Unpleasantness

How do you cope with work that is unpleasant? Join us in learning how the world of work really works!

Transcript

Todd: Hi there, I'm Todd Jensen and welcome to the world of work. I heard a story once. A power company started to have some internal systems shut down in one of their departments regularly each afternoon around 3 p.m. It would take the IT engineering people, you know, close to 30 minutes to figure out how to reset the system and get it back online so that people in the department could work at their terminals. This went on for weeks the technological options were all examined and found not to be at fault. Then they started looking into the personnel. It turned out that one of the employees in department had accidentally discovered something with her long fingernails, ⁓ a of keystrokes ⁓ that accidentally hit different keys ⁓ that down the system and took about half an hour to come back online ⁓ After some trial and error, she was able to replicate this series of keystrokes. And when she needed a longer break in the afternoon, she just set her keyboard trick into motion. Well, I don't know if that story is true or not, but it does highlight the kinds of things people will do to avoid or get a break from work that they find boring or tedious. That's what we're discussing today. Unpleasantness at work. Why it's a problem. and what kind of things you can do to manage it. I will not be suggesting corporate sabotage like that story indicates, ⁓ but I will have some suggestions for how you can manage But first, let's talk about the impact unpleasant work is having ⁓ people in their work. ⁓ a USA Today survey in January of this year, 2026, It was reported that one in five young workers, that's a millennial and Generation Z is how they organize their information, are dissatisfied with their work. One in five young workers dissatisfied with their work. As a quick reference, millennials are roughly in the 30 to 45 age range right now, and Gen Z is in the 14 to 29 years old age range. A second poll, a Gallup. Bloomberg analysis in June of 2024 reported that only 31 % of young people were thriving at work. Finally, in 2026 this year, survey by Coworking Cafe reported that Gen Z is reporting the highest degree of burnout, 38%, and higher boredom-related disengagement, 54%, than any other age groups. Well, I know people my age that would say, well, this generation just isn't what it used to be or whatever. You know, I think those numbers were probably similar when I was that age. Every generation has its little quirks or whatever, but some things persist and not knowing how to manage ⁓ boring or tedious or unpleasant work is something all young people. have to figure out. So, you've probably already discovered in your experience so far that there some parts of a job that are unpleasant. Any job. Some types of unpleasantness will be subject for future episodes like things like bullying at work or oppressive or illegal behavior by leaders or dangerous activity in high-risk occupations. All unpleasant. and I plan to discuss those more in the future. They deserve kind of some special attention directly. But for now, what I'm talking about today are these kinds of unpleasant types of work. Tedious work. This is the kind of work that usually must be done because it can't be automated, but certain steps have to be taken in every transaction with infrequent. variations. It can be things like mopping the same floor every day or mixing the same powdered eggs for the same ungrateful group of school children over and over again or auditing an expense report. This kind of work is steadily being automated and with that automation some jobs are going away. AI is making that automation more reliable and we'll probably have some more episodes on what AI is doing to young people's ⁓ type of work early in their careers. But tedious work is a type of unpleasantness. Another type is repetitive activity. This is encountered in a lot of the work in the world of outsourcing or business process services. I'll have a future episode on this kind of work because it has employed so many young people in developing countries over many years, and I have lot of experience with it. Repetitive activity can be things like entering data, evaluating an image, opening mail, or making outbound calls. I'm not adding things like home installations of equipment, which is doing the same thing over and over again, but you're doing the same thing in different situations, which makes it interesting When I was younger, I worked for the power company in my state, reading ⁓ power meters in homes that are usually the outside of the home somewhere. There were no smart devices then, so I had to go door to door, read the meter manually on the power service attachment, and entered into my portable device. This was the same thing over and over and over again, and all day long. But each house was different, it had a different challenge. Was there a dog in the backyard that I needed to avoid? Was there a note to knock on the door first? Or how am going to open that tricky gate without breaking it? So on. So the kind of repetitive work I'm talking about is low variance, low complexity work. It's, it's unpleasant. And there's isolated work. If you're an introverted person or hate social interactions for one reason or another, then maybe this isn't