Staying Motivated In the Workplace

Staying motivated in the workplace can be difficult at times. Everyone has moments or even entire days where they feel like they cannot conjure up the motivation to get anything done. We’re people after all and we can get depleted both mentally and physically. If you feel like you’ve hit a motivational plateau in your life, this piece may be able to lend itself to new perspectives and practices to help push your reset button. While much of the advice pertaining to motivation might seem like common sense or even come across a bit clichéd, there’s often a reason for that. Many of these methods are not necessarily difficult ones to understand, but rather they take mindfulness and effort in order to produce a noticeable difference in your drive when it comes to getting productive things done.

One thing you can start actively working on is discipline. Many times, what people think is a motivational issue is actually a problem with self discipline. We’ve all had times where we procrastinated on a big project, watched Netflix for hours in a day, ditched a workout routine or skipped a healthy meal for junk food. Discipline isn’t a one and done thing, it’s something that you have to constantly work on and cultivate. As a way to test your current level of discipline, try setting a very specific meal-plan, sleep schedule and workout regimen for one whole week and try and not deviate from it. Take note of any points where you felt like giving up and use it as an indicator that you might need to spend some extra attention in the category to refine yourself. And just as a rule of thumb, being on a set diet/sleep regimen has numerous benefits that manifest themselves not just physically, but mentally as well so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start here!

Next, let’s touch your social sphere. The people you keep around you are hugely influential on what you’re going to put focus on and what you’re motivated towards. Ideally, it’s best to keep those around you whose goals are at least slightly similar to yours and with who have some crossover in the same interests as you. If you’re an aspiring athlete and you’re constantly around partiers who drink and partake in vices all the time, you probably won’t achieve your goals or grow your motivational drive very optimally. Expanding on that example, if you’re an athlete trying to make it, you might want to be around other people who are taking sports seriously, or at the very least keep active and encourage you to do the same. This mindset of keeping compatible people in your social sphere directly correlates to efficiency at work and the drive to want to better yourself and achieve those things that will make you feel truly fulfilled.

Finally, we’re going to briefly examine time management. It can be all too easy to get sucked into a leisurely activity, especially if it’s engaging like a TV show you’re invested in or an immersive book. What you need to do is start setting limits on these activities and understand that while overindulgence in relaxation will feel great in the moment, it will ultimately serve to work against you in the long run. If there’s something you need to get done or work on and it just seems like a big wall, try segmenting it if possible and work on it a little bit each day rather than trying to take it on all at once. For example, a lot of people want to start working out, but they put if off due to either not knowing where to start, being confused on the specifics of certain workout/diet and just about everything in between. Instead of working yourself up and building this task into a something intimidating, try instead to break it down and start with a couple quick, simple workouts and some minor meal adjustments per day that are easy to learn stick to instead of jumping face first into it. Doing it this way has a higher success rate since you don’t have to do as much while you’re just starting out and gives you a lot of room to build up and be more efficient as time goes on. Obviously the example I provided was geared towards exercise, but this mindset can apply to anything that involves pesky tasks that you’re not inherently motivated to do. By managing your time and keeping the workload small each day, it’s easier to keep your motivation high enough to complete what you need to do now, while keeping some in the tank for the next day.