16 Nov Work Motivation: How to Keep Working Efficiently at the End of the Year
Out of everything else, our motivation is the one thing that actually gets us to do things. Without motivation, we would not chase our dream jobs, get weekly (or daily, if we are extra motivated) exercise, or even keep going with our day-to-day lives. Motivation can push us to amazing heights, especially in the career field. Unfortunately, as the long and exhausting year comes to an end, our work motivation tends to exhaust itself, too. If you ever find yourself dreading work, having a harder time focusing, or lacking ideas for projects more than usual as November and December roll around, you are not alone.
After a full year of ups and downs in your job, your work motivation will most likely waver—especially with the holidays coming around. Check out these tips on how to find and maintain your work motivation through the end of the year!
Why is Work Motivation Important?
Imagine this:
You wake up one morning absolutely unmotivated to go to work (or to sit at your desk and clock in if you work from home). You barely find yourself completing your morning routine, dragging your feet as you take a shower, feed the pets, wake your kids up, brush your teeth, do your hair, etc. Further, you hardly make it to work on time—not that you care much, since you don’t want to be there anyway—clocking in just before your boss can yell at you for being late.
When you sit down at your desk, all you see is a sheet of paper with only square check boxes—no words, no images, and no colors. Every so often, you check a box off. By the end of the day, all of your boxes are checked but you don’t feel like you accomplished much of anything.
Without work motivation to back you, your day-to-day work will feel like you are just checking off the next box on your sheet of squares. That’s not very exciting.
Work motivation will not only push you to check off the squares on your sheet of paper, but it will help you create new boxes and paint them in an array of colors. It can help you expand past the borders of your daily work, getting more experience, knowledge, and skills.
The right amount of work motivation can help you further your career. Plus, feeling motivated for your work will make it feel less stressful and more enjoyable. Your day might even go by faster.
How to Create Motivation for Work
Unlike Albert Einstein’s law of conservation of energy, motivation can be created (and destroyed… but we won’t focus on that part). With a few different tactics, you can find yourself more motivated than before to work. All you have to do is find the method that works for you.
Here are a few you can try out:
1. Get Comfortable and Creative
One of the most exhausting parts of work can be the repetitious day-to-day activities. If you work in an office or from home in your own dedicated office space, then you might find yourself sitting in the same worn-down chair in the same boring, old environment. While repetition can be great to a certain point, it does tend to damper your motivation if left too long.
Adjust the pictures on your desk, buy new trinkets to decorate with, exchange chairs for something more comfortable… changing your environment even just slightly can help bring back some work motivation that your otherwise monotonous decorations had drained.
Further, feeling more comfortable in your place will do wonders for your health. If you make sure to sit up straight—in a comfortable manner—it will help reduce the stress and aches that your body may be experiencing. Look into getting a chair that will support and correct your posture throughout the long day. But don’t hesitate to spice it up with a comfy pillow here or there. The main goal is to prevent slouching for long periods, not to be uncomfortable.
2. Listen to Your Body and Your Mind
One of the toughest things to experience at work might be the burnout. A burnout, in the work environment, is when you are mentally and physically exhausted so much that you have a hard time completing anything and oftentimes feel unequipped for the job. Even if you have years of experience in a job, a burnout can make it feel like you are just not good enough for it.
Lacking work motivation can be seen as a beginning symptom of burnout. If you can acknowledge that your motivation is failing you, you should be able to help prevent the blossoming burnout.
One of the biggest things you can do for this is listening to your body and your mind. There are a ton of signs that your body is telling—perhaps even screaming—at you throughout the day. So, take a second to listen to it.
What is your body saying? How do you fix it?
Do you have a headache? Are your joints stiff? Are you irritated at the little things happening around you—good or bad? Perhaps you need to take a step back and breathe.
Oftentimes, stress and dehydration are the main causes of headaches at work. When was the last time you had some water? And actual water, not coffee or sugar-filled juices. Though you might be drinking a lot during the day, you can still become dehydrated if you aren’t having enough water. If the taste of plain water isn’t for you, try spicing it up some with fruits or those powder flavor packets. You might be surprised at how much energy and work motivation you can find just by drinking more water.
If you are one of the few who keeps themselves well hydrated throughout the day, perhaps you just need that step back to think of something else. When things get frustrating at work, we always try to solve them as quickly as possible—pour over the same numbers again and again, reread a document a thousand times, think about a single idea for so long it stops being a great idea…
When things get that bad, it’s time for a break. Seriously. A break. Taking a step back from something will lessen the frustration and allow you time to clear your thoughts. Even if you take a step back by focusing on another task, this will give your mind more room to breathe. And when you go back to the original task, you will be able to meet it with new eyes and a clearer mind.
There is no room for work motivation when your mind is too occupied with stress.
3. Break It Down One Step at a Time
Your work motivation could be lacking if your projects seem too massive to complete. If you have a long-term project to finish, it’s probably too intimidating to look at it on a bigger scale. Instead, break things up into smaller, bite-sized chunks that you can see the end of much clearer.
For instance, you might find the motivation to finish writing a basic overview of the project to come—something that will detail the steps you need to follow and the little things you will need to complete along the way. You may also feel the motivation to knock out the first step of this project.
However, if you think of the project on a larger scale, you might not know where or how to start. Any single thing accomplished won’t seem like much if you’re only looking at the larger scale. This could cause your work motivation to plummet.
So, start small and grow from there; before you know it, the project will be complete and your work motivation will still be going strong.
4. Focus on the Parts You Enjoy Most
Sadly, we’re not all lucky enough to find a job that we like entirely. Perhaps you do too much paperwork or you’re in a different department than what you originally hoped for. Focusing on the negative parts of your job will only weigh you down and ruin your work motivation.
If you are not in a position to change jobs, you need to find another way to spark motivation in your current job. To do this, you should focus most on the parts you do enjoy. Are your coworkers nice to talk with? Are you surprisingly amazing at cataloging those tricky number sequences? Do you enjoy the act of checking off something else on your to-do list?
By expanding upon the parts you do enjoy or allowing yourself to focus primarily on those parts, you can increase your work motivation and reduce stress.
So, as cliché as it is, just think about the happy things.
How to Maintain Work Motivation
Though creating motivation might be the way to go sometimes, it’s always better to maintain the motivation you already have. But how do you keep your motivation steady between projects?
There are a few different ways, actually, but the most important is limiting distractions while working and keeping busy most of the time. A big factor in our lack of work motivation comes from boredom and distractions. If there are not enough things to do around the office, you might find your mind wandering to other things.
It will be important to keep busy even during the slow moments. Perhaps take the slow day to reorganize your files, clean up your desk, complete those small and insignificant tasks you’ve been pushing off, or create a detailed schedule for what comes next.
By keeping busy, you can retain your work motivation and lessen the boredom around you. This will lower your chances of reaching for your phone or trinkets on your desk, further preventing a dip in your work motivation.
How to End the Year on a High Note
This year was long and exhausting. Many people lost their jobs, many started new jobs, and many didn’t change anything. If you want to make the most of the remaining weeks of the year, consider what your goals are for next year.
By planning ahead, you can be ready for any lack of work motivation life might throw your way.
If you’re interested in changing your job, advancing your career, or updating your resume, check out the Career Services we offer at The Jonus Group!
You can sign up for a free, 15-minute consultation with our Career Expert here to get started.