5 ways to stay motivated in your job!

1 — Let’s start with asking yourself why?

Let’s start with asking yourself the question why you are feeling unmotivated in your job. If you think carefully you might have some answers. I would put these answers in a Google Doc or in my phone like inotes so you can do this whenever you are and wherever you are.

If you are that person like me you’ll find yourself finding answers to your thoughts by writing more than you have in your head. Try to provide a neutral approach and be honest with yourself when you are writing and try not to let any biases based on how you feel on the day. This will help you be more informed.

Are you unmotivated because it is the type of work you are doing? I.e. it’s not something challenging and you are bored with.Is it because you are doing work with little impact? Do you feel that your work is not being valued? Whatever it is, there should always be a reason why and how you can find a way around this.

You can go a lot deeper into these questions, but by taking your time to self reflect if you keep asking yourself why, you will find some interesting questions. Take your time doing this so you understand your situation on why you are feeling unmotivated in your job.

2 — Avoiding Burnout

A very common issue that you may have heard from LinkedIn articles and so on is burnout? Burnout is a work-related stress that occurs when you are overworked, you lack the energy to perform your job, you lack interest in the work you are doing and as a result this reduces your happiness and productivity.

This is not good, and I think we have all been there at times when I felt tired and dreading to do anything and often leads to procrastination.

Maybe burnout is part of a contribution to your lack of motivation. Here are some advices that works for me — depending how you felt in your self reflection:

• What really works from me and how I learn to work especially from working from home is to set yourself boundaries:
• What i mean by that you might be receiving notifications from your phone when you are not working — you might feel anxiety or anxious when you see a notification on your phone and feel the urge to respond if you are off work then you don’t need to respond, if you respond then you’ll set the expectations you’ll reply which might not be sustainable in the long run. That’s why it might be good to turn off your notifications.
• To take your breaks, remember to have your lunch, remember to take breaks and make/cook your dinner. It’s straightforward really but very often times gets forgotten.
• Very much so work can be convoluted with working from home. That’s why it is important to separate work and outside work. This can cause burnout and hence not being motivation
• Plan something exciting to look forward to! Whether that’ll be the weekend, catching up to see friends or going on a holiday…fingers cross soon!

3 — Build a healthy relationship with your manager

I’m assuming your work involves working and being a part of a team. You’ll be spending most of your time working with people, so try to be authentic and be professional. It’s okay to talk about things other than work with your colleagues — but make sure it’s at the right time. It’s okay to make mistakes, you have to own up and learn from it.

Now depending on your answers to what is causing you to be unmotivated, it is important to address it to your manager. From Making of a manager by Julie Zhou— which I really recommend a read. A part that really resonates with me is — Your manager knows what matters to you, and you know what matters to your manager.

Why this matters is because, usually your manager is your direct report, they delegate the work you should be working on, or they set you goals and expectations, this matters to them because they have their wider goals, if you hit and meet them they are going to be happy. And if they know what matters to you, then they can accommodate your needs to do well in the job.

Now these discussions with your managers in your 1 to 1 sessions is an opportunity for open and honest feedback to make this work. If you understand some reasons why you are unmotivated and you raise the situation up with a proposed solution with your manager this might help resolve some issues, and before it gets worse!.

For me it’s important that I am being stimulated and building exciting things in my day job that are valuable and I can bounce ideas and discuss and showcase my work. I communicate when I want to work on something different or new areas I want to develop in myself in my 1 to 1s and set out a plan.

It’s important to set those expectations from the manager. This will make things a lot easier for you. You can discuss projects in the future, plans that you want to get involved in.

4 — Provide solutions to improve at work

This can be done by providing feedback in the right way, your team should be up for listening to it as this can help them.

An opportunity to improve and communicate is usually as close to the event so it can be used as a reference. Then the receiver will know what you are about, rather than hearing this 3 months later at the next quarterly review where they often forgot or your feedback may come across threatening since you still remember it such a long time ago with that example.

From my experience your colleague will and usually appreciate you taking the time in providing the feedback.The structure should also be like an Oreo layer.. Think oreo -Good, Bad, good. start off something good, then start your feedback, then end in something positive — good!

A simple example, I’ll use to illustrate the structure to the person hosted in meetings that took a long time and the meeting was not run efficiently?

It was a great meeting _____ thanks for taking the time to set this up. Everyone is very keen on chipping in but it could run even smoother if we can set an agenda and prepare stuff to pre-read material so I can make the most out of the meeting? Thank you and I look forward to your next talk.

This not only helps you but would help everyone else in creating a better work environment.

5 — What makes you excited?

Finally, what makes you excited about your job? What more of that particular work can you do?

You can speak with your colleagues and be inspired by thriving on energy that gets them excited. Ask about what things they are working on, what they want to be working on? Maybe you can even collaborate on a project together.

What I got from speaking with colleagues, even virtually, was we were sharing resources about data engineering. And I put myself in a vulnerable position and I told him I feel overwhelmed with keeping up with the industry news. How do you keep up to date with it?

He says he struggles too and he usually reads blog posts and articles on medium before starting work with a coffee to put himself in the mindset of things. Yet I am still finding to put that in my routine to be honest, but it’s something I want to try getting better at.

Summary

On a final note focus on the things you can control and not on the things you can’t as it is about being realistic. What is the point in thinking about the things you can’t control tomorrow? If you know that it would be a bad one you still have to move on.

Like in a job, if you don’t like it and after so many things you still realise the job isn’t right for you. Life is too short, you need to hedge this and find yourself an alternative plan.