5 ways to reduce the emotional weight of a task

Recently I wrote a post on how to speed up your tasks. One of the points demonstrated how to reduce the emotional weight of the task. Doing this can help you experience less urge to avoid the task. It can help you get your task done more quickly, with less cognitive and emotional energy.

It was a popular point that resonated with readers, so this post will offer additional tools to reduce how emotionally weighty a task feels.

Cognitive Tricks to Make Any Task Feel Lighter

1. Imagine It as Standalone, Not Part of a Bigger Project

If you have a two-hour task that’s part of a bigger month-long project, that often feels more weighty than if you merely had a standalone two-hour task. Something we can blast through and be done with feels lighter.

If you have work that’s part of a bigger project that feels exhausting, try imagining it as a standalone task that once you’re done with, you’re done.

2. Imagine It as Having Few Consequences

Many strategies that reduce the emotional weight of a task do so because they lower the perceived stakes.

For example, imagine you need to write an extended email. You see it as being your one shot to have a positive relationship with that person, or get any response from them at all.

Compare that with a scenario where you don’t imagine your next interaction with someone will have much, if any, bearing on your ultimate relationship with them.

When we imagine our task as having few consequences, it reduces its emotional weight.

Sometimes you’ll only be able to lower the stakes from high to medium. For example, if you need to get a medical test, you might remind yourself that the result isn’t going to define you either way. It’ll be part of the picture, not the complete picture. It’ll be information, not a destiny.

3. Imagine It Is Purely Transactional—You’re Only Doing It for a Quick External Reward

Imagine you’re walking down the street and someone offers you $50 to complete a five-minute survey about some topic you don’t care about at all. You’re walking to a lunch date and you’re early, so you have time. You answer their questions and get paid, but don’t overthink it.

When a task is just business, not personal, the stakes feel lower. You show up, do what’s required, get the reward, and leave your ego out of it. Treating a task as transactional means you don’t have to bring your whole identity to it. This can be a useful mindset to bring to a task you’re overly emotionally invested in. Try capturing a detached vibe, and bring that to your current task.

Keep in mind that a more detached attitude won’t necessarily lower your performance. More on that next.

4. Imagine You Can Bring a Mediocre Version of Yourself to It and Still Be Guaranteed Positive Feedback (for Just Doing It)

Not every task requires our best self. Sometimes a task simply isn’t important enough to need that. Sometimes there isn’t enough added benefit from exerting more effort. Sometimes we have a level of expertise or experience that means even a mediocre version of ourselves can create an outcome on a task that’s impressive or valuable to others.

At times, an endeavor feels daunting enough to most people that they’re impressed just by our completing it. Accomplishing it is impressive, without us needing to cross any other threshold.

Try imagining a scenario in which you can bring your average self, or a slightly low-energy version of yourself, to your task and the result will still be valuable, or even impressive.

5. Remove Ways You Feel Offended by It

Quick story: Every two years, the rate I pay for my home internet almost doubles. I call the company, and get a “promotion” that lasts another two years, and invariably it brings my bill back down to slightly more than my previous rate.

I hate this game-playing. I feel resentful about what a waste of time this is. My self-talk is, “This company wants me to waste my precious life calling them for this runaround.” Yet, I recognize this business model. They make money from people who never call, and even from those who do call, they collect the higher rate for every day before the call happens.

If I remove any personalization, it makes the task still annoying, but not offensive.

Questions: What tasks feel emotionally weighty because you feel like you shouldn’t have to do them? What tasks feel like they inherently disrespect you?

Other common examples include dealing with bureaucratic paperwork, fixing errors you foresaw and tried to prevent, or jumping through security hoops because other people act badly leading to the procedures.

Lighter Emotions Don’t Lead to Lower Performance

There’s a long history of strategies to reduce the emotional weight of work, like the idea of the “sh*tty first draft” in writing, which sets the expectation a first draft will be bad. But not all techniques work for everybody.

Just like a mantra might appeal to one person but not another, cognitive reframes that work for one person won’t appeal to another. Therefore we need to be exposed to a variety of techniques to find a small handful that can become our reliable go-to strategies.

As you consider strategies, keep in mind that you often won’t be making a trade-off between emotional investment and performance. In sports, it’s recognized that there’s a sweet spot between arousal and performance. Too much arousal in a competition can decrease performance. Similarly, our task performance doesn’t always benefit from higher emotional investment. Often emotional weight just leads to procrastination or second-guessing. A calmer, more detached approach can improve both our speed and quality of work.