The Story About the Work Saps More Energy than the Work

The dread:work ratio explains why some tasks feel like they’re going to take a lot more effort than they actually will

When we look at the total energy required to get something done, the stories about the work always often take up so much more energy than the work itself. The diagram below captures this idea, except it may not be to scale because the green circle is too big.

This creates what I call the dread:work ratio — the relationship between how much energy we spend dreading something versus the actual energy required to do it.

For instance, when we look at frogs (the work we don't want to do), the dread:work ratio is always way out of whack; we can spend weeks dreading a 15-minute task. That's a dread:work ratio of something like 100:1, or one hundred units of dread for every one unit of actual work.

Here's the key insight: most tasks require a fixed minimum amount of work. A 15-minute task will take 15 minutes whether you do it today or next month. The work stays constant.

But the dread? That grows like interest on a balance. The longer a task sits there, the more mental energy you invest in avoiding it, until the psychological "size" of the task becomes enormous compared to the actual work required.

Some common examples may be helpful here:

• Many of us dread taking breaks or saying no to projects because we've tied our self-worth to being busy, when in reality the burnout from overwork creates far more problems than maintaining healthy boundaries ever would

• Teammates may agonize over talking to their boss about being overloaded or scattered, when the reality is that their boss may not have visibility over how much work they’re actually doing

• Leaders dread giving constructive feedback, when not giving it creates considerably more work and is the opposite of what many teammates want

There are several ways you can bring the total energy required down, closer to that smaller circle of work required and thus lowering your dread:work ratio:

1. Prove your yaysayers right rather than focusing on the naysayers

2. Assume you'll succeed when you're planning while acknowledging that it might not work

3. Let go of the outcome and focus on the doing

4. Keep your eyes forward

5. If all else fails, just get up and take care of your people

6. Take the next small step and build from there

As a case in point, I could've gone through and written new bullet points, but the only reason I'd do so is because of my story about needing to write more new stuff rather than reference stuff I've already mentioned. That doesn't seem to be a particularly good way to model the message.

If you were to zoom up to your life as a whole, I bet you'd see that there's a whole lot of unnecessary work caused by your stories (head trash), that you then attach even more stories to. If you've ever caught yourself in the suffering-martyr trap, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Changing your story about the work is often a much better way to get more work done than changing the work itself. After all, your story is taking up considerably more energy anyway.

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If you’re looking for more ideas and practices that help you focus on the work that matters (and dropping the head trash), Start Finishing has a lot more for you.