How to motivate yourself to work when lost motivation

[brighterthanthemoon]

How do you motivate yourself to work. I really struggled today and just spent ages staring at the screen.

You don’t enjoy your work? Boring?

I think everyone goes through this (certainly i do). Take a break, have a chat with your colleagues, try again tomorrow. Think about your paycheck. If all else fails start looking for a new job and see if something else motivates you.

Focus on other areas in your life like health, finance, family, friends etc. Put your energy and time where its more unpretentious and for me its definitely not work. Work just earns me money so I just do what I need to do to keep earning it. Dont give it too much of your headspace

Most days I do just found myself staring at the screen today sort of frozen in what am I doing!

Do you WFH? I love my job and I WFH but I struggle with motivation. I'm also a procrastinator.

It depends on your role. I say to myself - okay you've got half an hour (or whatever) to do ten emails then you can make a coffee/eat some choc/go in the garden for 5 mins

Then I set another small bite sized goal. Write this report by 3pm then you can go on TikTok for 15 mins

If I look at it as a long 8 hours I would just piss it away.

I am very fortunate that I am not really checked up on though and am allowed to 'manage' my own time hahaha. If only they knew how crap I am at that

God I sound like a lunatic but this is my internal dialogue daily

@catinboots123 That's so helpful! I am WFH some of the time. Today was one and I was just like..oh another cup of tea will help!

Yes they'll see how productive or not I am but I'm left to manage my own work load and luckily I'm super productive on other days.

Someone on here years ago said about the 10 10 loaf method.

10
10
Loaf

So when you are not motivated at all. You do 10 mins of something that needs to be done, 10 mins of something that should be done, loaf for 10 mins then repeat.

It has certainly got me through some days when I would otherwise have been stuck on the sofa with poor mental health and/or lack of motivation.

@catinboots123 I'll try it thank you. Hope I wake up tomorrow feeling brighter about it all

I think we all have these days, I find it's usually when I'm experiencing a lull where I have no 'urgent urgent' tasks and could actually get some of the To Do list done.

I try to find one of the things on the list that I've been wanting to do but have had to de-prioritise for more high priority activities. Then I put some music on, get a coffee and settle in to my task.

If you're super-productive most of the time, then not on other days, I wouldn't worry too much. Do you get all your tasks done?

I am lurking on the work boards and am
Similar to this. I don't know how to do more. I used to like when I had a job that was dealing with urgent queries. I was good at that.