An Important/Enjoyable cocktail.

Good morning,

 

In your town there are many jobs that need to be completed so that the lights can stay on, roads cleared and the water flowing. These long lists of jobs all have levels of importance and enjoyment attached to them. It is, therefore, an interesting exercise to work out and separate the jobs that have higher levels of importance to your town and those which have very little influence.

 

A small audit needs to be made, therefore, where you list all the jobs and tasks you currently need to complete down on a piece of paper. Next, to these items, a second column should be added where you can assign an enjoyment rating to each job. This rating should encompass the way it feels leading up to, during and the effects of completing such tasks.

 

Please see the below simple Important vs Enjoyable chart I made earlier which could be useful in organising your listed tasks…

 

 

Once you have taken your initial list and placed each task into one of the above boxes, you should have a good idea about which things in your life should be prioritised. Let me break down the above so there is no confusion with what we are looking at:

 

Important axis – This is simply a judgement call on the things you do in your days. Please consider the following questions. Has this task been requested to me from someone else? Do I feel emotionally obligated to complete this task? Will there be consequences if the task is not completed? Is the focus of this task on me, or someone else?

 

These are some of the things you need to consider when determining the importance of a task. It is also key to remember that within the tasks noted as important, some will be more pressing than others and so may need to be prioritised further when necessary.

 

Enjoyment axis – This axis is deceptive. ‘Do you enjoy something?’ sounds like a question you can answer without any problem, right? Wrong, when you take into consideration the enjoyment attained from getting a task completed or the lack of enjoyment you may feel from putting a task off, the overall enjoyment may shift.

 

An example of this would be housework, not many people can claim to enjoy housework, but the good feeling you get from having a tidy house may be enough to make the whole experience a positive one.

 

 

Ideally, we would all have happy lives filled with important and enjoyable tasks that are fulfilling and move us forward. Life, however, rarely works out like this naturally and there will be times we have to do jobs that are unimportant or hold no interest for us.

 

Whilst I would love to be able to tell you that I have the secret to getting a lifestyle free of the unimportant and un-enjoyable tasks, I have not got those types of magical powers. I have learnt a few things along the way, however, that I am very excited to send over these seeds of knowledge to you in future letters!

 

I will talk to you very soon!

 

Yours sincerely,

Ryan Rose-Blanc

Rose-Blanc Town management