Value
What is Value (in doing a task)?
Value is were you ask yourself, is the task at hand worth doing or not. More specifically, you will find yourself asking: what will I gain from doing a task? why should I spend time doing such a boring task anyway? or even why is it important I do this task in the first place?
How do you find Value?
In short, there are 3 different forms of value you can find in doing a task: Gain, Joy AND Importance. These values are all explained in further detail under the tabs above.
What can you “Gain” from a task?
Gain is about what you get out of a task that you didn’t have before you started it. Down below, I have given you a few examples of what you can “Gain” from doing a task:
Accomplishment
I find working on my website to be hard work. A lot of the time it can get quite tedious but at the end of the day I find no better accomplishment than seeing my work uploaded to the website and knowing the stuff I work on is to improve the lives of autistic people all over the world.
Learning Something New
Every autumn and spring, I like to check my local adult learning service to see if there are any courses that I could learn from. As of writing this, I am enrolling on a Mindfulness course as I want to see what I can learn and share my new found knowledge on the website.
Being Tidy
A messy bedroom leads to a messy mind and so I make sure to keep not just my bedroom but my house always clean and tidy. I do this by setting aside my Fridays to do nothing else but clean the house freeing up space in my mind to think about other things I can do with my time.
New Opportunities
The hard work I’ve put into my website has paid off as I was given the opportunity to work with a group of young autistic kids by running a “superhero” themed theatre and art workshop in an autism group.
Overcoming Yourself
I’ve always had a petty hate of painting walls as I’ve always felt incapable of doing it right but as Aspie Hero Van Gogh once said “If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint', then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” and so I did and this thinking has helped me see that I am capable of doing many other unusual jobs around the house such as putting down artificial grass.
How can you find “Joy” in doing a task?
Joy is about making a task more fun to do, like making it more like a game and seem less like a chore. Down below, I have given you a few examples of how you can find “Joy” in doing a task:
See it as A Challenge
I always keep a to do list of every task I need to do and challenge myself to complete as many of these tasks as I can each day.
Listen to Music whilst you work
When I do my monthly shelf dusting, I like to listen to music whilst I do it. I also like to listen to music when I workout on the treadmill. I find that high energy, fast pace music helps motivate me to keep working and work faster at these tasks.
Find a Productive Gaming App
There are times where I can’t be bothered going out for a walk to get exercise. In order to motivate myself, I started playing Pokemon Go, an mmorpg game which requires you to walk around the real world in order to play it.
Reward Yourself for Completing the Task
After I have finished mopping the kitchen and bathroom, I have to let the floors dry which means I can’t use either of them. From here, I choose to reward my hard work by going out somewhere on foot or in my car to have a well earned break and allow the floors to dry so I don’t ruin all my work.
Think Of the End Result
I find cleaning my pond quite tedious as it takes me all day to do it. It starts of looking green and murky ending up looking no different than when I started. On the following day it would all pay off as I would go out into the garden to see all of my fish swimming around in the crystal clear water.
What is the “Importance” of doing a task?
Importance is about understanding why a task needs to be done. Down below, I have given you a few examples of how you can learn the “Importance” of doing a task:
Being a Team Player
When it comes to being part of Yellow House (website link can be found in the top right corner of the website), I have always been willing to take part in the things they do such as performances, community work and art projects. I do this because I know I am part of a team and they need my help by participating and even if I am not participating, I am going there to support them.
Moving Forwards
When I was 16, my mother died and this was around the time I was to do my GCSE exams. The headteacher suggested that I see my mother (who was in Denmark) to say goodbye to her and that my exams could be taken at a later date. I chose to focus on doing my exams instead as I felt that if I didn’t get my GCSEs now, I wouldn’t be able to move forward with my life like everyone else in the school would.
Long Term Benefits
Passing my driving test was a nightmare. I failed over and over again, each time feeling more doubtful that I would ever pass but I never gave up and after my 5th attempt, I finally did it. I never gave up as I knew how the skill of driving would benefit me and now is the most valuable skill I have in my everyday life as I can go anywhere I want, whenever I want in my car.
Taking Risks
After many years of living in our own house, my cousin and I decided to fit artificial grass into our front garden and a professional would cost too much. I took a risk by doing research into how to fit the grass, bought the equipment and attempted to fit the grass myself. The end result can be seen in the accompanying picture and this would never have happened had I not took a risk.
Acceptance
My mother’s death was the most heartbreaking moment of my life. The thing is that ever since her death, I have found every every other death after my mother’s to be far less upsetting. Even the most recent death I have dealt with, that being my 93 year old Nan, I was not sad as at this point in my life I have learned to accept death and move on with my life.
Choose Values that Benefit You
Everyone has different things that they value but the only important values in life are the ones you yourself value as not all everyone else’s values will benefit you. You can value anything you want just as long as you use your values to become more productive in benefiting your life and not hurting others.