A client told me toward the end of a session this week that he despises repetitive, monotonous tasks.
He’s in his 30s. An HR professional between jobs. And when I say he’s good with people, I don’t mean he’s practiced the right phrases or learned to maintain eye contact at the right intervals.
I mean he can walk into a room full of strangers and find the live wire — the real thing someone is carrying — almost immediately.
He pays attention the way most people don’t.
He notices what a person is proud of, what they’re tired of, what they’re hoping someone will ask about.
And then he asks.
He hooks. He connects. He gets the number.
And then the room empties.
And things go quiet.
The next part is the part he hates.
The follow-up.
The second touch.
The third.
He knows this is where relationships become opportunities. He knows most people need more than one point of contact before something moves. He has watched it happen.
In fact, he told me that he knows consistency warms people up.
And still, he struggles to do it.
That’s the part I find interesting.
Because it would be easy to call this a discipline problem. A networking problem. A follow-through problem.
But “I struggle to be consistent” tells me very little about what it is like to be him.
“I despise repetitive, monotonous tasks” tells me quite a bit.
The initial IRL conversation is alive.
There is novelty. Information. Energy. Another person in front of him.
Follow-up is different.
Send the email.
Wait.
Wonder if they saw it.
Send another.
Wait again.
There is less to respond to. Less immediate reward. More uncertainty.
And eventually, boredom.
Research on boredom bears this out: when a task becomes monotonous, sustaining effort gets harder. Attention starts looking for somewhere else to go.
But I kept thinking about something else.
Repetition gives you information.
The first time you do something, there is still plenty of room to wonder what it means.
Maybe they’re busy.
Maybe the timing is wrong.
Maybe you didn't say it quite right.
Maybe they’re interested but haven’t had a chance to respond.
Maybe.
The fifth time starts to give you different information.
Not necessarily the information you wanted.
But information.
You make the call.
You have the conversation.
You follow up.
You do it again.
And eventually, you have something you didn't have before.
Evidence.
Maybe the person is interested.
Maybe they aren't.
Maybe your approach needs to change.
Maybe the job isn't right.
Maybe the story you've been telling yourself about why something isn't working isn't quite true.
That last one can be harder.
Because potential is comfortable.
As long as we haven't repeated the thing enough, almost anything is still possible.
We can still imagine that this might work.
We haven't disproved the story.
We haven't found out.
And sometimes I wonder whether the thing we're avoiding isn't the repetition itself.
Maybe it's what repetition will tell us.
I see a version of this with new leaders all the time.
They know they need to delegate.
They delegate once, get an imperfect result, and take the work back.
They know they need to hold a boundary.
They hold it once, someone is unhappy, and they soften it.
They know they need to have the conversation.
They have it, feel uncomfortable afterward, and decide maybe they were too direct.
They know what to do.
They just don't always stay with it long enough to find out what happens.
Because the first attempt is an event.
Repetition starts to create a pattern.
And patterns are harder to explain away.
That doesn't mean repetition is always the answer. Sometimes the pattern is the information you need to change course. Research on goal progress suggests that monitoring what happens can help people adjust their goals and behavior rather than simply pushing forward blindly.
You need enough information to know the difference between:
“This isn't working.”
and
“I don't like how this feels.”
Those are not the same thing.
So I went back to my client.
He doesn't need to learn to love repetition.
He may never.
I think the work is smaller than that.
Can he stay with the part he hates long enough to find out?
Not forever.
Not perfectly.
Just long enough.
Because consistency doesn't guarantee the outcome.
It guarantees you'll find out.
And maybe that's part of why consistency can be so hard.
Not because we don't know what to do.
Not even because we're incapable of doing it.
Because doing it again starts to close the door on all the other explanations.
You find out.
And then you have to decide what to do with what you know.
After coaching hundreds of new leaders coping with imposter syndrome, I’ve started to notice patterns in the ways it shows up.
It doesn't always sound like:
“I don't belong here.”
Sometimes it looks more like reassurance.
Or over-delivering.
Or trying to prove yourself.
Or pulling back when being seen feels uncomfortable.
Different pattern. Same underlying question:
What would happen if I stopped doing the thing that makes me feel safer?
I created a short quiz around the patterns I see most often.
It's called What Kind of Management Imposter Are You?
And it doesn't just name the pattern. Your result gives you a shift you can try — something small and specific that can interrupt the pattern and help you build more consistent evidence that you do belong in the job.
Four minutes. Immediate results.
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