How To Find Work Motivation When You’re Lacking The Determination

Motivation is one of the most complex concepts that can make or break our days.

Why? Because literally, anything can be behind motivation or a lack of drive.

Not seeing a purpose to your work. Being in an environment that’s prone to bringing up distractions. Feeling pressured or unappreciated.

The good news is that just as quickly as we lose motivation, we can boost it and make the most of our days.

The importance of staying motivated when at work

Motivation is that one tiny thing we all ignore until we realize it’s no longer with us. Behind its apparent unimportance, everything around you results from a highly motivated person who didn’t give up.

This being said, having more self-motivation drives us to keep pushing and learning until we reach our top goals. No motivation to work, and you’ve set yourself to nothing.

Beyond this, you must stay motivated to keep your business going and never stray away from your targets. Some people argue that motivation is not a prerequisite but a result:

“I thought motivation was a prerequisite to starting a tedious learning process—a spark necessary to get me going. But motivation is a result. Motivation is the fire that starts burning after you manually, painfully, coax it into existence, and it feeds on the satisfaction of seeing yourself make progress.”—“The Motivation Myth” by Jeff Haden.

This subtle mix of achieving motivation and keeping it makes us feel competent, accomplished, and accountable.

“Although it can be hard to summon up work motivation daily, especially consistently, it’s well worth pushing yourself. The sense of achievement keeps driving you along. Furthermore, once you find a sense of “flow,” work can be far less emotionally taxing than fixating on an endless news cycle. Yes, everybody is having bad days, but bouncing back and ensuring the next is a good one is the key.”—Ben Taylor, Founder @HomeWorkingClub.

Frankly, every aspect of your life depends on motivation to a certain degree, from staying in touch with your friends and family to getting out of a rut or improving your personal brand’s reputation.

The #1 reason you might want to regain your motivation to work is that it makes life easier. It is suitable for your energy levels, is one of the best solutions to procrastination, and pushes you to do your best. All in much less time than you would if you were delaying everything. No more postponing work or sleeping in because you just can’t be bothered to do something. It’s what always worked for personal productivity.

It gives you the confidence and grit to follow a schedule and do deep work. It’s also a great insight into how to do remote work. Need I say more?

How to increase your work motivation

Not all tips on work motivation are practical, though. With many aspects influencing our day-to-day lives, how can you know what method to use first?

Every individual has one or two key things they care about. For instance, if you’re career-driven, your top motivation might be always keeping your goal in mind.

But as usual, no matter how different we are, there will always be a set of feelings and concepts that will build up to demotivate us.

Here’s how to fight against the lack of motivation:

Get rid of negative emotions

Negative feelings can keep us from focusing on our goals. All our worries, fears, and anxieties keep us thinking of all the things that could go wrong, along with other personal issues we might have. These indefinitely distract us from our priorities, having us postpone our life-long dreams until it’s too late.

The secret is to avoid having time to think about these negative aspects of your life while focusing on the good: your happiest moments, things you’ve learned, or how you’ll feel once you reach a goal.

“If you are suffering from stress or anxiety, it’s a great time to start practicing yoga and/or meditation to help change your relationship to negative thought patterns. These practices can help shift your perspective to lean towards positive thoughts and emotions, leading to greater productivity and motivation in your personal and work life.”—Jamie-Lee Kay, Co-Founder @theotherstraw.

Simply talking to other people can keep you balanced and take your mind off all the things that are bothering you:

“Talk to people; don’t bottle up your fears and concerns. Once you let it off your chest, you may feel better and move onwards. It’s ok to be anxious.”—Andrew Taylor, Director @Net Lawman

Plan your day and keep distractions at bay

One quick fix to help you avoid bumping into distractions is to create a schedule and stick to it. If you know you only have 1 hour to take care of a task; you’ll have to work during that time and steer clear of any social media posts, funny videos, or articles that can wait.

