“Every week I write three new articles. And every week I have to find motivation to get to work. The worst thing is that this happens to me all the time. This has gotten me to the point where I'm Googling articles on "How to Motivate Yourself" and looking for posts on the topic on Reddit. Of course, all this does not help, but only eats up my time, leaving even less for work. Work that I never started,” writes the author of the note.
As Cooper notes, there are two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. “External comes from factors outside of yourself—for example, when you make your boss feel good about your success, when you get a promotion, or when you meet a deadline. Internal - when you want to do something for yourself. Finished work brings you joy or personal benefit.”
External motivation, Cooper notes, is quite common, but relying only on it may be ineffective - such factors are beyond the employee’s control. “Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, comes from what you can control. This is a natural motivation. It is she who makes us eat when we are hungry, go to bed when we are tired, and so on. To motivate ourselves to get to work, we have to increase our internal motivation.”
However, this, the author notes, is not so easy. “Many people misunderstand what motivation is and therefore fail to increase it. In fact, motivation is an emotion. Lack of motivation is a negative emotion similar to stress. It is often impossible to quickly cope with negative emotions. Some experts say that stress is a cycle that needs to end. Even if we are distracted by something interesting, in the end we will still have to return to the stressful situation and complete the cycle. Lack of motivation may not have a similar cycle, but it is also an emotion, and in the same way it cannot simply be “turned off.”
The approaches Cooper suggests, she says, help you avoid focusing on a lack of motivation. “These methods will help you develop internal motivation and get started easily,” says the girl.
Memories
Memories of positive experiences from the past, Cooper writes, have powerful motivational abilities. As an example, she cites a study conducted at one of the universities.
Three groups took part in the study, each of which was required to play sports. At the same time, in one of the groups, students had to remember something good related to training, the second group worked as usual, and the participants in the third group had to resurrect memories of negative experiences. Students not only from the first, but also from the third group turned out to be more motivated to work.
“You don’t have to remember something good. Any memories of how you performed your work before can increase your motivation. Of course, this assumption is based on just one study, but it doesn't cost you anything to at least try, notes Cooper. - Remember how you completed the task last time: where you were, what you did, and most importantly, how you felt before and after completing the task. Maybe this will get you started."
Where to start if I decide to change my field of activity?
- Take the career guidance test on the “Russia – Land of Opportunities” platform, which will help you understand yourself better and point you in the direction of choosing an industry.
- Browse the career directory to learn about new careers, the skills needed for career development, and the schools that can teach you those skills.
- Read the success stories of the winners of competitions and projects of the “Russia – Land of Opportunities” platform to get inspired and take the first step towards your dream!
Think through every step to make the right choice and not be disappointed in your new profession. Study as much information as possible about the specialty, and best of all, try on a new role to understand how the position suits you.
Get ready to play
“Writer and entrepreneur James Clear played a lot of sports. But when it came to baseball, he often struggled with motivation. During the season he had to play many games, but he was not always in the mood. However, he couldn’t let his team down, so he had to figure out a way to prepare himself for the match every time,” Cooper says.
The clear, the girl continues, has created a “pre-game routine” for himself. Before each match, he did the same things to get into the right frame of mind. He took his glove and bat, ran across the field, did a little stretching, ran across the field again - and performed other actions, in a strict order. Clear himself says that after completing all the procedures, he felt ready to play for the rest of his life.
Now, Cooper writes, Clear plays baseball less often, but he has developed similar exercises for all areas of his activity - for athletics, for writing, and so on. “No matter how motivated he is, he just starts doing the routine, knowing that by the end of the exercise he will be ready to get to work.”
Cooper provides several recommendations for creating such a “pre-game routine”:
- “The actions should be so simple that you cannot get away with it. The clear begins preparing to write texts by pouring himself a glass of water. It's very simple."
- Some kind of physical exercise should be included in the list of actions, even if we are not talking about preparing for sports training. “The fact is that the body languages of a motivated person and an unmotivated person are very different. Physical exercise helps the body “wake up” and get into a working mood.”
- You need to repeat routine actions every time before starting work, even if motivation is already present.
Motivating remote employees
Even if a person is far from you, he should feel involved in your common cause. For freelancers, what is more important is not even material motivation (this is the simplest thing), but a kind word and praise from the boss. It depends on you whether he will become part of the team and be able to work with you for many years. How to motivate a remote employee?
- meet each employee personally, communicate online, arrange video meetings, Skype calls;
- personally give specific tasks and periodically demand reports;
- tell us more about your plans and the future of the online store. Ask the freelancer what he is ready to do;
- invite a remote employee to your office or to your city - preferably at your expense. No phone calls can replace personal acquaintance;
- hold joint events, conferences, trainings, team building.
