Make the Boring Bits of Business Less Boring: Pleasure, Novelty & Micro-Rewards

There are bits of your business that you keep avoiding. The invoices stacking up. The content ideas that never get made. The email sequence that follows you around your to-do list like an annoying little passenger.

In this episode, Regan dives into why we avoid the "boring bits" of business, and why that avoidance quietly costs us our income, our clients, and our momentum.

She draws a surprising parallel from her past work as a pleasure coach for mums (responsive vs. spontaneous desire) to explain why some tasks will never spark you the way others do, and what to actually do about it. Spoiler: it's not about trying harder or becoming more disciplined.

This episode hands you three simple, practical ways to make the boring stuff feel genuinely good to do, so you stop avoiding the things that actually move the needle.

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome to the Pleasurepreneur Podcast 01:27 Why Business Feels Boring 04:05 The Busywork Avoidance Trap 05:10 Desire Types Explained 07:29 Responsive Desire in Business 09:45 Delete, Delegate, or Swap 11:32 Weave in Pleasure 13:31 Use Novelty for Motivation 18:42 Micro-Rewards That Work 23:56 Coaching and Freebie Invite 27:09 Wrap Up and Goodbye

What You'll Learn in This Episode

• Why the boring, indirect tasks in your business are the ones most likely to get avoided, and what that avoidance is actually costing you
• The difference between responsive and spontaneous desire, and how it shows up in your motivation toward business tasks
• A simple first filter to apply to any boring task: can you delete it, delegate it, or swap it for something more rewarding?
• Three practical strategies to make any task more enjoyable: weaving in pleasure, adding novelty, and using micro-rewards
• Real examples of novelty and micro-rewards Regan has used with clients (and her own kids!)

Resources + Links

• Join the Pleasurepreneur Mastermind waitlist (doors open August 3rd, waitlist members get exclusive bonuses): reganfigg.com/mastermind
• Grab the free guide with extra examples of pleasure, novelty, and micro-rewards (link in show notes)
• Follow Regan on Instagram: @regan_figg

Transcript

[00:00:00]  Hello and welcome to the Pleasurepreneur podcast. This podcast will help you create what you desire in your business with pleasure. Whether that be calling in your ideal clients, making more money, or creating a balanced business life blend, I'm your host. Regan Fig pleasure and business coach, published author of a Mother's Pleasure wife and mama to three little Wildlings.

However, you're choosing to listen to this podcast. Ask yourself, how can I make this more pleasurable and do just that? I acknowledge the custodians of the land on which this podcast is recorded and produced, the Wadi Wadi people of Doland. Now let's proceed with pleasure.

Hey, hey, lovely. Welcome back to the podcast, or welcome to the podcast if you are new around here. It is so great to have you here. It's so great to have you listening. I would love it if you would [00:01:00] hit the follow or subscribe button wherever it is you are listening in from. And of course, if you are enjoying the podcast episode, please leave me a review.

all I get in terms of feedback is the occasional DM of love for the podcast and, you know, just numbers of downloads. So if you are enjoying the podcast episode, I would be so grateful if you left me a review. If you're not enjoying it, maybe don't re- leave a review. Okay. Now, today I wanna talk about something that has been coming up a bit with, clients who have started working with me, with my peers, , with people in my Instagram community, which is like how do we make the boring bits of business less boring?

How can we make it more enjoyable? How can we be more motivated to do the things that we find boring in business, right? We wanna be making the usually indirect money-making tasks of business, we wanna make them more enjoyable so that we actually do them and bring home the bacon, right? [00:02:00] Now, I bet you've noticed that there are things in your business that are, as I said, that kind of indirect...

they're indirectly money-making tasks. So it's probably not the, you know, reaching out for a personal invitation for someone to work with you. It's probably not running the launch. It's probably not, you know, showing up in your stories, for example. Chances are it is that more indirect admin type work.

And you'll know that, you know, you've got those kind of tasks in your business if you have noticed, say, emails or invoices stacking up or content ideas that, you know, the list of ideas continues to grow without you actually creating, or if you have, you know, offer invitations or podcast pitches that are left unspoken, or the folder of viral hooks growing by the day without them being used, and maybe even an email automation or [00:03:00] sequence for your next launch continuing to follow you along on your to-do list every day like an annoying little passenger you can't get rid of.

Now, I bet you've noticed the way you feel about those things that you're putting off and avoiding, you know, that they feel like a drag and they feel oh so boring, right? This is why we're putting them off. This is why we're avoiding them, because it feels... Like, it feels heavy. It feels hard to muster up the energy to move through those tasks.

