Finishing moves

Remember Mortal Combat?

It was (and I guess still is) a fighting game whose claim to fame, when it was released in arcades back in the 90s, was the idea of a “finishing move”—if you beat your opponent, you had the opportunity to do a special attack, sending them off to meet their maker in a rather bloody fashion.

While I don’t condone violence, the idea of a “finishing move” made me think a little bit about how I tend to deal with recurring tasks.

Here are some examples.

1. Pull tiny Dyson City vacuum cleaner out of its cramped storage space
2. Give the flat a good once-over
3. Replace vacuum cleaner in aforementioned cramped storage space

• Comment: Older apartments have next to no storage space, which means that we needed a small but effective vacuum cleaner. The Dyson City is positively lilliputian, but with this space-saving design comes an equally tiny cannister to hold all the cat-hair tumbleweeds that our remarkably-fluffy cat can produce at an alarming rate.
• Finishing Move: Always empty cannister just before putting the vacuum cleaner back into storage. This way, it’s always ready for the next round of a chore we both hate.

1. Arrive at purveyors of fine haircuts
2. Enjoy the courtesy massage
3. Engage in banter about comic books and movies with hairdresser while getting haircut
4. Pay for services rendered
5. Leave purveyors of fine haircuts

• Comment: My hair grows like a weed. Coarse, wavy, rebellios weeds, to be specific. Given that my appearance needs all the help it can get, I go in for a haircut every three to four weeks.
• Finishing Move: So that I don’t have to give it a second though, I always schedule my next appointment while paying on my way out, and put it into my calendar immediately. This way, I don’t have to set any reminders to make an appointment, nor do I have to worry about looking like a sheepdog.

The key is that when I’ve got some kind of task that I know will pop back up on my to-do list at some point in the future, I ensure that I build into my workflow some kind of finishing move that makes my life a little bit easier the next time around.

Sure, it’s not a big deal to call up and make a haircut appointment, but my brain is put to much better use doing creative and enjoyable things, like solving problems at work or focusing on the people that are special to me.

It’s also no big deal to empty a vacuum cleaner before you start vacuuming, but it’s such an unpleasant thing to do in the first place that I don’t want to give myself any reason to stall. It’s friction, when it comes to productivity, friction is failure.