The Essential Guide to Staying Motivated at Work
Are you spending more time daydreaming at work? Are you letting your responsibilities slide? Or are you noticing a drop in the quality of your work? Staying motivated in your job is a challenge that most of the working world has to face at some point. So what can you do to rediscover your passion for your job?
Time for a Change?
If you’re becoming dissatisfied with your job, then maybe it’s time for a change. Changing your career is a healthy and perfectly natural step in life. Not to mention that taking the time to think about what you really want to do can be amazingly beneficial for your mental health!
You could consider talking to an executive outplacement service, who will take you in and discuss all of the issues you’re having with your career right now. These trained professionals will then help you along the journey of finding a whole new career path! It’s always best to have an ally with you during these transitional phases, especially if they’re a professional in the business!
Set Your Goals
One of the main causes of a loss of motivation is the fact that you have lost sight of your goals. If you feel like you’re working every day and it’s not leading you anywhere, that’s likely because you’re not working towards anything in particular.
Take some time to yourself and think about your goals. These can be as specific as gaining a certain promotion or pay rise, or as general as bringing in new ideas or making your impact more apparent. Write down all the ideas you have in a list and keep it nearby when you’re working. That way, you can use those aspirations as a source of motivation, and one day soon you’ll be able to start crossing your dreams off the list.
Be More Social
Many people get to work every day, sit at their desks and go through the whole day while hardly saying a word to the people around them. It’s an easy routine to slip into, but it can also be detrimental to your motivation! It may even make you begin to dread going to work at all! This problem is even more common among people working from home.
A great way to walk into work with a spring in your step is by making friends with your colleagues! Invite them all out for lunch one day, or come into work ready to share your stories from the weekend. Get the conversation flowing and you’ll find the long days at work start to feel a little bit shorter.
Break it Up
A common cause for feeling unmotivated is often feeling overwhelmed. If you’re getting to work every day and seeing an insurmountable pile of tasks in front of you, it can become very easy to switch off and ignore the lot. Of course, this is a very short term solution, so how can we tackle that response?
The best way to get yourself back on track is by breaking your projects down into small, bite-sized tasks. That way, you’ll have the satisfaction of crossing your achievable tasks off one by one, and all of a sudden, the pile becomes a whole lot smaller.
Take a New Approach
If your job involves doing the same thing every day, then your routine could be the cause of your drop in motivation. Doing the same tasks the same way every day just means that you eventually start doing your whole job on autopilot. That’s where the boredom creeps in!
Find a new approach to your work. Maybe you can come at it from a new angle, or take a step back and
think about a new and creative way to complete your tasks. Injecting a little creativity into your daily routine will undoubtedly help you get out of that rut.
Learn on the Job
People often get bored or unmotivated at work because they feel like they’re stagnating. This can be an easy trap to fall into, as you may be perfectly comfortable in your role, but if there’s nothing driving you on, then you’ll notice your performance slipping!
Nowadays, most companies are more than receptive to people learning on the job! So much so that many companies will fund any work related courses for you! Why not take a few hours out of your working week to complete an online course or qualification? Just talk to your manager about it and as long as it’s relevant to what you do they’ll be totally on board with the idea!
Work/Life Balance
Maintaining a work/life balance can be extremely difficult. It’s also a major cause for people becoming unhappy with their careers. An uneven balance could leave you feeling unhappy with both sides of the equation!
Maintaining the balance can be quite difficult, so try setting yourself a schedule so that you’re not working beyond certain hours. Give yourself time to destress and unwind from long days and make sure that if you have a work phone, you turn it off as soon as you get home. Don’t let work take over your life.
Schedule the Day
Sometimes you can just get into work and stare at your screen, struggling to figure out where to start. If you start the day off like that, then you can expect it to carry on into the afternoon!
If you’re finding the working day to be too long and daunting right now, then try breaking it up. Devote an hour of your morning to answering emails, another hour to one project, and then some time to the next task. Keep your brain active and moving, looking for new problems and new solutions throughout the day.
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Don’t despair if you’re feeling unmotivated at work! It happens to all of us, but thankfully there are some handy tips and tricks that can help you get back on track. Whether it’s as extreme as changing professions, or as minor as sharing your time more wisely. Any of these tricks can help you get back on top form in no time!
