Hate a Task? Do It Better!

One way to stop hating a job is to learn how to do it better.

I absolutely hated doing all kinds of sports and exercise ever since I was young. I only started running when I realized I had to do something to stay fit at an older age. At first, I was terrible at it, of course. But then I read several books (including Chi-Running, which I recommend to everyone) and learned how to run better. I completed 2,500 kilometers annually in the last three years. I still wouldn't say I love running. But I got good at it, and I stopped hating it.

In the last two weekends, I spent many hours repairing and painting walls in my house—again. For many years, I despised all kinds of Do-It-Yourself labor, especially painting. (My father was a professional house painter—I think there's some trauma there.) However, during COVID times, I had no travel and an entire home that needed painting. So, I watched dozens of YouTube videos on prepping, sanding, priming, and painting, and then I painted half our house. I still wouldn't say I love the job, but I enjoy that I got pretty good at it!

When you're good at something, it's harder to hate it.

It's the same for me with managing mailing lists. I've always considered newsletter management a pain in the backside. It has to be done—partners and community members need updates about what's happening—but managing a mailing list is not a lot of fun from an operations perspective. Trust me.

And it showed!

Our unFIX newsletter was a mess. Sorry! Recent community members were missing from the list; we could not distinguish official partners from Community+ members and free members; there was no decent onboarding workflow, no regular maintenance, and the free goodies were at least seven years old.

We ended up with this chaos because nobody deliberately managed our mailing list as an ongoing Initiative.

This had to change.

So, I rolled up my digital sleeves, read several books on email marketing, browsed through all the menus in Mailerlite—the software we use for our mailing list—and even plowed through a couple of free courses. I created better-looking templates, proper subscriber groups, fresh onboarding workflows, daily team notifications, and more. And guess what? I'm now at risk of enjoying the work because I'm getting good at it.

Note: I'm not saying I'm great at mailing list management—yet. Please let me know if you notice a mistake or something annoying as a subscriber. I'm still learning and improving!

One way to stop hating a task is to learn how to do it better, even if it's something as dull as running, painting, or newsletter management. Keep that in mind next time you avoid doing a task. Your reluctance could mean it's time to read a book, watch a few videos, or sign up for online classes. Don't hate the work; get good at it!

Jurgen

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