How 'Vampire Tasks' Are Sucking Up Your Time and Productivity

Dracula went down in history for making one simple, pointed statement: “I vant to suck your blood.” He was taking aim at our lifeline – the very thing that keeps us in existence.

So, you can imagine anything with “vampire” in front of it is likely to suck the life out of you.

This is where vampire tasks enter the scene. If you’re wondering, “What are vampire tasks?” and how to avoid them, we have a foolproof plan not even Dracula can foil.

What Are Vampire Tasks?

Vampire tasks tend to sneak up on us; they’re seemingly harmless items on our daily, weekly, or monthyl to-do list that slowly deplete our most valuable resources: time, energy, and money.

Because we don’t often realize when we’re engaging with these types of tasks, it’s important to be able to identify them.

It’s also important to note that vampire tasks look different for each person. What may be draining for one is invigorating for another. Still, here are some clues to look out for.

Low-Impact, High-Time Consumption Tasks

These come in all different shapes and sizes. Let’s say you’re carrying out some sort of data collection and you’re manually sorting and color-coding the data. This should trigger alarm bells.

For example, in Excel and Google Sheets, you can set rules for color coding using conditional formatting. Instantly, you’ve shaved a lot of time off your data collection task.

Of course, tasks like this don’t need to be eliminated. A properly coordinated spreadsheet makes the data consumption a lot easier for your intended audience. It just borders on the line of “vampire task” when you do things like this manually, instead of using the tools at your disposal.

Emails, Emails, and More Emails

Not every email requires a response. And not every email response needs to be labored over for longer than necessary.

Of course, we always want to communicate with the utmost professionalism. We never want to fire off errant emails without any formatting or editing.

The goal is to use your tools. Apps like Grarmmarly are an absolute must on every device you own.

Keep in mind the golden rule, as well: emails beget emails. This is where you need to decide if everything needs a full and proper response.

It’s also wise to limit the number of parties in every email chain; only include those who need to be a part of the thread, or else you run the risk of too many cooks in the kitchen.

Meetings, Meetings, and More Meetings

Have you ever been part of a formal, sit-down meeting and walked away thinking, “That could’ve been solved in an email chain or a Slack chat?”

Of course, this kind of goes against everything we just said about emails. But, that’s why vampire tasks are subjective and require a good deal of discernment.

For example, at the start of a new project, a meeting might be appropriate. But, do you need to a schedule weekly or monthly meeting thereafter? Perhaps a quick huddle on Slack or a streamlined email thread will do the trick.

Progress reports are handy, and a nice way to keep the communication lines open while avoiding the catch of an hour-long meeting on a busy day. Always try to weigh the two in the balance, remembering time is a commodity and everyone has their own workload to manage.

General Administrative Tasks

There are countless administrative tasks that can either be outsourced or streamlined through virtual assistance. This can include bookkeeping tasks, organizational or filing tasks, and maintaining a social media presence online.

Although these are vastly different tasks, they all have one thing in common: automation.

Is there a bookkeeping app that will generate month end reporting? Are there rules you can set in your inbox to auto-file messages? Can you consider an app like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or TweetDeck to manage the same post across all your social media platforms?

With vampire tasks, we often dive right into them thinking, “No problem. It’ll only take a minute.” But, before you know it, a minute or two has turned into ten minutes and beyond. When you compile all those “few minutes,” you’ve really impacted your productivity.

Cleaning

Vampire tasks permeate the workplace and the home. But, since we’re often looking for new ways to optimize our productivity in the workplace, we can apply the same rule of thumb for household chores: that is, clean as you go.

Get in the habit of wiping down surfaces after you’ve eaten. Much like we spray our showers after each use to prevent mold, we can keep our work stations clean as we go.

It’s still wise to timeblock organization and cleaning – at work and at home. But, when we clean as we go, it makes the recurring task easier and faster. Afterall, nothing feels better than home clean home.

How to Avoid Vampire Tasks?

How can we avoid something when it’s possible we don’t even know they’re a part of our everyday life? It starts with a good, hard look at our workdays.

You can liken it to the need to tighten up our finances. The best way to start that journey is to make a budget and put everything under the magnifying glass.

The first step in learning how to avoid vampire tasks includes mapping out your day.

Use Time Blocking

If you take a week to test out time blocking, it’ll probably reveal a lot of underlying issues. For example, in your mind, you might think one hour, from 9am to 10am, is a sufficient amount of time to tackle your inbox.

Set that as a color-coded timeblock on your calendar for an entire week. When 10 o’clock rolls around, see how far down the inbox you are. If it seems like you haven’t made a lot of progress and your time is up, it may be that you have to pick and choose how you correspond online.

Don’t Be Afraid of Do Not Disturb

If you've been on the internet lately, you've likely seen a do not disturb meme in the form of a sign on the door warning everyone to leave you alone. While this may give you a chuckle, it can also be a useful tool to take advantage of when you're trying to focus.

If you’ve never used focus time or set yourself away on your inter-office communicator, it can prove to be a little stressful at first. The fear of missing out is a real thing.

But, give it a test run. Perhaps you’ll only dip into your inbox at various intervals throughout the day. Try every two hours, to start. The same holds true for your interoffice messenger. Set yourself away and try to only check it two or three times before and after lunch.

This will not only help you perform better, it’ll also set healthy boundaries; people will know they have to be patient when they reach out to you and not demand how and when you reply to them.

Various distractions throughout the day tend to prolong the negative effects of vampire tasks. The simple act of selecting high-performing hashtags for your most recent post can easily become sidetracked the moment someone messages you to ask a “quick question.”

So, embrace the do not disturb meme, and cut yourself off from the outside world for a little while.

Take Structured Breaks

When you’re experimenting with time blocking, don’t forget to pencil in dedicated breaks. Breaks are important to not only stretch the body, but also clear the mind. We can easily get so wrapped up in a task that we lose track of time.

When your calendar signals it's time for a morning sunshine break, it might snap you out of the vampire task you didn’t even realize was sucking the life out of you!

Throw Out the "Don't Say No" Culture

As we try to maintain a career, a social life, family time, a healthy lifestyle, etc, the culture of "don't say no to opportunities" loom over our heads. There's even a movie staring Jim Carrey that is based upon the don't say no culture called Yes Man.

You can classify this under the fear of missing out or the fear of being overlooked. Still, it’s imperative that we learn to say no – in our professional and private lives.

The moment you realize you’re harboring a bit of resentment about a task, you’re on the verge of a vampire task. When we drag our heels through something, it only slows us down.

If you’re asked to do something that’s not within your brief, question it. If you’re asked to take on a new task by someone that you don’t want to disappoint – but don’t have the bandwidth for – deny it.

Often, we live in fear of letting people down when that’s rarely the case. People are busy, living their own lives. In the end, we tend to spend more time worrying about whether or not we’ve let someone down when they’re not even thinking about it anymore.

Keep Dracula at Bay, Starting Today

You, too, can avoid vampire tasks. Tackle them in little bites.

Commit to time blocking one week. Then, see how often you can set boundaries with the do not disturb option next week. Automate as many tasks as you can. Nowadays, there’s a tool for everything.

Streamlining your productivity will feel a bit like decluttering. It’s freeing and, in the end, sets you up to achieve even greater things.