so bad for you. But for many, Being isolated from a team or customers or support staff is a really unpleasant thing. At first, when we all ended up working from home, when the COVID pandemic started, it was great. You could come to work in your housecoat and put on a dress shirt when you had to appear in a zoom call and everything was great. But for many, this experience made them feel isolated from their work and their mission at that work and the team, which had been a strength to them, but maybe they didn't fully appreciate it at the time. Another type of unpleasantness at work is boredom. This is a different challenge because it's rooted in the idea that there's no challenge or purpose to that specific type of work that you're doing for some period of time in this job. For example, you can be doing something tedious like carefully reading a manual on a new piece of equipment that you're using. That, on the surface, seems like it's boring. But because that new piece of equipment is going to be a part of your work life, and you want to figure it out and do well at it, and you like gadgets, it might not be boring to you. Think of a work that the security guard has to do, monitoring screens that don't change several hours at a time, walking the same routes late at night. Those tasks can seem very boring. In some jobs, There are pauses in the flow of the work and there's nothing to do for an hour at a time. ⁓ And people find that boring because they can't figure out how to manage themselves within that period where they don't have anything to do. For the security guard, to my point about whether a certain type of work is inherently boring or not, if you're a security guard that works in a place where you have to be on alert and there's good reasons to be on alert, well, those monitoring the monitors and walking the halls and looking at those kinds of things and looking for signs of trouble. ⁓ may not be boring because you have good reason to be vigilant in looking for a threat. So some tasks that might appear boring, ⁓ it depends on your relationship to the task and if it has purpose or meaning for you. ⁓ Another type of work that's unpleasant is intense or demanding work. ⁓ Here's an example, have ever put off your study for a test at school and then you wake up a day or two before this test to say to yourself, ⁓ no, that test is this week? Then you know all about intense and demanding work. After that moment of panic, your brain says, okay, I got a plan. We're just gonna reread all of our notes and practice memorizing. We're just going to reread all of our notes and practice memorizing four of the most critical things that I'm sure are going to be on that test. Well, that's your plan, but you got to check your phone first because Tina was starting a new job today and you kind of want to see how that was going. Then you think, ⁓ did I move money over to my account or am I an overdraft? better look at that. Okay. Now you're done with all that. Now you're going to get down to it. Let's go right after. I checked the score for that game yesterday that I missed. I've got to know what that was. That's going to bother me. And then while you're getting ready to get back into your study, you get a text and you're thinking to yourself, Tim did what? And so it goes. ⁓ Concentration is hard. Focusing or engaging in something with prolonged effort, physical or mental, requires stamina. The unpleasantness is that feeling you have right when your mind and body says, I'm done. I don't want to do this. Let's find something else to do. And all the consequences of not having the power to do more, to do what you need to do, just start running through your mind and building stress. And that's a very unpleasant situation. The last example of unpleasant work that I'll mention is frontline. retail. When I was younger, I worked for Wendy's, a fast food chain. And after a big concert, there was usually a long line at the drive through of starving and sometimes high or intoxicated people. I learned then that some people are mellow and pliable when they're intoxicated and others are hostile and difficult. But if you've stood in any line in any fast food place ever, You probably have a story about someone in that line in front of you complaining about the food or arguing about a discount that wasn't applied or just being obnoxious to the people that work there. Dealing with the wide variety of people in public, especially in high stakes or pressure filled areas or jobs is frequently unpleasant. So that's the problem. Nearly every job has something unpleasant about it. and jobs that are lower in pay or jobs that are in the entry level for an industry always have more unpleasant parts to them than the jobs at higher levels. So why is it a problem? ⁓ You just have to endure it, right? That's just the price you pay for starting into an industry and it'll eventually get better. Well, yes and no. I want you to face the reality that you're not going to erase or manage every bit of unpleasantness out of your job. As long as there are imperfect people and imperfect systems and individual choice, there's going to be some part of your job that you don't like or enjoy. But there's a danger in just saying you'll endure it or get another job if it gets too bad. The danger comes from the fact that it's human nature to avoid pain or difficulty. So