And, perhaps, the most important thing is to be passionate about your work. Believe in the success of your online store and instill this faith in your employees. Let everything work out!
Rely on your teammates
“If you've ever worked remotely, you know that working remotely can bring both a sense of peace and loneliness. It's wonderful to be part of a team. It brings such strong emotions that your productivity can increase just from the thought of having comrades,” Cooper explains.
The author of the note cites as an example one of the studies on increasing motivation. Participants were divided into two groups and given a puzzle each. The scientists told members of the first group that they would work with teammates, and even introduced them to each other. Members of the second group had to work alone.
Participants in the first group actually also worked alone, but the researchers handed them notes supposedly written by their comrades (in fact, these notes were written by the scientists themselves). Members of this group ultimately showed themselves to be able to work 50% longer on the problem. In addition, they noted that the work was fun and interesting.
Motivation to action
How to find motivation to act? Even the most ambitious among us know that staying motivated is extremely difficult.
In fact, finding motivation and inspiration to take action is one of the challenges we face almost every day. Although no one likes to admit it, we all more or less face this problem.
However, there is a small detail that is critical. This is your ability to cope with a lack of motivation to act.
Interestingly, some of us are better at this than others. They seem to be able to “miraculously” keep their motivation always high. They avoid a significant drop in motivation levels. They rarely find themselves in a crisis of not wanting to do what they should.
What at first glance seems impossible is the result of a system that is relatively simple to implement and at the same time surprisingly effective.
Put something on the line
Loss avoidance is a concept from the field of neuroeconomics. It describes the fact that a person experiences more emotions from a loss than from a gain - even if they are completely equivalent. “If you find $20, you will be happy. However, if you lose $20, you will be much more upset,” Cooper explains.
“The good news is that we can turn this to our advantage. One professor conducted an experiment on his students. He offered the first group of students to solve additional tasks, for each of which they could earn additional points. A student who earned 5 points did not have to take the exam. The second time he changed the problem statement. If the first time the exam was mandatory for everyone who did not earn 5 points, then the second time it was optional to earn 5 points. However, those who did not bother to solve additional problems at all lost the right not to take the final exam.”
“The difference is that we hate losing what we think is ours. In the first class, 43% of students ultimately earned 5 points and received the right not to take the exam. In the second grade, 82% of such students turned out to be,” says Cooper.
The girl recommends trying to put something important on the line. “Promise yourself that you will give up something if you can’t get the job done. You will be surprised how much your intrinsic motivation will increase.”
Employees want to experiment
The second way to activate search engines is to create a “safe zone” that includes play and community support. The game, in turn, not only activates the search system, but also relieves the employee from fear and anxiety.
And it's not just about positive emotions. Experimental safety zones create natural motivations that are more influential than artificially induced ones. They are the ones who unleash creative potential.
Those firms that help employees come up with new approaches receive feedback from society and are more flexible and dynamic.
If change and innovation are presented as an experiment rather than business as usual, then people are less anxious, less afraid to take risks, and less afraid to resist challenges.
As an example of this, workers at an appliance manufacturing plant in Italy learned lean production by playing with Legos rather than with real hotplates.
After this, they conducted an experiment to transform their product line, taking into account new techniques and techniques. After two weeks, the manufacturing team achieved lean production, reducing internal defects by 30% and improving productivity by 25%.
Increase interaction
In many organizations, managers and their subordinates are too busy and therefore rarely see each other. They have almost no opportunity to communicate. To increase the intensity of contacts between the organization's management and staff, you can, for example, draw up a plan for meetings and events so that managers find themselves at the same time and in the same place with their subordinates. Organize work in the office in such a way that managers interact with ordinary employees more often. You can't increase the motivation of someone you rarely see.
have a rest
As I said, constant work can lead to burnout and loss of motivation. It's like with food: you overeat something, and then you feel disgusted with food. When you do a job you love, you don’t think about how much time it takes and you overwhelm yourself with tasks - it’s cool, I like it. But enthusiasm fades over time, especially if you don’t see quick results. He writes letters of disappointment, calls from fatigue from overexertion. And then loss of motivation breaks down the door.
Look at your tasks from a critical point of view - highlight the highest priorities and do them now, and put aside the irrelevant ones. This way you will find some time for yourself and can take a break from the routine.
If you are already facing burnout, the best thing to do is take a break and go on vacation right now. The main thing is not to run away from real problems, but just to reboot a little.
Ask for feedback
This will help you look at your work from a different perspective. Ask for feedback from your manager or members of your team, and you will see what tasks you should focus on and what new goals to set.
Having goals is very important for professional development and job satisfaction. It helps combat boredom and lack of motivation, which inevitably comes after a while.
Take note