Use top collaborative work management software like Paymo to plan tasks and follow your and your team’s progress as you work on getting each task done.

Prioritize them and start small daily, gradually expanding your goals until every daily task will help you reach your ultimate goal.

Detailed task list in Paymo

Nikki Hamilton advises on automating this entire process of managing tasks:

“If there are tasks that need to be repeated over and over, create templates to take the thinking and emotion out of them. This could be as simple as drafting a checklist to work through each time or using scheduling software to automate the workflows.”

To see how you’re progressing, you’ll want to monitor how you spend your time. Clock in your tasks to see how your efforts add up and whether or not the time was spent according to your priorities. If turning the timer on and off seems too routine, switch to a top time tracking tool like the online timekeeping system for project tracking.

Paymo Track automatically records everything you do on a computer—including idle time—so you can see exactly what your top distractions are and stay away from those apps or websites in the future.

Time tracking works best for freelancers compared to businesses with multiple employees. For example, if you’re managing your team’s working hours, you’ll want employee timesheet software to augment your business.

Time tracking is essential to accurate billing, so many users like online bookkeeping because it’s easy and convenient. Try out the best invoicing software for freelancers in 2022. If you’re unsure how generating invoices works and which invoicing mistakes to avoid, read our complete invoicing guide. Opt for an invoice builder if you need a free and quick invoice generator online with printable templates.

Another helpful feature is the built-in Pomodoro timer for desktop (Mac, Windows, and Linux). Learn more about what is the Pomodoro technique in this article.

Time tracking with Paymo

Identify the causes behind your mistakes to avoid making them again

Humans are, by nature, highly likely to repeat the same mistakes they’ve made before. You’d think that seeing what blunders you’ve faced, learning from them, and never going that way would be easy. Life happens, and we find ourselves in the same positions repeatedly.

We procrastinate, choosing temporarily fun activities over the ones that can help us attain our goals, and we’re too distracted by everything around us.

As mentioned in the previous section, the key to a successful weekly work plan is ensuring you don’t leave time for distractions. You should keep anything unrelated to work for your planned breaks. Bookmark it for later if you come across some tempting news or a viral video.

The worst distractions are not a harmless cat video or your kids asking you a question. The bad news you see on TV or social media will only make you worry and keep your mind elsewhere in the long run.

Mitchell Kelly, Director of Digital Marketing @Pathfinder Alliance, shared his own biggest distractions, which are likely to be the same for many of us:

“A huge challenge for me is procrastination and distraction. They are the biggest enemies of productivity and motivation.

To get on top of them, you need to identify the source of your significant distractions and eliminate them individually.

When you’re working from home, it’s easy to get caught up in the endless parade of notifications and time-draining apps only to find your concentration and productivity melt away. At a minimum, use the Do Not Disturb mode and put your phone in another room so that you won’t have it constantly tempting you.

Also, it should go without saying, but you must keep your office separate from where you usually relax. If you have a separate study room, this is the best option, but if you’re in a small apartment without much space, the next best option would be to set up an area in your living room facing away from the TV.”

Challenge yourself

Why challenge your daily routine if you struggle to stay motivated?

Challenges are what keep us evolving. They help us stay focused on our goals and increase our engagement rates, making us excited to take care of our duties and not just complete them to finish work quickly. We all seem to have different ways of looking at a challenge.

Ben Taylor shared with us how finding a new challenge has been motivating him each day:

“Giving myself new projects has been a strong motivator for me. This is a great opportunity to take stock and think of where to develop new skills, and many companies offer free training materials. I hope to someday emerge from lockdown knowing two new languages – Python (programming) and Spanish!”

For Grant Gurewitz @Think For Yourself, keeping himself busy also works:

“I like to take a page from Japan’s longest-lived people who maintain a healthy body and active mind into their 100s by simply keeping their hands busy. Gardening, washing dishes, folding laundry, cleaning, and cooking are amazing ways to stimulate creative thinking while some are not activities we love. Try doing any of these necessary activities without consuming content like audiobooks, podcasts, or scrolling your phone to give your brain time to wander into some of your best creative thinking in years.”

