Reader situation
There’s a task you keep putting off: a report, a difficult email, a skill you know you should learn. You wait to feel motivated, and the feeling doesn’t arrive. Meanwhile the task grows heavier each time you look at it.
Central idea
A task may become easier to approach when you identify a question that interests you. Use curiosity to create a small entry point instead of waiting for strong motivation to appear.
Practical steps
- Name task. Write down the task you’re avoiding, specifically. “Work on the budget” is vague. “Draft the first section of next year’s training budget” is clear enough to start. Naming it precisely often makes it feel smaller.
- Find curiosity. Look for something about the task that genuinely interests you, even slightly. You might wonder what the data will show, how someone else solved a similar problem or whether a new approach would work better. Ask: “What would I like to find out?”
- Choose first experiment. Turn that curiosity into a small experiment. Instead of “write the budget,” try “find out which training course had the best feedback last year.” An experiment has a question and an answer, which makes it easier to start and satisfying to finish.
- Start briefly. Give yourself a short, fixed time, such as 15 or 20 minutes, to work on the experiment. You don’t need to finish the whole task. Starting is often the hardest part, and a short session lowers the barrier.
- Review experience. Afterwards, notice how it went. Was the task as unpleasant as you expected? What did you learn? What’s the next interesting question? Use the answer to choose your next small step.
Worked example
Fictional example
The people and details are invented to illustrate an approach. It reports no outcomes.
Selin, a team lead, has avoided writing a process guide for new hires for weeks. She names the task: “Write the first page of the onboarding guide.” Looking for curiosity, she realizes she’s genuinely interested in which questions new hires ask most often. Her first experiment is to look through the last three months of team messages for questions from new starters. In 20 minutes, she finds a clear pattern and drafts a short list of the top five questions. Reviewing, she notices the task felt far lighter once she had a question to answer, and she decides her next step will be to write answers to the first two.
Companion tool: Curiosity starter sheet
The task I’m avoiding: ________
What interests me about it, even slightly: ________
My question: “I’d like to find out ________.”
First experiment: ________
Time I’ll give it: ________ minutes, on ________
Afterwards How it felt compared with what I expected: ________
What I learned: ________
My next interesting question: ________
Boundaries
- Curiosity helps with starting, but some tasks remain unpleasant. That’s normal, and it isn’t a personal failing.
- If you’re avoiding a task because it’s unclear or unreasonable, the answer may be a conversation about the task rather than more motivation.
- Persistent avoidance across many tasks may reflect workload or wellbeing issues worth addressing directly.
Member action
Ask a peer what they find interesting about a task you avoid. Their answer may point to a part of the task you hadn’t considered.
Discussion prompt
What’s a task you once dreaded that turned out to be interesting once you started?
