Mowing a lawn is one of the strangest rituals of modern life. We grow grass on purpose, then spend our Saturdays punishing it for growing. Then we do it again next week. Forever. Or until we give up and move into a condo.
Last week I did it wrong on purpose.
I mowed my buddy's lawn in circles. I started in the dead center and spiraled out, like a very slow, very loud Spirograph.
Here's what nobody tells you about mowing in circles: it's a pain in the ass. My first circle wasn't perfect. Every lap after it inherited that mistake, so I had to keep watching the line I'd just cut and fixing it as I went. No autopilot. No drifting off into whatever I was listening to.
Well. There was something in my ears. We'll get to that.
I didn't see the pattern until I stopped. I'd been so locked in on each pass that I kind of forgot there was a whole lawn. Then I looked back, and honestly? It looked amazing.
The pattern was nice. The mowing was better. I had one stupid, specific thing to get good at, and I really wanted to get good at it.
And it gets weirder. The whole time, I had Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi playing. (Try saying that name three times fast. You can't. Nobody can.) So while I'm wobbling around this yard fixing my circles, he's explaining how people get into flow. One of his ideas is to bring more intention to work you already enjoy and practice one small part of it.
I was listening to a guy explain the exact thing I was doing, while I was doing it. It's like reading the manual for a bike while you're riding the bike. Very meta. I loved it.
Now the slightly uncomfortable part.
A lot of what we call boring is just stuff we've stopped paying attention to. The lawn didn't change. The grass didn't get more interesting. I changed one thing about how I did the job, and suddenly I had something to pay attention to again.
Meanwhile, most of us are waiting for life to hand us something exciting. A new job. A new city. A midlife crisis with a convertible attached. And the whole time, the lawn, the dishes and the commute are sitting right there, waiting for you to do them a little weird.
So pick one boring thing this week and do it wrong on purpose. See what happens.
What Has My Attention
What I've been listening to: Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It's a book about how people get absorbed in what they're doing. I listened to it while getting absorbed in a lawn, and I highly recommend the combo.
Trail Marker
What's one boring job you've made more interesting by doing it a different way? Hit reply and tell me. Bonus points if someone watching thought you'd lost it.