7 Best Ways to Stay Motivated at Work

In the morning when you wake up and head to work. You intend to get as much done as possible. The number of emails arriving at the mailbox is horrifying and already at the beginning of the day, you wonder how you can cope with everything.

Of course, the level of motivation varies from day to day. There might be a poorly slept night, making it difficult to concentrate on work when tired. It is a pity that the work calendar often does not follow your state of alertness, but sometimes things have to be taken care of even when tired.

The workload can also make you feel numb when returning from a holiday, for example, when work seems to be insurmountable during the holiday. You may get the feeling that you don’t even know where to start. That’s when you get confused and paralyzed, and you certainly can’t get anything done without planning.

Motivation comes from either an internal or external stimulus: either you genuinely want to complete a task or you do it for some external factor, such as money. The motivation associated with tedious, repetitive tasks is often external and one tends to postpone them. Unfortunately, you can find motivation for every single thing, so creating excuses to postpone won’t help.

Here are 7 tips to keep you motivated in different situations.

1. Are you afraid of failure?

Fear of failure may even prevent you from starting a task. At this point, it’s worth thinking about what’s the worst thing that can happen if you fail. What if you don’t do the task at all? The consequences are automatically negative.

2. The task feels too boring

Don’t think about how much time the task will take. Focus on what you need to do. At best, you got so focused that you wake up to the passage of time in a few hours. You can make this more effective by setting sub-goals and tracking how you achieve them along the way.

3. You are just feeling lazy

Most of us sometimes have days when we “can’t just do it or we just don’t care.” It’s good to remember that you can’t plan your mood, but you can plan your day. If you are most energized in the morning, plan your day early. If you still find it difficult to follow your planned schedule, simply try counting to ten and get started. Counting tunes the feeling to get started.

4. You are tired and stressed

When tired, you can’t work at full power – especially if all the energy seems to be wasted staying awake. If you are tired today, learn from it. You can fix it in the future by taking care of yourself: sleep, eat regularly, exercise, yes we all know these. If your means do not alleviate the feeling of stress, you can for example visit an occupational health care professional.

5. When you don’t know where to start

Sometimes work comes from doors and windows at the same time. It’s hard to choose where to start. Then make a to-do list. When creating the list, you should be realistic: think about what are the most important things to do that day and how long it might take. If you plan to do much more than you eventually have time for, you may cause yourself to feel disappointed.

6. If there is too much work

Learn to say no and delegate tasks whenever possible. If others in the company have a hard time finishing tasks as well, talk to your supervisor about what to do about the situation. Focus on the most important tasks and don’t get hung up on less important ones.

7. When you don’t understand why you do what you do

Sometimes in the middle of a project, for example, you encounter a problem that raises the question of why that task is even being done. Focus on the end result. In many cases, projects have boring parts that need to be done for the end result. However, if you are doing genuinely useless work, discuss it with others and develop the process.

In summary

Think about why you originally applied for this job. Maybe your work is linked to a bigger, more meaningful goal? If so, look for motivation from it.

Even if everyday work is consuming, you can get the strength to do it by knowing that you are helping individuals or society with your work.

Also, think about what things you can influence in your work and what things make everyday life meaningful. Look for something in your daily work that is reasonably sensible to do, and think about how meaningfulness could be strengthened or similar things could be done more.