This world is exhausting. For some of us, it’s always felt exhausting. For others, it’s been a steady increase and lately feels all just too much. In any of the paths, there seems to be quite a few people struggling with motivation lately. For me personally,
- There is so much uncertainty. What tragedy will happen next? What layoff will impact people I care about? What work will dry up? And on and on.
- Big responsibilities: two kids in college, considering a move, owning my business… and on and on.
- When I think about things impacting the world, my little bubble seems so trite. Why should I be spending time on this when that is happening.
- I’m tired and disappointed in humanity. As someone that believes in growth, learning and trying to do better once we know… the volume of people that would rather avoid/diminish/even hate… just makes me heartbroken.
I’m sure there are even more but even typing them is sucking the little motivation I have to write this post so I’ll leave it there. You may have similar ones or not but so many of us are experiencing the lack of motivation right now.
So here are some of the things that I do specific to work:
- Give myself permission to not do anything. There are times when I don’t have that luxury but there are times that the blog post can be written on a later day. The perks of writing posts and doing things in general ahead of schedule means you have flexibility on the days when the motivation is gone. I’m writing this post in June and will be writing several more while I am focused (get ahead a bit).
- Find someone to do the work with. I have to create logistics emails for an upcoming conference and I simply do not want to. But if I’m collaborating on them, not only will I focus but they will be better as a result. So I ask if anyone has time to partner with me for an hour.
- Find a quick win. Sometimes I just need the feeling of that checkmark to spur the next thing. If I start with the biggest hardest one, my motivation has no chance of picking up.
- Play the what’s the risk game (keeping asking yourself this if you were to not do the thing you lack motivation for). Sometimes, you learn you don’t need to. Sometimes you remember why and take responsibility, thus find motivation to do it. For example, if I don’t reach out to clients – I won’t have work in the second half of the year. Pretty big deal – I got to those emails!
How do you deal with a lack of motivation?
