How to Stay Motivated At Work

It doesn’t matter if you have an exciting job or that you have a healthy mental attitude towards work and life in general, motivation issues will surface on occasion. It’s perfectly natural for our energy levels to dip from time to time and not all of us will be fortunate enough to work in a particularly stimulating environment. However, whatever you do for a living, if you follow a few golden rules it can help you with your motivation at work.

Clarify Your Objectives

Nothing is likely to affect your motivation more than not having clearly set out objectives at work for you to work towards. By knowing the specifics of what your boss expects of you with regards to your duties, you can alleviate the problem of losing focus which in turn can often affect your self motivation.

Reasons For Being There

We all tend to get bored with our work at some time or another. For some people, they might have become so disillusioned with their job that any kind of motivation apart from picking up a wage packet at the end of the week has disappeared long ago, whilst there are others who may just have a temporary energy dip now and again. To maintain your motivation at work, it can often be useful to draw up a list of legitimate reasons why you go out to work each day. Perhaps they are money oriented only. If so, think of the things you’re looking to spend the money on, a new car or a holiday, for example. If certain elements of your job are boring or, perhaps, difficult, focus on the part they’re going to play in accomplishing the broader objective and the fact that the bits you don’t enjoy will still lead you towards the ultimate goal. A lot of the time it’s down to attitude. Why not ask yourself how you could perhaps make the task more fun? Sometimes with a very mundane task, some people will set themselves an amount of time in which they are determined to accomplish it. Others will achieve a similar result by going head to head with one of their colleagues to see who can finish it first.

Give Yourself A Reward

Even if a company doesn’t recognise your efforts and achievements, that doesn’t mean to say you have to do likewise. If you find that you’re lacking motivation at work, think of ways in which you can reward yourself if you achieve certain objectives in a given time. It might be an hour down at the pub or treating yourself to a new outfit, whatever spurs you on, you’ll often find having something to look forward to is sufficient to motivate you into completing even the most mundane of tasks.

Think About How You Would Feel If You Were Out Of Work

Sometimes in order to keep our self motivation levels high, it’s important to be thankful for what we’ve got and to consider how we’d feel if we weren’t going to work each day. Would you feel still useful and connected to the outside world if you suddenly found yourself sitting at home with nothing to do each day and no money even if you did have something to do? It’s also important to keep things in perspective. Remember that whilst it’s important you have an income, work is simply that - just work and that it only forms part of your life so think about the other things in life that you have to look forward to when work is over – your family, friends and outside hobbies and leisure interests, for example. This will all help with maintaining motivation at work.

Team Motivation

Unless you work autonomously, why not open up a discussion with other members of your team at work to see if there are ways in which you can enjoy the job more and how you can make it more interesting? Negativity can spread fast and affect team motivation greatly. The more positive energy you all bring to a workplace, the greater your own and the team motivation levels will be. People get motivated in different ways. In the worst case scenario where you’ve tried everything and still feel unable to keep your self motivation levels up, then perhaps it’s a good time to start using some of your spare time to look at possible alternative jobs – whether that’s within your own industry or maybe it’s time for a career change. Setting some goals and working towards them, even if the goals relate to a life outside of your current employment, can often make all the difference in making life inside your place of work more bearable.