How often do you perform repetitive(usually boring) work throughout your workweek? I usually think about this when sorting through my inbox, replying to simple emails that, this is fixed, this will be fixed and whatever else is needed. 

And when done, the inbox is sometimes almost empty, and at other times you only managed to clear out the upper top of the iceberg. No matter what, at both of those occasions, I’ve figured it would be nice with some positive feedback. Something simple, like, “Great, you cleared out 18 emails”. Looking at the mail client, it only shows 534 left to do. :) Not very inspiring… Its the same with task managers, 13 done, 243 to go.. 

Because of this, I’ve been thinking about something of an activity dashboard, on to which you could hook almost anything. Some systems include it, for example redmine or some of those webbased task managers. It really helps you get a feeling of, “Good, I’ve really accomplished something here.”.

Add a level of comparison with your friends to that dashboard, and you should have a really good motivator. Its fine even if your friends doesnt do the exact same thing, you can always motivate each other to work harder.

Pushing the idea even further, you should perhaps be able to setup a race between a few friends. Earn X amount of points before 12:30. And each point is a checked item of your list, a replied email, a fixed bug, a tested functionality or whatever is a tiny action that you can perform in your work. Best thing is if the action can report itself as done, for example a commit-hook, a email hook or whatever.

Hmm..I’ll try to elaborate this and perhaps create a working example in a future post.

Update, if you read this far, dont miss part 2