Self-motivation is the main engine of our daily exploits. It helps us to study, play sports, eat right, look for a better job, and build a career… This is the engine without which our dreams and projects will never come true. Is it possible to develop motivation? These are 17 ways to boost your motivation and mental power.
Motivation is what pushes you to achieve personal and professional goals and at the same time gives you a sense of satisfaction with your results and improves your quality of life. It’s no secret that motivated employees are more organized, they have more time management skills and self-reflection.
The latter is not accidental: the best motivation is indeed internal, not external. The association with management as something directive – instructions from above – is gradually losing relevance, especially in companies with a progressive and open corporate culture. However, there is no better driver for the result for a professional than self-motivation.
It arises naturally among employees who feel their involvement in the business and influence its results, on the one hand, and who are passionate about their field of activity, on the other. And if the first factor can still be influenced by the corporate environment or the leader and mentor, then the second is entirely the responsibility of the employee himself.
Hence the conclusion: do what drives you, be able to respond to business challenges and bring results, feel your contribution – and the growth of self-motivation will not take long.
It is especially important to maintain it in oneself in creative professions, such as marketing, for example, where professionals are often prone to burnout. In order not to run into it, you need to be able to optimize routine tasks and understand what greater goal you are leading your business to with your work, as well as understand how the tasks you solve affect your own professional and personal growth.
The last factor should not be underestimated: the opportunity to add a strong case to your experience and grow above yourself is something that incredibly motivates professionals. And at the same time, it is worthwhile to adequately assess your workload so that after a month, quarter, or year you do not face almost physical exhaustion.
Competent self-regulation, self-reflection, a tangible impact on the result, and large-scale cases – this is what will allow you to maintain internal motivation yourself. And already with it comes creativity, the ability to think beyond the tasks set and find new solutions, which is extremely important both in marketing and in open corporate structures.
Also read : 5 Careers for creative mind
If you decide to work on self-motivation, it is important to consider the following principles:
Complexity
When developing self-motivation, do not use only one method. There is no one hundred percent solution here: for the best result, you can use several techniques that complement and reinforce each other.
Individuality
What works for your colleague may not work for you. Choose what suits you.
For example, productive time. “Everyone has their own time of maximum activity, someone cannot wake up until 12, but from 18 to 21 is his time for creativity, work and creativity,” And for some, the best decisions come at 7 in the morning. Analyze when you are most productive during the day and plan your most meaningful tasks at that time. During periods when you have low activity, schedule technical or less significant tasks.
There are several directions in the methods of self-motivation: someone is better inspired by social methods related to communication. And for some, connecting others is excessive stress. Someone disciplined takes small steps, and someone is too bored – and he breaks down after three days. Analyze your preferences and features to focus on “your” techniques.
Condition assessment
If your resources are depleted—you don’t get enough sleep, you don’t eat well, you aren’t healthy—self-motivation techniques won’t work.
⚠ No whip will lift an exhausted horse.
Trying to squeeze more out of the body than it can give is a direct path to burnout and disease. When planning your tasks, do not fill life by 200% – leave time for rest and restoration of resources.
Experiments
Some people are lucky – and they find their own way of self-motivation, which works for many years. But for most people, a constant change of techniques is necessary. Experiment, try, evaluate the effectiveness and share really working techniques with your friends.
Self-motivation techniques
Self-motivation techniques can be conditionally divided into groups: emotional, disciplinary, logical and social.
○ Emotional – Methods that give rise to emotions that make our work bright, rich, help to cope with emotional barriers in work.
Record small wins.
Fix everything that you get, praise yourself, “collect” your achievements and victories. This allows you to get out of the feeling “I can’t do anything, I’m spinning like a squirrel in a wheel, but the result is zero.” A few days of self-observation – and you will see that your efforts are not in vain and there really are results.
You can keep a diary of victories. You can sum up the day after work or before going to bed with the obligatory highlighting of at least three achievements.
Use an artificial deadline.
This is one of the most popular self-motivation techniques. People have noticed that before the end of the task deadline, they manage to get 10 times more done than in a normal time. Therefore, you can set a deadline a few days before the end of the project or break the task into small steps, each with its own deadline.
“The technique is quite effective, but to abuse it means to constantly drive yourself into a situation of artificial stress.” If you do this regularly, you can get a nervous breakdown, fatigue and lack of strength to continue the project. This technique does not work in the long run.”
Come up with your own rewards.
It’s also a popular technique that many come naturally to rewarding themselves for achieving results. It can be a cup of coffee, or a walk, or a ten-minute break for an activity that you really enjoy.
Before starting work, imagine how you will pamper yourself at the end of it, what you will do, how you will feel. These views will help you get started.