For Becca Taylor, a Holistic Time Management Coach, simply staying accountable is enough to keep her motivation strong:

“One of my favorite ways to get motivated is to tell someone else what I’m doing and when I’ll finish it, and that lights a fire for me. Accountability is one of my favorite ways to challenge myself, especially when I give a deadline that I know is a bit of a stretch. Another great way is to have a treat or something I want after completing a project. This exercises my self-accountability muscle, and I celebrate that I accomplished a goal at work. Our brains love positive reinforcement.”

Find that one thing to keep you going.

Receiving recognition, changing, advancing professionally, and even earning extra cash. All of these are solid reasons to stick to and keep going. Accomplishing each goal at a time helps you feel like you’re contributing to a more significant cause and not just putting in work for someone else’s sake.

“Look deep inside of you for your ‘why.’ What is that one big reason for what you’re doing? Sometimes, finding a reason for ourselves is hard, so I also make it about others. I support my girl, my family, and even the cat (she counts too)! This makes waking up at 4:30 in the morning easier. It also makes it easier to sit down and complete my actions for the day. You don’t always have the biggest ‘why’ in the world, but making it emotional and attaching it to the ones you love can help you move mountains.”—James Canzanella, Owner @Isolated Marketing Nights.

According to Vroom’s Expectancy Theory, this tip should work for everyone. This theory states that individuals and companies are driven by the positive correlation between their efforts and performance outcomes. Implicitly, rewards will satisfy their needs. So, the mere thought that your need will be met by performing a task is enough to keep you working and staying focused on the end reward.

Prioritize your mental health.

Job burnout might keep you from focusing on your work, performing best, and seeing the results. To steer clear of burnout, you must know when to end your workday.

Take breaks as often as needed [maybe even when you don’t feel like you HAVE to take one, but you’ve already been working for 5 hours straight]. Go for a walk, or take your laptop to your balcony or terrace to take some pressure off your shoulders. Anything to break the routine will do the trick.

Your mental health is at stake here. So, focus on one task at a time and take care of them in order of priority. Try not to accept new work you won’t be able to finish unless you stay to work through the night or on weekends.

“Know when to stop working. Having all you work at home, you tend to work beyond your regular hours and keep working through. I even find myself working on weekends when I usually wouldn’t. This is a surefire way towards burnout, so this must be avoided.

Rather than looking at all obstacles, see the opportunity to test, learn, and recreate your culture’s meaning in the digital world. We understand the importance of mental health, so we’re using a couple of hacks to increase team morale:

• We surprise and delight our employees by delivering a pot plant and OKR poster to their door
• We now hold Team leader one-on-ones weekly [not fortnightly] to make up for the missed informal catch-ups
• We have virtual hangouts for lunch and coffee
• We’ve created a separate WFH-hacks & health zone Slack channel to share ideas, inspiration, and prompts to get up and stretch” – Adam Stewart @HROnboard.

The HROnboard team sends employees plants to brighten their day

Even helping others can keep you motivated when you’re struggling:

“I also try to keep myself motivated by performing random acts of kindness throughout the week. I try to give a little money to causes and people worse off than me. Knowing that my money will help not just myself but others who are struggling motivates me to keep pushing forward and to give everything I can to my work.”—Jay Allen, Publisher @Unseen Japan.

Celebrating every win

Sometimes, nothing else works besides looking at what you can do after reaching a goal or completing a project. Take a vacation after writing your book, launch an app, and write down an article on the success you’ve achieved, or thank everyone who helped you along the way. Studies have shown that simply tracking and writing down our small achievements can boost motivation at work because it reminds us of the rewards we’ll get, providing bursts of energy to keep us hooked on a goal.