your behavior on autopilot has a mind of its own sometimes. And in my experience, that will generally deal with unpleasantness in a way that's not very healthy. For example, if you just sort of go on autopilot, ⁓ you'll maybe ignore that type of work or that part of your job, you'll tolerate it. But after a while, you do it less and you do it less well, and you end up letting your team down. and then getting disciplined by the organization for performance issues. If that doesn't snap you out of it, ⁓ then the job now carries a degree of resentment for you and bitterness. I'm forced to do this work that I hate and you're the kind of guy that answers all those surveys that say, ⁓ I'm dissatisfied with my work because it's horrible. And misery is contagious, just like courage and... happiness are contagious in a workplace misery is also contagious in a workplace and if you become miserable and you're not even if you're sort of meeting the minimum performance levels eventually leadership is going to force you out of the organization and if that doesn't snap you out of it then you might go through the same type of cycle for another job or two and then After a while, you're only qualified to do the type of work that has a high degree of unpleasantness. And darker and difficult times are ahead on this trajectory. The better way, the way I want to help you have some keys to or some tips to, is to manage it. Understand that unpleasant work is part of the job, but actively cope with it. And don't let it hold you back from succeeding at that job. Okay, so how do you manage or cope productively with the kind of unpleasant work I've been describing? I've got five ideas for you and you can apply them all or a few of them. ⁓ But I think they can help you manage yourself through that unpleasant kind of work and it can help you build certain capabilities that will make you more attractive within the job and for other jobs. So, first one is, the first tip is to learn how to care about some part of your work. Most of us try to get jobs that align in some way with things we like to do or care about. It doesn't always work that way, but when we are looking for work, we tend to filter out things that seem overwhelming or terrible. I hope that... make sense. That's pretty natural for us to do. You don't always have that choice, but if you have a choice, you tend to go towards something that has some level of attractiveness to it. But it's important because things, it's important to find something to care about in whatever type of work you're doing because that gives you a strength and stability to deal with the unpleasantness. I'll give you another ⁓ example. It's really satisfying for me to make a customer happy. Any customer, for anything I'm involved in creating or producing or doing. And this has got me through several jobs that had a high degree of unpleasantness. In some of those jobs that I had early in my career, I needed to stay for another year or two for one reason or another. And I wasn't enjoying much of the work, but there was always a part of the job that directly impacted people, customers. And on those occasions where I was able to see or understand the customers were happy with the things that I was involved in or that our team completed, It was really satisfying for me and it gave me a kind of durability to get through the stuff that I didn't like. Maybe for you it's the act of creating or improving or packaging something that's satisfying. Perhaps you really enjoy the technical aspects or the global nature of your work. Learn to enjoy working on a team. And while your job may consist of shoveling or sweating through the day, you are doing that with others and being a good teammate means carrying your load well and not making others have to make up for your defects. It really is satisfying to finish a day knowing that you carried your fair share of the load on a team and maybe even a little more sometimes. Enjoy that. That's a satisfying feeling. It's a terrific quality that will win you more work and more friends and more trust in the organization. Overall, find something to care about. It will provide an anchor for you. I guess at a minimum you could be, you should be able to find the energy to be happy about the money that you're making or the benefits that you're securing because you're working. But I've found this isn't a very reliable thing to stand on alone because in your head you're thinking, ⁓ I can get any job and replace the money as as it gets me away from this Well, you might have to do that, but I'm just telling you, especially in the early part of your career, some part of your work is going to be unpleasant. ⁓ I think you need these tips to help get you through it. My second tip is strengthen your ability to control your attention. ⁓ Tidious or boring work is a great opportunity to add a or improve feature to your workability. are a couple of books about this that I found really helpful. First is called Deep Work by Cal Newport and he addresses this exact thing concentrating at work. Another great book on the broader subject of attention is called The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. His thesis is that Google search and the internet have made us all a little ⁓ dumber, a little slower. And you're thinking to yourself, well, he's an old guy, so what does he know? But