Like, we know that feeling. Now, here's the thing. It is really hard to do the boring things in business, you know, or anything for that matter. This is how I find, my work is really great in my home life, because some of these skills are transferable to my children. So, if you've got kids as well, you'll know how hard it is to try and get them to do the boring thing of cleaning their room or unloading the dishwasher or unpacking [00:04:00] their bags when there is a skate park full of mates over the back fence, or maybe that's just us. But we know this, right?

We know this. The, the stuff that we find boring that creates no spark of desire in us, we'll put it off, we do anything else instead, and we drag that task around, and we'll do literally anything that has more of a spark of dopamine for us, you know? And this is where we can get caught in the trap of doing, like, busy work.

G- getting caught in the trap of doing productive work in our business. typically stuff that makes no real difference in terms of moving the needle to grow our income or calling more clients, but it has us feel good 'cause we feel like we're being productive. This is also how when, a lot of clients come to me and they're like, "Oh my gosh, I've got no time, no capacity.

I feel so rushed. I don't have any more time to do anything at all." And then we discover that the reason that is, is because the stuff that actually moves the needle in their business feels really boring and, overwhelming and scary for them, so [00:05:00] they're avoiding it and they're just doing busywork that's making no difference to the bottom line of their business.

If that is you, you need to come and talk to me about coaching together. Okay, so

This type of work reminds me of the work I used to do when I was a pleasure coach for moms, and I would support my clients, helping them to understand the difference between responsive desire versus spontaneous desire. So if you didn't know, before I became a pleasure-led business coach, I was a pleasure coach for moms, and one of the big things I helped my clients achieve was the desire for their partners.

So I helped women who wanted to want their partners want their partners, which was super rewarding for everyone involved, and it is something that is also transferable to business, and I'll, I'll get to that, like how that's transferable in a moment. in the meantime, I think maybe if you've got little ears in the car with you or around you, you might want to pause this episode now or skip a couple of minutes, because I [00:06:00] wanna explain what I mean by this.

So spontaneous versus responsive desire. Now, this is... I'm talking about desire for intimacy, physical, sexual desire. This is what we're talking about here when I'm explaining responsive versus spontaneous desire. So spontaneous desire is the kind of desire where you're initiating that intimacy, where you just like spontaneously, perhaps like, uh, left of field, are keen, right?

You're keen for intimacy. You're keen for, sexual relations with your partner. Whereas responsive desire is more the kind of desire where it's kinda doesn't spring on you just out of the blue. It is the kind of desire that once you get started and you start to weave in some more pleasure and you kind of get in the mood, then that helps your desire to grow, right?

So chances are, if you're the person who [00:07:00] initiates sex or intimacy, you're going to be more of the spontaneous desire type. Whereas if you're the person who doesn't initiate most often, then you're probably more of the response- responsive desire type, and that's the kinda type where, you know, maybe you don't feel like it, but, you know, maybe as things start to progress with your partner, you start to get more interested.

You start to warm up to the idea, and then, you know, that desire builds until you can really get into it

You might be asking, "Regan, okay, what's that got to do with business?" So I see this very similar in business, where sometimes there'll be things that we have this spontaneous desire to do in our business. For me, I love showing up on my Instagram stories. I love conversations in the DMs.

I love reaching out to people. I love following people up. I know other people would hate that, but these are the things that I actually enjoy. Whereas there will be things that we have a sense of responsive desire for. [00:08:00] So tasks in our business that we really don't desire to do them.

We're not motivated to do them. But once we can bring in a little bit more pleasure, we can start to warm up to them, and then that motivation and that desire builds, and then we are more engaged, focused, motivat- motivated, and locked in

So what do we actually need to do for those tasks where we have almost like that responsive desire? What we need to do is we need to weave pleasure or the anticipation of pleasure into those tasks in order to start us warming up to them, in order to start us having that reward system activated in our brain That creates a surge of dopamine that really has us motivated, engaged, focused, ready to go. Now, we touched on this mechanism in the recent episode on discipline and consistency a couple of episodes back. so I highly recommend you listening in to that one. So today, I'm really just wanting to bring some practical ways that you can make the [00:09:00] boring bits less boring so you can spark some of that desire to actually want to do those things, to actually feel motivated and engaged to do those things, and therefore they feel good, right?

'Cause we wanna feel good

I want you to consider what are the things in your business that feel boring, that you have no desire for, that you do not love, but you kinda need to do in order to create an income, in order to call in more clients, and achieve the results that you want in your business.

