No motivation and work-omg!!

Motivation is rather elusive, isnt it? Some days you feel it, and other days you cant grab a measly corner of it no matter how hard you try. You stare at the computer screen, willing yourself to type, create, develop, and instead you find yourself simply going through the motions, barely caring about the work youre producing. Needless to say, youre totally uninspired and you dont know how to make yourself feel otherwise.

Ive totally been there, too, and Ive felt the frustration that comes from a lack of motivation at work.But Ive also got some good news. There are some key things that contribute to your work being motivating (or not), and once you recognize them, you have the power to redesign your workday in a way that gets you moving.

Here are a few things maybe you can try out

Task Identity

Work is most motivating when its clear what, exactly, youre accomplishing. Think about it: How great does it feel when you know youve gotten a launch off the ground or made great progress on big project? On the other hand, nothing is worse than working all day and thinking What did I even do today?!

If youre feeling like youve been spinning your wheels, try this: At the end of each day or week, make a Got Done list (the opposite of to the to-do list!), where you outline all of the tasks you've completed. For extra motivation, keep it somewhere you can see.

Skill Variety

Feel like youre doing the same old repetitive work, day after day? Its not so stimulating, to say the least. But when youre engaging lots of different skill sets—thats fantastic for your motivation.

Try to structure your days so that youre working on different tasks (and thus, making use of different skills) throughout the day. For example, instead of writing all day on Monday and then building your client presentations on Tuesday, try to do both in smaller three-hour chunks each day. When you stimulate different parts of the brain, your motivation will be recharged.

Feedback

One of the most motivating factors you can have is getting feedback on your work . Not only for the ego boost you get when youve done a good job, but because the right feedback can help you hone your skills even further. It can also help you see the difference that your work is making. On the contrary, if you dont know how youre performing, its easy to lose steam.

If find that youre in a black hole of feedback, ask your boss for regular check in meetings every one or two weeks. Let her know that youd like to use the time to check in on your projects, and that youd love honest feedback on where you could improve.

Autonomy

Finally, this is a big one: having autonomy in your job. Now, this doesnt mean that you always get to do what you want—it just means you get a domain of choice about how youre doing things.

For example, say you need to secure three more clients for the month. Its much more motivating to be able to determine how to do that on your own—perhaps you want to build your online charactor or perhaps you enjoy building relationships offline. Sure, in the corporate world, there are plenty of things that have to be done a certain way—but there are also plenty of places where you can ask your boss for more autonomy.

And that brings me to my final point: Unless you work for yourself. you probably dont have the power to totally rewrite your job description. But what you can do is communicate with your manager. You can identify the skills you want to develop, ask for feedback more often, probe for clarification when tasks are not clearly identified or seem insignificant, or ask to take on different tasks or have more autonomy on a project.

More than likely, youll be able to change something about your workload. And not only will you be more motivated—your boss will be impressed you've taking the innitative.

So whats getting in the way of you being motivated at work? Find out, and then find a solution.