it's a well-written and well-argued thesis that the habits of getting quick answers by searching Google and skimming a few pages to feel like you understand something affects your ability to do deep work. affects your ability to read a whole book because I can just read a summary in five minutes and have the high points and why wouldn't I do that and read all the great works of literature and Well, it doesn't work that way. Your mind, when you read books, when you do deep work, when you train yourself to control your attention, to do difficult work that requires concentration, it's a muscle. It's a muscle in your mind that gets better and stronger as you use it and practice it. And it gets weaker and harder to deploy when you don't use it. So my point here is strengthen your ability to control your attention. Physical and intellectual work requires stamina. Stamina to pay attention to non-flashy, sometimes non-interesting things, things for a prolonged period of time, things that take a long time to explain, things that are nuanced. There's a whole industry around training AI models right now. And in order to qualify to do that kind of work, which pays pretty well. You have to be very detail-oriented and clear about the instructions on what you've been asked to evaluate or look for and sustain that concentration over a long enough period of time to be productive and make money. The precision and volume demanded for this type of work is very high and it's a great example of if you don't know how to control your attention through this, you'll never succeed at getting that kind of work or making good money by doing it. And so learning to control your attention, to manage your attention, to be able to handle. tedious or detailed work is a real advantage in the marketplace. And think of the capacity to do this. If you're in a job that has, you know, tedious or repetitive work, use it as an opportunity to train your attention. It really is like a muscle. And the more you do it, the stronger you get at it. ⁓ You know, I mean, apply the things we know about physical work. If you started your physical fitness routine today and you were maxed out after doing five push-ups and you kept trying and you did those five push-ups and as many more as you could get every day for two or three weeks, at the end of that two to three weeks, you would, promise you, you would be doing more push-ups. That's strength. You're building strength. And the same applies to sustained mental activity as well. My third tip is make work a game that you can improve your score in. I think this is probably my second most frequently used idea that I've employed over the years. It's easier to do in production environments. It's harder in some other types of jobs, but I've spent most of my career in production environments. And I like to win at things. I like to improve performance over time. Those are satisfying things for me. I had a really dreadfully dull job once where I worked for a very large bureaucratic organization. I didn't really enjoy most of the people I was working with at the time or the work itself, but it paid well and I kind of needed to stay there for another year or two. So I had to really work. at how I was going to cope with and succeed at the job. One of the things I did was figure out how long it would take me to do the central part of the job, which was to review and finalize incoming contracts for new projects. Some elements were in my control and others were not. So I tracked all of them and set a baseline for each step, how long those are taking each time I did the process. Then I knew I could shave some of the time off for those parts that were in my control. And that was the game. So what can I do to do this quicker or more effectively so that my cycle time on this part of the project is better on this go around? And when I got finished doing all that I could do with those, then I tried to start figuring out how to do other parts that were outside of my control. faster. Who could I talk to in a different department? What would entice them to turn their part around a little quicker? And that was also a fun challenge for me. So within six months, I was put in charge of training new people that did the same type of work on my team, even though there were several veterans on the team. And I loved the training part. So my efforts had helped me win more pleasant work. You can apply this in a number of ways. ⁓ Maybe it's improving the cycle time of something that's, ⁓ cycle time is the time from start to finish, or improving the acceptance rate, ⁓ total accepted units out of the total units produced, that's your acceptance rate. Usually if you get better at executing a task, in your workplace, gets noticed and appreciated by those that you work with. Not always, but usually it does. ⁓ Sometimes your coworkers will pressure you to not become too efficient, to not become too quick at your work, because when they do the math, they think that if everybody was forced to deploy your methods, ⁓ the whole team could become 20 % more effective. And that would mean on a team of 10 that the company is going to get rid of two people. Well, yeah, I understand that. I'll talk a little bit more about that here in a few minutes, but that's not how I do things. And I want to move and do as quickly as possible because I think that's best for