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Executive Function
The Hidden Hazard of Work to Do Work
The lead-up tasks to start an activity can tax our brains. Here's what to do.
Posted August 21, 2024 Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
Key points
- There are many mostly invisible steps required before we start a task on our to-do lists.
- Not accounting for the time and energy required for warm-up tasks can foil our best plans.
- We can uncover and address the warm-up steps, alleviating their burden to help us achieve our goals.
I’m staring at my kitchen counter, holiday music playing in the background, the oven preheating, the cookbook open to one of my favorite recipes. And I feel frozen. I’m certainly motivated to bake these thumbprint cookies, even extra excited because they’ll feature jam I made over the summer. Yet, the process is overwhelming. Before I begin to make the dough, I need to do some work—a lot of work, really— and it’s holding me back. I need to clear a large space on the counter for the cookie sheets. I need to get the mixer from the hall closet and take out the food processor, step one of which is finding it. I’ll need to gather ingredients, hopefully not needing to make a quick grocery run to grab something I’m missing. It’s a lot of steps to take, a lot of obstacles to conquer, before I even start to bake these cookies. These invisible, prerequisite steps are what I call work to do work.
Examples of work to do work abound in academic, home, and work settings. Any time we must log in, set up, gather materials, or otherwise take several actions to initiate a task exemplifies the concept. The thing they all share in common is that work to do work impedes our activation; it’s an extra tax we pay in getting started and can make the difference in whether or not we complete a task.
How much you dread or avoid a task can be related to how much work to do work there is. If it’s easy to get into a task and get it done, it’s more likely you’ll do it. For example, putting away a dish into an empty dishwasher, with its door already open for you is about one step; you’ll be much more likely to do that versus having to empty the whole dishwasher before putting away the same dish.
Another way to consider the impact of the overwhelming pre-work steps is to consider the contrast, reflecting on things that are so easy to engage with we may mindlessly begin. If you find yourself scrolling a social media platform without realizing you started, it may be due to their engineering a very low amount of work in order to engage. Most social media platforms, game apps, and the like keep you logged in and often reduce the clicking necessary to jump in (and possibly get stuck). Contrast that to your work or school email, where it can require many steps to log in, and you may have to find or try several passwords or complete a frustrating two- or three- step verification.
Work to do work fuels procrastination. So what do we do about it? First, we find it and we give ourselves some credit: We’re doing a lot before we even start the tasks that others notice. Next time you dread something or have a hard time getting started, ask yourself how much underground work to do work you’re facing. Do you have to set up? Find things? Log in? Get in the right physical or headspace? Complete prerequisite steps before you can get going? When you uncover these, write them down. They can help you start to strategize to make your “on ramp” to getting things done a bit smoother.
Once you’ve seen your work-to-do-work challenge, your next step is to see what you can make a bit easier. Can you have your internet browser save your passwords? Can you bookmark your usual spaces? Can you make the pre-work part of your routine, so it’s sure to be done when you start the work? Can you leave things physically or digitally set up for future you, so you don’t have to re-do your setup system each time?
I work with a college student who’s figured out that predictable noise and motion around her helps her focus. To be honest, without these factors addressed, she spends about half of her mental energy monitoring her own attention, rather than progressing on her studies. Recognizing that she’s heavily influenced by her space, she’s found a room and desk in her school library that are perfect for her brain. But she faced many steps before she could get in and do work. She’d have to pack up her things, go to the library, see if her space was available, set herself up, and then start to work. By the time she was all set, she was often hungry and tired. It was work to do work.
She followed the process of noticing and then alleviating some of the warm-up steps that drained her. She noticed that many of the needed actions could be done the night before, so she got in the habit of packing her bag and scheduling her trip to the library–including time to walk there–in the evenings. She also started reserving the room several days in advance, so it wasn’t a risk that it would be taken. Last, she took a photo of what her ideal setup looked like, making it easy to emulate the setup once she was in the library each day. Her work to do work was cut down to a very doable amount, and now she’s thriving.
In home-life examples, I’ve seen people use the same strategy of getting prep things done the night before, when, yes, they’re already tired, but there’s no risk of running their batteries too low before they go to bed. People will set out the things they’ll need for breakfast, including pots and pans, or even put their prescription bottle in or near their coffee cups, so they have an easy prompt to remember their meds. It becomes a habit of imagining what future you needs the next day, then setting them up for success, which so often translates to getting the work to do work done early.
Recognize and celebrate the invisible work to do work that you conquer each day. Then, see if you can use a detective perspective to find ways to ease that workload for future you.
