The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

Small but annoying

It is not nec­es­sar­i­ly the big and exten­sive refine­ments and changes that make the biggest dif­fer­ence in terms of cre­at­ing a real­ly smooth work­flow, though. It often comes down to the small­est alter­ation, an adjust­ment of some kind of detail or ​”bug”, if we put it in programming-terms.

If you are any­thing like me, the lit­tle bugs will slight­ly annoy and frus­trate you. At the moment, I am both­ered by some pack­ag­ing bags that still have not got their prop­er place in my office, which means they keep falling to the floor and are in my way. I am also annoyed by a track­suit I got (while work­ing, if you can believe it!) but which in the wrong size and I, there­fore, have to get rid of, and a new rou­tine I have not imple­ment­ed ful­ly yet but still need to do every week (accom­pa­nied by moans and groans since it is far too complicated).

No big deals real­ly, but frus­trat­ing and annoying.

The rea­son for the bug is rea­son to adjust

If you ask your­self what the cause or rea­son for the thing annoy­ing you is, and then the cause of that cause, and so on, you will ulti­mate­ly end up with some kind of orig­i­nal cause or rea­son. If you elim­i­nate this, what­ev­er it was that both­ered you will be elim­i­nat­ed in the process as well. No more has­sle, no more annoyance!

But if it is that easy, why do we have so many small but annoy­ing things both­er­ing us? It is usu­al­ly not that the amend­ing or adjust­ing of these ​“orig­i­nal caus­es” takes much time or is very dif­fi­cult. It is just that we rarely get around to ask­ing our­selves what is actu­al­ly wrong, what the root cause of our prob­lem is and then take the time to fix it when we have a lot of oth­er things going on.

Get in con­trol of the bugs

If you grad­u­al­ly make note of the bugs and hin­drances you encounter in your every­day life on a list, you will soon have them all round­ed up and easy to get an overview of. You can then con­scious­ly decide to deal with one every week, every oth­er week or when­ev­er you feel inspired to and want to feel that you have done some­thing con­struc­tive and con­crete to make your life a tad better.

Do this

If you want to make your life smoother and eas­i­er by get­ting rid of ​“bugs”, then

1. Decide where and in what form you will keep your ​“bug-list”. It is a good idea to keep it some­where that syn­chro­nizes with all the dig­i­tal units you use since you then have access to it almost every­where and it will be read­i­ly avail­able the moment you think of some­thing that needs fix­ing or improv­ing. I keep my bug-list in the Notes-app on my phone which means it is avail­able on my com­put­er and iPad as well.


2. Start your list off by writ­ing down all the annoy­ing lit­tle bugs you can spon­ta­neous­ly think of.


3. Decide if you will deal with the items on the list on a reg­u­lar and struc­tured basis, or if you will pick things off it to fix at random.
4. If you want to get rid of the small annoy­ances of life faster and more often, add a recur­ring task to one of the days of the week dur­ing which you take a look at the bug-list, select one of its prob­lems and do some­thing about it.

One bug at a time

If you gath­er all the small but annoy­ing things you are both­ered by in a sin­gle list, you will soon have quite the num­ber of things you can improve upon. Instead of con­stant­ly being remind­ed that you should have done some­thing about that frus­trat­ing and faulty thing, you can now have a look at the list and do a small but con­scious effort to amend, cor­rect or fix what­ev­er has been both­er­ing you and thus make your life and work a lit­tle smoother and more pleas­ant. Just imag­ine how great it will feel to not have that annoy­ing thing annoy­ing you anymore!

Any oth­er tricks or tips?

What’s your way for get­ting rid of all these sources of irri­ta­tion and annoy­ance? Have you found some oth­er way to deal with them? If so, feel free to email me to share your thoughts. 

(Do you know that you actu­al­ly can mea­sure how affect­ed you are by every­day nui­sances?)