Like, just conduct a little micro mental audit here of what some of those things are for you. It'll be really good for you to have that example in your mind whilst I take you through this

Okay. Before we get into those three simple ways, here's what I want you to consider. First, number one, think of those tasks that you find really boring in your business. Can you delete or delegate those? Right? Are the boring bits even [00:10:00] required? Can you just delete those bits? You know, are you forcing yourself to do stuff that you find boring because you think you should, because somebody told you to, because somebody else in your industry is doing it that way?

Like, do you have to even do that task? Do you have to do it the way that you're doing it? Can you just delete it? Can you remove it? Is there another way to achieve what you want to achieve? Same goes for delegating. Like, delete or delegate. If you can delegate something like this, and again, if it is required and you can delegate it, why not?

I would delegate it because these kind of things will drain your energy if you don't shift them or delegate them. Number two, can you swap it for something more rewarding? So is there an alternate way to achieve the same thing that is more appealing to you, that feels more rewarding? So an example could be, um, maybe you find writing email sequences really boring.

you could draft those emails while you are walking the beach in the sunshine recording, [00:11:00] voice memos, and then transcribing those into emails when you get back into the office, right? That feels so yummy to me. Number three, I want you to consider if you can't delete it or delegate it or swap it, what you need to do is make it more enjoyable so that it creates that sweet little surge of dopamine to activate the reward system and light up your desire to do it and have it feel better to do it So here are the three really simple ways that you can make the boring bits way more enjoyable.

Number one is to weave in pleasure. So you wanna either experience pleasure or the anticipation of pleasure when it comes to doing these tasks. Again, the same mechanism will activate that reward system and have you feel really excited to do it. So ask yourself, like, "How can I make this more pleasurable?"

And if you know that maybe you can't make it so much more pleasurable right now, but I will give you some examples, then I want you to dial [00:12:00] into the pleasure of completing it. Like, just do s- a little future pacing and imagine how good you're gonna feel when it's completed, when it's achieved, when it's done, right?

Dial into even just the sense of completion. Maybe it's a sense of relief. Maybe it's a sense of pride for actually doing the thing that you've been putting off, right? So really just either weave in pleasure or dial into the anticipation of pleasure from completing that task. So some examples might be, like what I just spoke about before.

You might wanna walk and dictate your emails or your content, right? You might want to brainstorm your next launch plan with your business coach or your business bestie over a cocktail. Pop on some heels and some lippy. you might put yourself in a much more pleasurable environment. You might take your work somewhere bougie.

That's what I like to do. you might do some dopamine dressing before you start your boring task or your workday. you might set [00:13:00] a 20-minute reply sprint with a little treaty, like maybe some Coco Love or, you know, something yummy and maybe some music or a playlist that you love. you might like to write your invoices immediately after a sale, you know, to really lock in that celebration while you're still riding the high what else?

You might like to choose your content ideas based on which one would feel most fun to talk about right now. Like, you know, you get the idea. We wanna make it way more pleasurable. So I want you just to think, "How can I make this more pleasurable?" The next way you can do it is to make it novel. Now, novelty activates the reward system to drive us towards variety, and therefore progress us as a species, right?

So this basically works as, you know, we want to be in new environments, relationships, experiences, so that we have a sense of variety, and it will help us to grow as a [00:14:00] species, right? because we're trying different, new things, right? So when you introduce novelty, this is how you activate the reward system.

It has you way more engaged and focused and motivated and locked in because it's not sure if there's gonna be a reward coming or not. So your brain is, like, like, switched on, like, "Ooh, I wonder what's gonna happen here. Are we getting a reward?" That's why you're going to be engaged and focused, and that's why it's, like, really fun, and why we're really motivated when we do do new...

when we do do new things. you know, if you've given yourself a challenge. At the moment, my challenge is to coach myself to go... to get hot, rich, and hungry for more in 80 days before my 40th birthday. And of course, the first two weeks are the easiest because that's when I'm motivated. That's when, like, I'm going to a new gym.

I am doing new things. I'm buying new products. so my brain is like, "Oh, this could work out well. I wonder what's gonna happen here." So I am engaged, and I'm motivated. I'm getting that surge of dopamine. so it's easier, right? [00:15:00] This is why I also love having a business coach because I know that when I get started on a launch or when I get started on a new year or when I get started with a new offer, of course I'm motivated and excited.

but I am aware that there comes, you know, the mid-launch dip or the mid-year dip, you know? There are, there are moments where the motivation wears off because the dopamine's worn off because it's not novel anymore. You know? It's not new anymore.

