Comfort Work

Austin Kleon:

Comfort work is work that I do when I don’t know what else to do.

I know I need to work, but I don’t know what I should be working on, or I can’t work on the thing I should be working on because I’m too tired or depressed or otherwise unmotivated.

Comfort work must be comforting and it must be actual work. This sounds simple, but it’s an odd combination. Comfort work is work I’ve done before that I know I can do, but it still must present enough of a challenge to be considered actual work.

That’s always been blogging and tinkering with personal websites for me. I’ve turned blogging into money before, so I think it counts as work.