Seven Best Ways to Stay Motivated at Work

Sudden demotivation is not new to office workers. There are days when you feel like not doing anything, even if you have a load of tasks to be done. While this feeling is normal, you have to push yourself to be productive so that you will be able to continue developing your skills as well as impressing your boss.

Here are seven of the best ways of boosting work motivation even during a long office day:

1.  Do Some Morning Exercise

You might be thinking, “Going to the gym? In the morning? Is that even possible?” If you are not a morning person, you better start now. There is a misconception that exercising in the morning will make you feel tired and drained the whole day; but in fact, it will make you feel the opposite.

Exercising in the morning actually wakes your body and your mind up. It is an effective energy booster as it increases the flow of oxygen and nutrients in your body. Moreover, physical activities help your body produce endorphins, which improve your mood for the day.

So, start your day by pumping up your body so you will feel energized and rejuvenated to do office tasks the whole day!

2.  Make Friends!

While this might sound cliché, surrounding yourself with positive people and creating a light environment will actually make your day at work slightly better.

Instead of talking about work during lunch break, ask your colleagues how their weekend was or what their favorite movie at the moment is. You might even discover that your officemate has the same favorite band as you. This will be a huge breather from all the work you have been doing the whole day.

Of course, you still have to keep a professional relationship with your colleagues but at least you are closer to them than ever and you can look forward to talking about many topics with them during your breaks.

3.  Stay Off Social Media

Unless your work is managing social media sites, try your best to keep yourself from sending memes to your friends or watching the latest episode of your favorite TV series in the office. These WILL make you unproductive.

Instead, give them to yourself as a reward. Finished doing that report for your meeting? Have a 10-minute Twitter break. Survived not checking your social media all day? Reward yourself with a TV series marathon when you get home.

In this way, you will appreciate the little things you didn’t get to enjoy while working in the office the whole day. Because imagine being on Instagram the whole day and getting home, and doing more Instagram swiping. Where is the fun in that?!

4.  Make A Motivational Playlist

There are a lot of people who can focus on their work when they listen to the music they like. The human senses can be very sensitive and hearing music that is pleasing to you will lift your mood up and make you feel inspired.

However, try to limit the songs to those which have normal tempos because music with a fast tempo can distract you from your work. Try listening to study music or instrumental music so you will not have the urge to sing the lyrics to the song.

While it’s important to stay motivated for the whole day, don’t forget to be considerate to your colleagues and wear earphones or keep the volume to a moderate level.

5.  Take A Walk

While staying in your desk the whole day is an ideal practice especially for impressing your employer, it is necessary that you pause for a while and clear your mind. If you don’t take a rest, the pressure and stress might build up and one of these days you will end up completely worn out.

It is not bad to pause, so take a walk for a few minutes, even if it is just around the office so that you can clear your mind, breathe, drink water, and just connect to the real world. After doing this, you will feel like you have just reset a button and are ready to work again.

6.  Clear Your Desk

Believe it or not, having a clean and organized working space makes an office worker more productive. A clear desk will prevent you from getting distracted by the small and unimportant things. Start throwing away those candy wrappers on your desk; wipe off the cookie crumbs on your notebook; neatly put those documents in labeled folders, etc.

Limit the items you place on your desk. Aside from your computer or laptop, only put necessary things like a notebook and a pen, your tumbler or glass of water, and the documents you actually need for the time being. These will keep you from randomly hitting things and getting distracted by all the mess.

7.  Create Labeled Folders

Sometimes your workload becomes so heavy that you find yourself utterly dazed and confused and eventually, completely stop working and start staring into the deep space. Most of the time it’s because you don’t know which task to do first and you easily get pressured by the deadlines.

One trick for this problem is to have different folders with labels. This applies to both printed paper and online documents. You can try using the following words: “Urgent”, “Later”, and “Can Wait”.

In the “Urgent” folder, put all the documents that you have to do as soon as possible so that you know which tasks to prioritize. After clearing the tasks in the urgent folder, you can start with the “Later” folder, which are tasks that have deadlines but do not need to be done right away. The “Can Wait” folder will contain tasks and documents that don’t require immediate action and sometimes, do not have deadlines. You can start doing tasks from this folder when you have more time on your hands.

Every time you clear a folder, it will make you feel accomplished. You will then be motivated to start clearing the tasks in the other folders.

These are just some of the simple ways you can stay motivated at work. Although the ideal ways of staying motivated still vary depending on each person, these are great options whenever you need to keep your motivation up the whole day.