Rename it to reframe it

Shift how you feel about less obviously appealing activities

I am not sure when exactly used cars became “pre-owned,” but I’ve always thought this was one of the most brilliant renaming projects in history. What went from sounding negative simply became a statement of fact. “Pre-owned” is so much less pejorative.

On some level, names shouldn’t matter — but they really do. What we choose to call something affects how we feel about it. That’s something we can use to our advantage.

Anything can be a date

For instance, in one of my recent time-tracking challenges, a person told me that she decided to categorize any time she spent with her partner under the heading of “Date.” Who knows what they were doing together — it could have been shoveling snow — but she said that this had shifted how she felt about whatever time they managed to get together. It was something to savor and celebrate.

Perhaps you will find the same thing. If there’s a category of time that you’d like to treat as more special, or at least as something less negative, then maybe you can shift the language you use.

For instance, instead of thinking about your time in the car on the way to work as commuting, you could think of this as audiobook reading time. How nice to get 90 minutes to read each day! I mean granted you’re in a car in traffic, but still, that switches the emphasis to rethink the primary activity.

Shifting names

Time driving your kids home from school or sports could become “the daily debrief.” Time sitting in your car during their practices could become “hobby time” — take knitting, cross-stitching, or something else. Yard work can become “gardening,” which for some reason sounds more enjoyable. Cleaning out your closet can be a wardrobe refresh. Think of a hair appointment or a physical not as life maintenance but as self-care — a pleasure. Why not refer to tidying and cleaning your house, putting away groceries, and the like as “nesting,” instead of chores? Or if you clean at an aerobic pace think of it as exercise. Suddenly, you’re a person who gets 30 minutes of exercise every day!

A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, as Shakespeare tells us, but for less obviously appealing activities, renaming them may create a somewhat rosier experience of them. It might be worth a shot.