Further Tricks on How I Stay Focused When Bored by Tedium

This strategy is somewhat quirky but if it helps others stay focused, great. It’s complicated, so hang in here. We begin with three mental images: 1) Superman, 2) time lapse photography, and 3) high speed photography.

1) In the TV show Smallville, Clark Kent (Superman) runs really, really fast. When he does, the world around him slows down. From his point of view, he’s just plodding along. But compared to the world out there he’s lightening fast. It’s a “relativity of time” sort of thing. At first glance it seems like that would be a cool skill—speed up you, slow down time. At second glance, however, if we all lived at a Clark Kent pace 24/7 we’d eventually want more time. It’s human nature; if we were given a 36 hour day it wouldn't be long until we’d want a 48 hour day. It’s the human condition for our reach to exceed our grasp.

Okay, got this “relativity of time” thing in your head?

2) Now, think of all the things around you that slowly decrease, little by little. Over time I can barely see the amount of coffee grounds in the one pound coffee can in my kitchen slowly diminish. I barely see the toothpaste in the tube gradually empty out. But if we were to take a time lapse photo of the coffee can or toothpaste tube every day and then watch them sped up, our cans and tubes would empty instantly. In real time it takes weeks to empty those things. Like those sped up shots of growing plants, moving clouds, or blooming roses--time is condensed. We need not take actual photos to visualize this; with our imagination we can see time sped up.

3) Finally, think of all those high speed photography Youtube clips you’ve seen of bullets slowly puncturing balloons, drops of water slowly falling into a sink, or the spray of germs from a slow motion sneeze. When filmed at super high speed (like Superman), and watched at a slower speed (like those of us not from the planet Krypton), fast actions slow down.

With these three goofy images in mind, let’s turn our attention to your tedious tasks using my tedious tasks for illustration.

When I see a pile of 428 pages each of which requires ten to fifteen minutes of tedious editing, my heart sinks. I shudder at the hours I’m going to “waste.” I cringe at the thought of missing out on sunshine, fresh air, and hanging with friends. To combat those negative thoughts I do the following.

I pretend I’m Superman running real fast and the world around me is moving real slow. While traveling at that super human pace I feel like Superman feels, just plodding along, tweaking one tedious page at a time. Even Superman feels like he’s going slowly, but he’s doing his best. This relieves me of the pressure I feel to “work faster.”

I pretend I’m taking daily photos of the stack of un-edited pages in front of me and in my mind I speed up the film and weeks of real time are condensed to a fifteen second video clip. The height of my papers magically shrinks. This relieves me of the illusion, “I’m not making any progress.”

I pretend each tedious task (clicking a mouse 100s of times on each page) is being filmed at high speed and will be replayed in slow motion. This reminds me of how many actions I actually do per page. What takes a tedious minute in real time looks in slow motion like an infinite number of muscle movements, eye/hand coordination, and precise acts. This relieves me of the faulty notion, “This is unskilled work.”

If the above mental tricks don’t work for you….repeat after me:

1. Instant gratification takes too long.
2. We over estimate what we can do in a day but under estimate what we can do in a year.
3. “He who gathers money little by little makes it grow.” (Proverbs 13:11).
4. "Moments tumble like grains of sand falling through an hourglass of time" is a stupid metaphor in this high tech age but sounds more poetic than “digital minutes on our cell phone alarms tick away.”
5. The world will beat a path to my door, folks will stand in the snow to get a glimpse of my work, and what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.
6. Upon completion of this task I will win a Nobel Prize in one or more the following categories: peace, economics, literature, physics, chemistry, physiology and medicine.