Take the time to celebrate success, whether the goal was something you’ve always dreamed of or just a tiny bump you were worried about:

“Celebrating ‘every’ little win keeps me motivated. If a blog gets published, if a tweet does better than average, whatever it is, I’m celebrating it. I realize that as a team of one, there’s a lot that I can (and feel like I should) do. So, I even ‘did’ something with the limited resources I’m now working with, which keeps me motivated each day.

Finding people to celebrate those wins with. At a company mainly comprised of engineers, it’s hard for them to fully understand or appreciate sure wins that many marketers would be super pumped about. Not because they’re not supportive but because they don’t fully understand what it takes to achieve certain things. So, I lean on my community of marketers and friends who can appreciate and fully celebrate those wins with me.”—Hiba Amin, Content Marketing Manager @Soapbox.

Are you feeling swamped with work?

A lack of work motivation becomes a bigger problem when you have loads of tasks. While many of the people I’ve talked to stay motivated because they know they must deliver work on time, others find it challenging to focus on everything in their lives.

In early 2020, the world is going through a bizarre situation: quarantine has put extra pressure on everyone, making people think they should use this time to work more.

So many people are now busier than ever.

The industries professionals primarily influence this are active in, as there’s an increased demand for work in pretty much everything that involves staying visible online:

“I’m finding that I’m busier than ever right now, and I’m feeling overwhelmed now! As a website designer, I’m finding people are trying to get online or improve their online presence more than ever, and prioritization and productivity are critical to getting the job done and maximizing the work I can take on, and consequently, my income throughout this time.”—Nikki Hamilton, Digital Designer @Seedling Digital.

“In my full-time job (online technical training for a major IT company), we’re seeing a HUGE surge in demand as in-person training classes get canceled, and everyone wants to move to online training. While it’s awesome to be considered useful, we’ve all found we need to set boundaries to prevent ourselves from becoming overwhelmed. For example, we’ve had to push back on requests to compress launch dates when we were certain we couldn’t have a given solution ready in the time requested. This aggressive boundary setting is critical for anyone feeling overwhelmed.”—Jay Allen.

Many of us also put too much pressure on ourselves and try to achieve more than we’ve ever thought. Whether that’s because we’re overachievers or trying to compensate for lost clients:

“Since the start of the crisis, I’ve lost all my regular clients, but somehow I’m busier than ever. To stay afloat and distract myself from the crisis, I’ve set myself an almost impossible number of tasks and projects. From cold pitching to publications, I am rewriting my website, training, and tackling my reading list. The problem is my ever-lengthening to-do list is motivating me even less.”—Sally Fox.

Luckily, Sally also shared her go-to strategy to get back her work motivation, something we’re all struggling with:

“Regaining motivation will mean accepting that I can’t plan too far ahead. I’ll need to get realistic about my weekly goals and realize that doing everything on it isn’t a golden ticket back to how things were before.

Then, I must take every day as it comes and not beat myself up if things slip out slightly. Much like how we’re all taking stock and working out what kind of world we want to return to when this is over, I want to do the same for my business. And, as my boss, I don’t want to be an unkind one.”

Working on a side gig or taking on an additional project is commendable. But steer clear from overworking yourself to avoid burnout and its main consequence: losing your work motivation altogether. Here are some tips from Lonna, who is also juggling quite the workload these days:

“Many of my clients are counting on me to help give their marketing plans more fluidity. I’m grateful to be over-capacity, but it also comes with intense feelings of guilt and, if I’m being sincere, some mental paralysis, too.

I feel guilty because my business thrives while others are struggling or shuttering. Then I feel paralyzed (like everyone else I know) by the distractions of daily news cycles, breaking alerts, and worry over the health of my friends and loved ones.

Productivity comes in spurts, and these energy fits are unpredictable at best. So I get as much done as I can in sprints and try not to be too hard on myself for needing extra breaks during my regular work hours.”—Lonna Whiting, Chief of Content @lonna.co