Research: How to Power Through Boring Tasks - Deepstash

Keep reading for FREE

Boring Tasks Are Inevitable: The Key Takeaways

Boring Tasks Are Inevitable: The Key Takeaways

There’s no escaping boring tasks. While we all do our best to fill our personal and professional lives with engaging activities, there are countless menial, yet critical tasks that keep our organizations running.

Pairing boring work with a secondary task that requires more attention can be an effective strategy to boost engagement and thus persistence. This insight can help individuals, managers looking to help their teams stay on track, organizations looking to encourage healthy practices, and product designers looking to improve customer retention.

5

21 reads

Tangential Immersion Decreases Boredom and Increases Persistence

Tangential Immersion Decreases Boredom and Increases Persistence

  • People can really only pay attention to so much at one time.
  • Tangential immersion, when there are two tasks of differing cognitive loads to be done, seems to increase persistence while decreasing boredom.
  • Tangential immersion only increases persistence if the two tasks together occupy most of - but not more than - one's total attentional capacity.

8

22 reads

Putting Tangential Immersion to Work

Putting Tangential Immersion to Work

So how can individuals, managers, and organizations start leveraging the power of tangential immersion? Many people already demonstrate an intuitive understanding of this effect in their personal lives — for instance, listening to immersive music or podcasts while at the gym is a great example of real-world tangential immersion.

But there are also a lot of workplace situations in which both employees and their managers might benefit from this approach.

4

14 reads

The Office Use Case

The Office Use Case

When it comes to menial office tasks, many employees use monitoring tools such as work timers to increase their persistence. In other cases, managers might rely on incentives such as extra time off or bonuses to motivate their employees. And to be sure, strategies like these certainly have a place.

For tasks that don’t require much attention, tangential immersion may be more effective. That could mean encouraging workers to listen to an audiobook while filing paperwork, watch a video while cleaning their desks, or read a news article while stuffing envelopes.

4

11 reads

The Bottom Line

There’s no escaping boring tasks. Of course, we should all do what we can to fill our jobs and lives with engaging activities — but given the prevalence and importance of low-attention work in our personal and professional lives (and the lives of our employees and customers), we all stand to benefit from finding ways to persist in these behaviors.

Tangential immersion offers a simple yet effective strategy that can empower anyone to stick with the work they know they should be doing, boosting personal productivity, organizational success, and well-being on a societal level.

5

11 reads

CURATED BY

jennifrobert

Equities trader

CURATOR'S NOTE

While doing a boring task, pair it with something interesting.

Ready for the next level?

Read Like a Pro

stash-superman-illustration

Explore the World’s

Best Ideas

200,000+ ideas on pretty much any topic. Created by the smartest people around & well-organized so you can explore at will.

An Idea for Everything

Explore the biggest library of insights. And we've infused it with powerful filtering tools so you can easily find what you need.

Knowledge Library

Powerful Saving & Organizational Tools

Save ideas for later reading, for personalized stashes, or for remembering it later.

# Personal Growth

Take Your Ideas

Anywhere

Organize your ideas & listen on the go. And with Pro, there are no limits.

Listen on the go

Just press play and we take care of the words.

Never worry about spotty connections

No Internet access? No problem. Within the mobile app, all your ideas are available, even when offline.

Get Organized with Stashes

Ideas for your next work project? Quotes that inspire you? Put them in the right place so you never lose them.

Join

2 Million Stashers

4.8

5,740 Reviews

App Store

4.7

72,690 Reviews

Google Play

Ashley Anthony

This app is LOADED with RELEVANT, HELPFUL, AND EDUCATIONAL material. It is creatively intellectual, yet minimal enough to not overstimulate and create a learning block. I am exceptionally impressed with this app!

Shankul Varada

Best app ever! You heard it right. This app has helped me get back on my quest to get things done while equipping myself with knowledge everyday.

samz905

Don’t look further if you love learning new things. A refreshing concept that provides quick ideas for busy thought leaders.

Sean Green

Great interesting short snippets of informative articles. Highly recommended to anyone who loves information and lacks patience.

Giovanna Scalzone

Brilliant. It feels fresh and encouraging. So many interesting pieces of information that are just enough to absorb and apply. So happy I found this.

Jamyson Haug

Great for quick bits of information and interesting ideas around whatever topics you are interested in. Visually, it looks great as well.

Ghazala Begum

Even five minutes a day will improve your thinking. I've come across new ideas and learnt to improve existing ways to become more motivated, confident and happier.

Laetitia Berton

I have only been using it for a few days now, but I have found answers to questions I had never consciously formulated, or to problems I face everyday at work or at home. I wish I had found this earlier, highly recommended!

Read & Learn

20x Faster

without
deepstash

with
deepstash

with

deepstash

Access to 200,000+ ideas

Access to the mobile app

Unlimited idea saving & library

Unlimited history

Unlimited listening to ideas

Downloading & offline access

Personalized recommendations

FAQ

Claim Your Limited Offer

Get Deepstash Pro

Supercharge your mind with one idea per day

Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.

Email

I agree to receive email updates