Get inspired.
Have you ever encountered the fact that after meeting an interesting person, an article or a video, you seem to grow wings, you want to immediately start working in this direction? Each area has its own stars, charismatic leaders, looking at whom you feel inspired. Who can serve as such a leader for you? Where can you talk to him or hear/see his performance?
Unfortunately, the peculiarity of this technique is that without additional steps (for example, such as prescribing one’s own vision, goals, steps, etc.), inspiration quickly disappears: its effect does not last very long.
Avoid high value.
Excessive motivation slows down work. In psychology, there is such a thing as “optimal motivation”. Too simple tasks are boring, and too difficult ones are scary to approach: the price of a mistake is too high. And, as a result, the work is postponed for a long time, or excessive excitement negatively affects the result.
If the task is too important, consider several scenarios for the development of events to reduce the significance of the error.
○ Disciplinary ways to develop self-motivation – what allows you to organize space and develop the right habits. Often these are techniques that actively involve willpower.
Walk in small steps.
Too big and complex tasks scare us, they are like a mountain that cannot be moved. The best way to work with voluminous tasks is to break them down into small subtasks. The finer the crush, the easier it is to approach. A small task is easy to handle: it brings a quick victory.
For such small tasks, there are good control tools. For example, the Pomodoro technique is the maximum inclusion in work, but for 15-20 minutes. Under this technique, there are several applications for smartphones.
Represent the beginning of a task.
The first step is usually the hardest and often the step out of your comfort zone. Imagine in advance, on the way to work, how you will do it: for example, spend the first half hour on the most difficult task and only then reward yourself with coffee and communication with colleagues.
Plan the day before.
Planning your day is another great way to set yourself up for the task: set small periods of work & include obligatory rest time in the plan.
Kill choice.
This is a great workspace technique that works both in focusing on a meaningful task (it is in front of your eyes, all the necessary equipment for work is already ready and configured), and in reducing attention to distractions (removing social networks on the far screen of your smartphone, insert restriction on reading news, etc.).
“Organize the space in the office, on a PC and phone, so that the necessary tasks are at hand and easily accessible, and such distracting moments as food, social networks and movies require additional efforts to get to them.”
Focus
Work with one task in one working period – multitasking makes you nervous, pushes back the result and lengthens the time for each task.
Use standard planning methods: day, week, month & year.
This is another standard method of getting things in order and setting priorities. If the tasks are clearly structured and broken down into steps to work with, they require less emotional effort.
○ Intelligent techniques – they allow you to conduct a deep analysis of your tasks, connect them not only with the situation here and now, but also with more distant global goals. Evaluate how current tasks affect your career prospects, personal development, and relationship development.
Analyze: what, why, how, why, what.
Spend some time by yourself to sort things out, especially if you feel like you’re tangled up in a tangle of work. Analyze and answer your questions: what do I need to do? Why do I need results for these tasks? What can I achieve by solving them in a longer perspective – in a month, a year, several years? How can I make them?
Why can’t I move forward, what obstacles can I face? How exactly will I solve the problem, what specific steps and when will I take?
Structuring your tasks, linking them to higher goals, allows you to form a more stable self-motivation, and not just rely on techniques that give an instant effect.
○ Social techniques work by engaging other people. The maximum effect will be achieved if you manage to connect with people whose opinion is really important to you and whose good attitude you really value.
Find a partner.
This is a person with whom you could solve a significant task for yourself. People in a team at work do more than they do individually.
If you decide to achieve personal results, then you will support your partner when his interest in the project falls. “And you yourself will receive encouragement at the very moment when your hands give up.”
Start the competition.
We have loved “fun starts” since childhood. Competition in the conditions of friendly support is no longer hard work, but entertainment, excitement and a brighter feeling of victory. You can make a bet between participants or “fans”. Often competitions are organized by the employer to turn routine work into an activity filled with emotions.
State plans publicly.
Today, the easiest way to do this is through social networks. Well, or just tell your friends and colleagues about your plans. In this case, it will be more difficult for you not to fulfill them. Not wanting to be embarrassed by giving up will be an additional incentive to work on the task.
Find a mentor.
Find someone you respect and whose opinion you value. It will help you look at your tasks from a new angle, and in addition, it will also be inconvenient for you to not keep your promises.
Look for examples.
Your friends, colleagues, relatives, acquaintances achieve their goals and implement interesting projects. Feel free to ask what motivated them, what helped them cope with difficulties and collect a personal library of self-motivation techniques.
There are many ways to self-motivate. Learn them & experiment with them to choose your own techniques that will allow you not only to solve current problems, but also to achieve really significant goals.
Also read : How to look for a job after a conflicted dismissal?