During a recent coaching experience, we were talking about the lack of focus that this person was having during their work day and looking for the motivation that they needed to not be working all hours of the day trying to make up for the work that they should be doing. Motivating and different levels of motivation, can hit all of us. Tiredness, work fatigue, stress…. you name it and it can all affect your motivation and your ability to be productive and effective during your day.

There’s a lot to be said for analysing your motivation and during my Pluralsight course on Developing Teamwork Skills, I mention about the difference between the two types of motivation (Intrinsic and Extrinsic) and how they are important for motivating your teams. This also applies to yourself!

For me, being motivated means that I’m more likely to achieve my goals and objectives, I am more likely to do everything in a timely manner and I will be less stressed in the process… so, all in all, it’s a good thing for me to be motivated. When I’m struggling with my motivation, I try the following things:

1. Reset myself!
   1. This means: taking a break. I’ll go for a run to reset my brain and get some fresh air. This can also be taking a short walk or having a dance around my office to get my mind off the lack of motivation that i’m feeling
   2. Resetting myself can also be realising that I will not get anything productive done for the rest of my day and just stop work and try again another day. This is a real luxury if it can be done but it’s definitely one way of managing your motivation / stress levels.
2. Timebox an activity
   1. If i’m struggling with the motivation to complete a task, I will timebox it. This could look like the following:
      1. I need to be finished with this review within the next 30minutes. Then I can move on.
      2. I’ve got 5 minutes to review emails and then i’m switching off outlook notifications for the next hour
3. Go back to basics!
   1. For me, this is “working out the why”. I want to make sure that i’m finding and adding value in the task and I critically question myself for whether or not I really need to be doing this and why
   2. Look
4. Switch it up!
   1. If I’m struggling with looking at the same 4 walls (which happened a lot during covid), I tried to work from a different location. This could be a friend’s house, working from the office or even just going out into the garden when the weather was nice. It was a great way to be effective, get in a new environment and space
5. Analyse why
   1. If you start noticing a pattern towards your lack of motivation, it might be a trigger for you to look at wider patterns or issues that exist. Are you noticing a pattern when it comes to the type of work that is causing a lack of motivation? Is it on specific days? (e.g. Monday morning blues).

Conclusion:

What do you do to give yourself more motivation? Are you looking at the root causes? or just trying to get through each day? Let’s connect and share knowledge!