With the best of intentions, all professionals need help with motivation sometimes.
Between the bustling workday, a slew of hard deadlines and the sheer effort of maintaining personal life outside of the office, it’s unsurprising that many Brits have a serious problem with finding the motivation to upkeep their home and work lives. Things slip, and once they start to slip, it’s far harder to prevent a full-blown disaster. Miss that one deadline, and all others are pushed back as you struggle to catch up. Lose concentration whilst completing a task and the day’s work may be rendered pointless. Miss laundry day one week and you’re wearing that ill-fitting shirt you took out of rotation for the day.
It’s important, when looking to improve motivation, to consider that many workplace specialists perceive motivation to act like a muscle. If you don’t use a muscle for a while, it starts to get weaker and is unable to perform as it once did. Work on that muscle, and it rebuilds itself stronger and better than before. With that in mind, your motivation needs to be trained with an equally effective regime.
But when pushing your motivation, what works?
Find an ‘accountability partner’
The best way to get motivated is to find someone else who is either already talented at productivity, or someone who also wants to better themselves and use this camaraderie to push yourself to your limits. Friendly competition and the conviction of knowing that someone else is aware if you succeed or fail is a fantastic way of keeping yourself to your own promises.
Organise your brain
Different kinds of learners will do this in different ways, yet a good way to describe the jumble in your brain is in the form of a metaphorical monolith. This giant, looming monolith of to-do lists, big projects and general tasks requiring effort looks seemingly impossible when viewed in this way, yet simply getting these things down in the form of a structured to-do list replete with action dates and scales of investment will turn that monolith into bite-sized chunks, which you can complete one-by-one.
Start small
The rewarding feeling of crossing off an item on your to-do list is a powerful one. It breeds motivation as you power through your tasks. Start with something small that you’ve been meaning to get done and build to bigger tasks. You’ll be so in the zone by the time that you get to the key projects, you’ll be in the mindset to tackle them head-on.
Be realistic
People generally attempt to dive into productivity and set themselves unrealistic deadlines. If you’re physically unable to complete these deadlines, you’re setting yourself up for guaranteed failure, which is a massive motivation killer.
Give yourself a break
Figuratively and literally, everyone needs time to clear their mind and unpack information. If you try to pile on too much at once, you’ll overload yourself and kill your motivation. Take short, sharp breaks between tasks – but keep these brief and get right back to work afterwards.
(Credit to Executive Grapevine Daily)