The Dirty Car Effect
Washing the car and mowing the lawn are my two least favourite chores (putting laundry away is the third in case you were wondering). It’s possibly because these are outdoor tasks and I live in England where the weather is often cold and wet, but whatever the reason is, I absolutely hate them.
They are more hassle than they are worth, the rain basically washes the car anyway and grass has coped okay for hundreds of millenia before lawnmowers were invented. To me it seems like the time and energy invested in washing the car or mowing the lawn provides little value or outcome…
- Spend 1 hour washing car, friend comes over: “Wow your car is clean” said NO FRIEND EVER
- Almost electrocute self mowing lawn, neighbour Bob: “Fancy doing mine? har har!”
That is it! There is almost no benefit to be gained, especially when you can be watching Netflix and eating ice cream instead. That is, until the tipping point.
No Malcolm, I am not talking about the sales of Hush Puppies, or the New York crime rate. I am talking about the moment when your car is so dirty you cannot tell whether that colourful blob is another car or a skip in the road. Or when your lawn is so unkempt the grass blades have started growing seeds. This is the tipping point of motivation where for the first time you will actually want to do the terrible chore.
Make no bones about it, this is a marvelous moment. You will wake up that day and get right away to work, there will be no distracting you from the task at hand and what’s more you will kind of enjoy it. “Take that you pesky seeds, sayonara black gunk”. This tipping point is when it finally becomes more painful to leave the car dirty and lawn wild than it is to go through the rigmarole of maintenance. You will find an energy you didn’t know you had and once you have finished it will be, and feel amazing.
I have used the dirty car motivation tactic a few times successfully in other areas of life. Watching entire boxsets in a few days so that by the end of the series I am desperate to start my dissertation. Eating so much food over the Christmas holidays that by January 1st I am there with the kale and the smoothie maker and it is my pleasure.
Granted the effect won’t last but this is not about sustainability, this is about those first steps and getting started. So once in a while ditch the guilt about procrastinating and allow yourself to binge on short term gratification. The tipping point will emerge, you’ll feel when it does, and it can be one heck of a kick up the backside to push you out of your comfort zone and into doing that thing you have so wonderfully been putting off.
