How to Motivate Yourself to Do Boring Life Tasks

Do you struggle to motivate yourself to do boring life tasks?

We know that self care is not the commercialized version we so often see. (That’s often actually a form of self soothing; providing ourselves with something nice to ease the discomfort or distress of a situation. We talk about the difference between the two a little bit here.)

But, essentially, self care is about developing a life and forming habits that take care of your physical, mental, and emotional needs. 

Which isn’t always as fun as the bubble bath, treat-yourself version of “self care” that we sometimes think of! 

In fact, many ways in which we care for ourselves are very boring chores, such as: 

• Making a grocery list of foods that fill you and make you feel good (physically and emotionally–emotionally nourishing foods are also important, there should be joy in the task of eating too!) 

• Refilling prescriptions

• Remembering to take medicine 

• Making doctors appointments when something is wrong

• Cleaning your home; making sure your space is tidy enough not to inhibit your daily life or get you sick 

• Prioritizing time with people who make you happy and leave you feeling rejuvenated 

• Finding a method/system for remembering appointments

Some of those are more fun than others–seeing our friends for example, isn’t a very hard one to motivate ourselves to do. Making doctors appointments and cleaning our house, however, isn’t really all that fun! Tasks like those, which are important to a healthy, happy, and well rested life, often go neglected because it really is just so hard to find the motivation to do those things–especially when we’re living in a world prone to burning us out already. 

And we’re now also facing the obstacles that come with the winter season. Many of us struggle even more this time of year due to the short, darker, colder days. We’re getting less sunlight and our brain is producing more melatonin because of that, which means we’re more likely to be tired all the time! 

So how can you motivate yourself to do boring self care tasks?

Stop all or nothing thinking: 

Is there a pile of dishes sitting in your sink? Maybe it’s been there for days and it just keeps getting bigger? And now, the bigger it is, the more daunting the task seems? Stop telling yourself you need to do it all at one time. Life is rarely all or nothing. 50% is pretty much always better than 0%! Tell yourself you’ll just start those annoying tasks (dishes, laundry, grocery prep, etc.) and after ten minutes or so, if you want to stop, you’re allowed to. 

Getting started is often the hardest part, especially when the task itself is so massive it feels like even if you start you’ll never finish.  When you tell yourself “I don’t have to finish the dishes, I just have to start them” you’re easing that pressure. Chances are? You’ll realize doing the dishes isn’t actually that bad and you’ll just finish them. And if not? Then some of your dishes are clean now when they weren’t before! 

Select part of the day to be “productive”

You’re not going to want to spend the whole day on boring tasks. If it’s hard to even get yourself started, you’ll never want to dedicate a whole day to it!  Instead, find ways to split the day into productive and non-productive chunks. Give yourself a starting time (“I’ll take a look at my to do list and decide what’s realistic to get done today at 1pm”) or a cut off time (“I’ll try to get what I can done before 3pm, but after that I’m going to rest.”)

Have a “life admin” buddy

Can you coordinate with a friend who might also struggle to get some boring self care done? Maybe the two of you can have cleaning dates where you help each other clean each other’s homes, or meal prep days where you cook or grocery shop together. You could start a monthly “tradition” of getting together to go through your calendars for the month and make sure all your appointments are in there with reminders and any info you’ll need for them. While the tasks themselves might not be fun, having a friend there can add in some joy (maybe even get you looking forward to it!) or just assure you that you’re not the only one who needs a little extra help with these “life admin” tasks sometimes. 

Give yourself a reward

There’s nothing wrong with making boring tasks more appealing with a treat! Maybe when you go grocery shopping, you could stop by the bakery section and pick yourself up a fresh baked treat as a reward for getting groceries. Another idea could be to make plans with friends after appointments you don’t enjoy (see a friend for lunch after a doctor’s appointment, etc) to make them more appealing! While you might not enjoy actually going to the doctor, making it a “rule” that you get something fun in return can help make it a more positive experience overall–and might help you to stop putting it off. 

If you're looking for more support, our therapists are trained in modalities like cognitive behavioral therapy (cbt) to help you move from feeling hopeless to feeling empowered.