So what I would invite you to do is consider novelty in the sense of a novel environment or a novel format or a novel identity, like stepping into a new identity for yourself or even novel or new rules, right? You wanna change how the work is experienced, not just how it's done. So some examples could be, you know, going from if you're always very structured to maybe playing with some, some stuff that's spontaneous.

If you are, [00:16:00] you know, if you're often isolated, you work from home by yourself, you know, you do a lot of work in isolation, can we share it? Can we share the behind-the-scenes to your online community? Can we do some co-working sessions? Can you... You know, there's a number of different things you can do. if you are used to sharing, you know, online or digital offerings, maybe a novel idea would to do a physical in-person event.

you know, if you are typically very polished and perfected before you put things out, maybe you could play around with just letting yourself be a little bit messy and unpolished. And if you are noticing that things feel a little bit slow or you do things in a very slow, calculated, measured way, maybe there'll be things that you wanna try and add in a fast sprint for, right?

So now obviously when I work with my clients, we make sure that the swaps or the novelty that we are introducing are actually aligned with their personalized [00:17:00] strategy to create the results that they want to, so that we're not just doing like really random stuff that actually doesn't align.

but we're actually like taking their strategy and the results that they want to achieve into consideration when we are looking at how we can bring way more pleasure into their business and how we can make those boring things not boring. So I will give you some simple examples of what I have done in the past, what I've seen my clients do, things that have worked in terms of becoming quite novel...

not becoming quite novel, but things that have worked, in terms of novelty to make those things less boring. So creating content somewhere new instead of like at home. running a multi-day telegram pop-up with voice notes instead of just posting content and hoping for the best. swapping very polished content for raw one-take rants.

committing to one format for a week. So going from, okay, [00:18:00] doing reels and Instagram Stories and everything to doing... This client just did a week of carousels, which felt kind of fun and new for her. ditching the long two-month launch plan that you might typically normally do for perhaps a waitlist style launch or a layered launch.

sending voice notes or doing, like a kind of sprint, like seven invitations in seven hours. You know, things like that. I'm, I'm not gonna go on with like all these different examples, but you get the idea. I'm actually gonna provide for you a bit of a freebie where you can pick and choose some of those examples that feel more aligned and enjoyable for you So just those things, they're the kind of novelty that will actually get you moving, right?

Now, number three, our final way that I'm gonna offer you to make the boring bits of business way less boring, make it more enjoyable so that you actually do them. number three is micro rewards, so some physical micro rewards. This is why [00:19:00] ticking off a list feels so good and so made- motivating, 'cause you're giving your brain legitimate, actual rewards.

Like, your brain is going, " Yay, we're ticking that box. That's a reward," right? So this is clearly, you know, activating your reward system in your brain. This works because your brain doesn't have to wait for the big reward, like money or clients, which is often the most, you know, lagging factor when it comes to us creating results in our business.

but it is your brain responding to immediate physical reward, right? It's like some little treats as you go. So instead of, you know, "It'll feel good when I make money," you're giving it, like, "I feel good every time I complete something." So I would get you to ask yourself, like, "What would make this feel like a tiny celebration when I finish, finish it?"

And build that in. So some examples of a [00:20:00] physical completion micro reward would be obviously, you know, the ticking off of the to-do list. You could do that with a thick marker, you know, make it bold and very satisfying. doing the Post-It note thing where you have your tasks written on different Post-It notes, and you scrunch up that Post-It note after finishing a task and throwing it in the done pile.

moving a, a bead or a paperclip or a coin from one jar to another for every completed task. Now, these probably sound a little bit silly, like, really? As if that's gonna make me feel motivated. But it actually does, right? These micro physical rewards actually create a bit of s- do- bleh. Actually create a dirge of...

Oh my God. Actually create a surge of dopamine in your brain one thing that a mentor of mine used to do was drop a, you know, those, like, fairy stones, the wishing stones, the little glass stones, into a jar every time she completed a consult call, whether it was a yes or a no. So then her brain [00:21:00] started associating pleasure with that micro reward and pleasure with the actual task that she was doing, right?

Um, that's a whole nother episode in itself in terms of our associations between our tasks and pleasure. Some other micro rewards that you could offer yourself would be, you know, some visual kind of progress trackers. So maybe it's drawing five boxes for the day and coloring one in at- after each task.

