You may completely love your job and feel absolutely engaged with your work. But the reality is that we’re all inclined to suffer from slumps in motivation levels during the day.
And those who can best fight these motivation slumps and retain their focus will ultimately be the most successful at their jobs.
So how can you stay engaged with your work at all points of the day?
Below are some tips that’ll enhance your performance when you’re lacking motivation and inspiration. Feel free to share your own tips in the comments below.
- Write a to-do list. When things start to feel as if they are stacking up against you, the best way to stay in check is to create a to-do list. Write out all your tasks and tick them off as you go along, that way you can keep track of what has been achieved and what is yet to be completed. The sense of achievement we get from ticking off tasks as they’re accomplished provides another encouragement boost.
- Maintain a clear head. Frustration and stress can affect even the most level-headed of us from time to time, and it’s easy to make mistakes under pressure. If it’s been a hectic morning or afternoon, take a moment to unwind. Walking away from your desk, be it by going for a quick walk outside or just heading to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, can make a huge difference and allow you to regain your focus.
- Turn off your emails for an hour. The average person spends about two and a half hours per day merely responding to emails. It’s grown into a hugely distracting force, so much so that it can be difficult to complete tasks as your concentration is constantly being broken. To avoid distracting email notifications popping up every few minutes, completely close your outlook for hour-long sessions allowing you to keep focused on one task at a time.
- Keep a clean workstation. It’s amazing how quickly your work desk can turn into a minefield of scattered documents, pens, mugs and other office clutter.A messy desk can severely affect motivation levels, so ensure that you make the effort to regularly organise all the items you have lying around. By ensuring all documents and items are easy to find, you can also enhance your productivity as less time is wasted searching for things.
- Speak to ‘energising’ people: Everyone has that one person in the office who has endless enthusiasm and can inject positivity into every situation. When you’re lacking motivation, seek out that co-worker and take the time to have a chat with them. Surrounding yourself with people who are dynamic, driven and continually offering words of encouragement can really boost your inspiration to get the job done.
- Focus on your ‘end game’: This is possibly the most important item on this list. Always keep in mind what you’re doing and why you are doing it. If the project you’re working on right now isn’t your favourite task to do, think of it as a stepping stone to achieving your long term goal.
- Create clear personal objectives. This is a list of items that you should keep handy in the office and at home. It should include both personal and career goals, for example when you’d like your next promotion or your future holiday destinations. Ultimately, these end goals can keep you motivated to achieve the day-to-day tasks required to help you get ahead.
If none of the above help, it might be time to meet with your manager and discuss what other options are available. Work now takes up such a large proportion of our waking life, it’s important that we find satisfaction and happiness in whatever role we’re in.