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A Few Motivation Hacks We All Need10 Jul 2018

Regardless of whether you love your job or if you just have to be doing it, there are days when you simply can't get into it, aren't there? When the window view or your phone attract a lot more attention than the work. Try the following tricks and see if they make a difference.

Sit up straight

It's been shown, that changing posture, and your physiology along with it, alters your mental state. So if you're feeling unmotivated, try moving a bit around the office, take a brisk walk and sit upright in your chair.

Ditch the perfectionism

It may feel great to get everything absolutely right. But the truth is, obsessing about details and being 100% spot on every time only wastes time and makes every task seem larger and more complex than it really is. Try completing your tasks, instead of making a work of art out of them.

Postpone - some things are actually better left for tomorrow

If there is something that's causing you a lot of unease or that you just don't know how to solve, leave it for when you've got more energy or willpower. Perhaps for first thing the next day? It's not always worth it to force a solution just for the sake of getting things done right away.

Eat the frog

Now, while the above point makes sense in many cases, don't be fooled into re-scheduling that pesky task for tomorrow, and then for tomorrow again. At that point you're just procrastinating. Once you've left a hard thing to be done later - do it as the first and most important thing of the new day. Once done, your day should be all downhill from there! Getting a hard job done first thing can also be a very good motivator in and of itself.

Divide and conquer

Another approach to the tasks you're dreading is to divide them into bits. Name all the particular steps that need taking to complete the whole thing. Then, imagining some kind of progress will be possible, and instead of building this job up in you mind as something looming over you, you may see it as a set of small, doable tasks.

Set the mood

Keep a work playlist that contains only the music that you're fine to listen to at work. Nothing too engaging, but nothing putting you to sleep either. Middle-ground kind of music; if you're working with words a lot, try to keep in vocals-free.
Doing this will help your mind to recognize work time and may help to put you into an appropriate state of mind. We've all learned this much from Pavlov's dogs.

Don't bother remembering things

Get something to do the remembering for you - use an online application, like Kanban Tool, that keeps tabs on what needs doing, when and how. There are things more worthy of using your memory for, than work schedules. By putting your work on a Kanban board, you'll not only free up some of your memory, you will also remove a lot of the chaos associated with managing planned and suddenly arriving tasks. Try it!