It could be using a whiteboard and, you know, wipe the tasks off dramatically, or building a done list instead of a to-do list. How good does that feel? You know, when you've finished the day and you haven't got a to-do list, but you write down, like, what you've done, and then you mark them off. Am I the only person who does this?

but that's why it feels good, because we're activating that reward system in our brain. there are some other kind of sensory rewards that you could weave in as well that will kind of act as micro [00:22:00] rewards. So that could be, you know, providing yourself with a little treat or your favorite drink after completing a particular task, or, letting yourself have a boogie with some music after you've completed a specific task or Spraying like a...

feels so bougie. So it could even be, like, misting your face or, like, giving yourself a little facial or something like that once you've completed the task, you know? and then finally, in terms of a micro-award reward, you could give yourself points per task and aim for a daily score. I don't know about you, I know my middle child, and also me as a child, would gamify things.

Like, I know my son gamifies lots. You know, once my son, when we were at the skate park, had a little crash. It didn't seem too bad. and he got really, really upset.

Now, this is a kid who I swear has, like, the highest pain tolerance, and I was like, "What is going on? Did something happen that I didn't see?" and he was really upset, and he just said, "Now I've [00:23:00] gotta go back to zero." He said, "I crashed 10 times, and now I g- gotta go back to zero." I said, "What do you mean?"

And so what he was doing was he was actually challenging himself at the skate park by gamifying practicing his tricks. So he would give himself points, and for every time he crashed, he would take away those points. How hectic, hey? I was like, "Oh my gosh." I thought my brain was interesting. Um, but we do this, right?

And so that can work for us as well. So we can make it, uh, a kind of playful game style, micro-reward set up there, where, you know, you might, um, give yourself points, as I said. You might, set a rule, like once you've done a certain number of tasks, then you get a treat or a break or maybe, um, a scroll guilt-free.

You know, there's plenty of different things we can do that will actually give you those micro-rewards and make those boring bits of business way more enjoyable. Now, the best part about all this, of course, is that, you know, [00:24:00] you don't need to become a different person to be way more productive in your business.

you don't have to... you don't have to wait for a big amount of power, or to become the most disciplined version of you or the most disciplined person you ever know. you don't have to really try harder. You just need to know how you can build a business that your brain actually wants to participate in.

Yeah, 'cause when you start looking at your business through this lens, you're gonna actually see where you are making things way more harder than they need to be. You'll see where you are forcing things, where you are draining yourself, and, you know, where you're unintentionally slowing down your own income and impact.

And you'll also start to see how simple it is to shift it And if you are listening to this and you are thinking, "Okay, I can see where I am doing this, but I actually want support to change it," this is exactly the work that we do [00:25:00] inside coaching with me one-on-one, and also the Pleasurepreneur Mastermind.

So we take things like what we've spoken about today, you know, pleasure, novelty, reward, and we apply it to your strategy, and your offers, and your content, and your selling, so that you're not, you're not doing more. You're doing what actually works for you. You're doing what lights you up. You know, this is where you start to move from that responsive desire, where it feels like you're not initiating, to feeling as though it's more spontaneous desire.

Now, it's not a shift in your sexuality or your intimacy or anything like that. It is just you understanding what kinda turns you on, what motivates you, what activates that reward system in your brain, what creates a surge of dopamine for you. You know? and obviously, the result of that is more action or more aligned action.

Action that doesn't drain you, but action that you feel energized by and excited by, that you look forward to, which results in more clients, and more money, and a business that feels so [00:26:00] much better to show up to. So if that is something that you wanna be a part of, I have put the waitlist link for the Pleasurepreneur Mastermind in the show notes.

come and join us there. I have just opened the waitlist, and the doors to the Mastermind will be opening on August 3rd, but only for the people on the waitlist. And if you are on the waitlist, you're gonna be getting a bunch of bonuses and freebies only for the people on the waitlist. So if that is you, come send me a DM on Instagram or click the link in the show notes.

And if you want something practical to start with right now, uh, as I said earlier, I have created a freebie to go with this episode. It is a simple list of the three ways we spoke about today, so pleasure, novelty, and micro rewards, with a whole bunch of very specific examples that you can choose from based on what feels good for you, and start implementing those straightaway.

So there'll be more in there than what we've covered in this episode, so that you can stop [00:27:00] procrastinating the boring bits and actually start moving the needle in your business. . So you can grab that via the link in the show notes. And that's it for this episode.

All right, my love, I'm gonna leave that there, and I will see you back here next week. Bye for now.