Tiny Painful Slogs

Every single day, I spent at least a few seconds—maybe half a minute, total—adjusting the capitalization of text I’m copying and pasting.

This minor task, which is of a scale that’s barely worth remembering, much less mentioning, irritates me to no end. It’s necessary and valuable, so I continue doing it, but I take no pleasure in it, and the investment of time and energy grates at me like a hangnail or paper cut.

Another slog, likewise teensy in scope and forgotten as soon as it’s concluded, involves taking a list of URLs (links to things on the web) and one by one copying them from that list, opening a browser window, pasting them into a new tab, going back to the list, deleting the URL, and then repeating this process for maybe 20 or 30 of them at a time.

It’s possible to get into a groove with these sorts of tasks, and I often space-out when doing them, as staying fully conscious and cognizant while repeating a necessary, but on its face silly and pointless activity, can be numbing and even vaguely insulting.

But repeat these chores I do, because there’s no obvious way around them: all the at-hand, obvious means of doing away with them (and similar tasks) because of their specificity and minuscularity.