Feeling motivated every day is a difficult task and mustering enough motivation to show up at your workplace is also a common problem.
No matter how hard you try, there are days when you grab a corner and try to just stare at your computer screen, willing to type, create a presentation, doing something creative that cheers you up. But at the end, you find yourself simply killing your time, hardly bothering about the work you’re producing.
No need to mention, that you are totally unmotivated and you are running out of the ways that will make you feel otherwise.
There are situations where you like your job but are bored of your monotonous routine, so don’t feel motivated enough. But in case you hate your job, then showing up at work and looking motivated enough every day is an uphill task.
All of us sail in the same boat, chasing motivation. Lack of motivation doesn’t only affect your performance at work, but it can also affect your emotional well-being. It can also affect your ability and your aim of achieving your set goals in life.
It’s easy and all but natural to fall into a rut and get stuck in the same monotonous routine. When one follows the same routine for a long time, it is natural to feel demotivated. It is also possible that the excitement for work may vanish.
It may take some time, but it’s not at all difficult to get that motivation mode on. However, if you consistently motivate yourself. You be able to not only show up at work every day, but you will also experience increase energy levels. You will have a new zeal of energy to get the work done. You will be more excited about work and will feel willing to take challenges. Working on your motivation will help you in achieving better-sustained results.
If that wasn’t enough, then here are some more that will enlighten you and will bring back your high energy mode at the workplace.
Why do you work?
People usually base their motivation on external sources like appreciation at work, promotions, incentives. Of course, such things do make you feel better and worth at the workplace, but they only provide temporary motivation.
External factors can make you happy for some time, but it’s your own internal feeling that will keep you motivated for long.
The easiest way to identify your internal source of motivation is to find your own personal reason to work. Yes, you need to find out why’ do you work?
This ‘why’ will keep you motivated for long.
Whenever you feel low and stare at your computer screen, just think about your reason to work. For example about your life goals, how you believe in the overall mission and vision of your company, how do you want to help your co-worker with whom you have been working for years.
You could also consider the fact that your job helps you in learning so much and preparing you for the next steps in your professional life. These are some meaningful reasons that motivate you from within. They will help you in taking up the challenges, tackle them and achieve your set goals.
Managing your schedule
Managing time and the schedule is quite important to maintain the pace of work. If one gets tired and is left with no energy, then it becomes difficult to stay inspired till the evening.
Most of us, usually try to finish all the little things in the first of the day, so that rest of the day can be used to complete some of the daunting tasks. But this kind of schedule may leave you tired any uninspired in the very first of the day and the rest of day can go staring at your computer screen. Because you are tired, so there’s no room left to handle some of the bigger tasks.
Try doing it in a different way. Try and finish the difficult stuff as first thing in the morning, when you are fresh and energized. It will help you in not only finishing the major stuff, but it will also give you a kind of kick to stay fresh for rest of the day. Once you have covered the heavy stuff, then you can move on and finish the things in a zip, zap, zoom way.
Trying different ways to tackle your daily work can keep you in high spirits. Like if you have your hands full, don’t try to overload yourself with lots of work. Try to delegate, as much as you can. You can distribute the work that is not yours or can be done by your subordinates or someone else. Stop pushing yourself into being busier than you have to be.
Try to balance your personal life
Do you go home and relax with your family and friends or your life outside work is also difficult and exhaustive. Many of us slog at work and then even in personal life are overly burdened with responsibilities. As a result, it leaves us with hardly any energy or zeal for work.
Rebalancing your personal life could be difficult and even if you want to make any changes, they will also take a lot of time to yield results. But you can do one thing; you can start focusing on doing at least one thing for yourself each week. Like taking a walk at your favourite park to booking a massage or pampering yourself at the parlour or having a lunch out with a friend. These things will recharge your emotions, exactly like you need to recharge your brain.
In your personal life as well, look for ‘whys’ than ‘shoulds’. You either find ‘whys’ behind them or just chuck them out from your to-do list.
Set small-sized goals
Having bigger goals in life is not harmful, but it may lead to mental stress. So to tackle it, you must break down the bigger challenges into consumable goals.
It will make you feel that you are making some progress in your journey and will also give you a sense of accomplishment when you complete the smaller goals. A feeling of progress and achievement not only makes you feel happy but also motivates you.
Being friendly with co-workers
Working alone in the workplace can leave you all exhausted and uninspired. When you aren’t friendly with your coworkers, going to work every day could become unpleasant.
Even if you are popular among your friends, but still don’t have any additional friends at work could be boring. Distancing yourself from rest of the office can make working harder for you because you spend so much alone time without even connecting with anybody.
Sometimes having a small loo talk or a little conversation with somebody in the office during teatime break can perk you up for the next meeting or the lined up work. You might also get a brilliant idea while talking to people around you.
You don’t have to really make best friends in the office, but having a short chat with people around you can keep you inspired. Working in teams is always easier when you have a warm relationship with your teammates.
Look for the most fertile time to work
While working there are certain hours of the day, when you are in high spirits and can complete most of your work. At the end of the day, when you feel demotivated, drained and are left with no energy to complete it you try to overstay and finish the job with whatever comes first to your mind. Always, remember it can hamper the quality of your work. It can also leave you wondering what to do next.
The best way to go about it is to leave it as it is and re-approach it the next day. Next day, you can immediately start working on it and build momentum for the rest of the day. Instead of staying late on Friday or working over the weekend to wrap up your unfinished work. You can stop somewhere and pick it up again on Monday with fresh ideas and energy to work on it.
This way, you would exactly know what to do next.
Taking the control of life in your hands
It’s easy to fill your day with meetings and interactions, but taking control of planning and scheduling your day in your own hands helps a lot.
Having few interactions in the first half of day will make you look forward to them. Once you done with the meetings, then you can plan a coffee meeting or a conference call with somebody who’s creative and upbeat. This kind of meeting is usually low on stress and motivates you, as it only requires showing up with a little bit of planning.
You can also plan an evening with family and friends or try to have one meal together as a family. Eat meals together helps in creating strong relationships. It will also give you a dose of energy and of course motivation!
Author Bio: Anand Rajendran is the CEO and co-founder of Uptra, a leading consultancy firm which offers taxation services to business firms and other organizations. As a business entrepreneur and marketing consultant for 6 years, he launched Uptra Consultancy Services to make taxation process a simple one with professional accountants.