the business. And if you're working for a good company, then doing what's best for the business is going to be better for you and your teammates in the long run. One caution for you here before I end this segment about ⁓ making things a game. Any process, any task that's worth doing has a counterweight to production speed and that's quality. If you get those two things out of balance, you will very quickly find yourself sitting down with a supervisor who's going over a warning and an action plan to improve your output. ⁓ The best way in production environments to manage this is to get the quality right first. Produce as much as possible without defects. Get the quality right. Know how to make or perform your task so that it doesn't create defects. Then increase your speed while holding that defect rate low. Okay, on to number four. Change your aperture. In photography, aperture has to do with the amount of light and depth of field your lens allows or focuses on. I'll give you another example. I was transferred once from a supervisory job where there were many things going on on any given day. Personnel questions and issues, meetings and interviews, questions on solving production problems or supply problems. I was in camera language, always viewing at a wider angle. taking in lots of individual subjects and issues rapidly, never really going into depth with any of them. The job I transferred to was a much more analytical and involved fewer things to grapple with, but each of them was more complicated and nuanced. I was really frustrated and unhappy early on with this, but I started to figure out how to manage this feeling. I came to understand that I needed to change my aperture. I needed to zoom in. to portrait mode, detail mode, and take in fewer things, but see the things I was focusing on in all of their detail. That wasn't natural for me, and I wasn't very good at it at first, but I decided that it would be valuable to my career if I was good at it. Later in life, I had to do both in a senior leadership position, switching from one lens to the other on any given day, and the experience of building that capability was really valuable to me. So if you're living in a world where the detail is boring to you, consider changing your aperture and teaching yourself to see very interesting and challenging things with a tighter focus. Finally, my last idea is to... innovate and make your work better. Put your mind to the task of, does this task have to be done this way? So yes, I'll do it. I'll get good at it. And then I'll try to think if there's ways that I can make it more efficient so that it doesn't require so much of my time to do. Reduce the sheer hours per week that I'm doing unpleasant work. ⁓ Whatever the task that seems unpleasant to you is probably something that is being done because no one has thought of a better way to do it or the company can't afford a better way to do it. Keep in mind that if you finish your first day and you had an unpleasant task and you say to your boss, is really stupid. Why am I doing this boring work? And why can't a machine do it? Your boss will probably say to you, there are 20 people standing in line for this job. So if you don't want it, Now is a good time to let one of them come in and try it and let you go. So no, don't, don't do that. Get some experience first after a while, ask around about the history of this job. Get good at doing your job, even the unpleasant parts of it. But with that as your foundation, start to think, what if there was a better way? Maybe if you're doing data entry work, you notice that you're having to take your hands off the keyboard several times to use a mouse to click on something. make a suggestion that a change in the entry form would allow you to tap through everything and keep your hands on the keyboard. That might make you more efficient. Every job evolved into what it is now over time. And sometimes the technology has changed that could make it better. Sometimes... the way it was being done, at the rate it was being done, was good enough. And ⁓ I like to make things better. And I hope you are the kind of person that likes to make things better. As I mentioned before, ⁓ you'll have some people who will push back on making improvements or efficiencies because they think that will reduce the number of people that will eventually be on the team. But you have to decide. My advice is that if you're working for a good company, one that is growing, doing good things and treats its people well, you have a lot more to gain by making the work more efficient because it makes the business more profitable. And profitable businesses grow. So protecting or covering up for the status quo is not good for business. It's not a good habit in a career, even if you take some lumps early on. your teammates. Well, I'll close this episode by telling you to be valuable. Take responsibility to work through the hard parts of your job. Make the business better. It's my goal in this series of shows, podcast episodes to share insights and qualities that will open bigger and better doors for you throughout your career, making you happier and more prosperous. If you like what you're hearing, rate and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and invite others to listen. Stick with me on this journey as I tell you how the world of work really works.