62 How to do less of the drudgery and more of the fun

In the good old days women spent all day, every day, doing the washing.  They rubbed, kneaded and wrung the clothes until their hands were raw. It was drudgery at its very best and it left scant time for anything else;  except maybe a bit of cooking and cleaning.

Then along came the washing machine. Hurrah!

One hundred years ago a bit of equipment turned a process that took days into one that took minutes (if you exclude the ghastly act of putting away the clean clothes) and it liberated women. Seriously, before the advent of the washing machine we were too damn busy doing the laundry to have a career or run a business.

Now you might be wondering where I’m going with this given I usually write about ways of making a small business more profitable, not the emancipation of women. Bear with me.

We don’t mention it much but there can be a fair amount of drudgery in our businesses. Not of the rubbing ,kneading kind but drudgery all the same.

Yes, lots of the stuff we do in business is exciting and fun and we are passionate about it. But there’s also a whole heap of stuff that has to be done every day – peeling potatoes if you’re The DinnerLadies maybe, or possibly the uploading of photos etc if you’re in online retail.

It’s time consuming and quite frankly we could do without it.

But how can you avoid doing it? Here’s our plan:

1. First of all think about what the ‘washing’ is in your business  – the drudgery. We’re often so busy doing the yukky work that we don’t take the time out to be honest and say ‘this task sucks’.

 

2. Next, write down the ‘washing’ tasks on a piece of paper. There’s a quirky (but scientifically proven) mechanism in the brain which moves a problem into our subconscious thinking if we write it down.  This is a good thing because our subconscious brain is better at solving problems than our conscious brain.

 

3. Now look at your list of tasks and ask yourself “If money and technical know-how was no option how would I get rid of the drudgery of doing this?”

 

4. If your answer was ‘employ someone’  – remembering that one man’s drudgery is another man’s fun, or at least their meal ticket – then think now about how you can get to the point where you can afford a helper or employee of some sort (or if it’s packing boxes say, maybe a little child labour!) Have a look at this blog post which might give you some thoughts.

 

5. If your answer was technology try Googling and/or asking around to see if something similar exists. I’m always amazed when I ask the question “does anyone know if there is something that does this?” that there normally is! It might be expensive and unaffordable now, but worth saving up for.

 

6. If your answer was outsourcing to a specialist (a logistics place say, or a distributor) again it might sound expensive but go and check it out anyway. If it frees you up to grow the business then it would be worth finding out a way of affording it.

Whether you free yourself of your ‘washing’  – the drudgery – is up to you. But the point is you don’t have to do it. Somewhere there is the equivalent of a ‘washing machine’ for your business. Yes you might have to save up for it big time (like a generation of women did in the 1940s,50s and 60s) but once you have a plan for ditching the scrubbing you’ll feel a whole lot freer.

 

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