How to Keep Working When You’re Just Not Feeling It

It's difficult to keep yourself motivated. In fact, I frequently compare it to one of Baron Munchausen's exploits: trying to maintain your motivation through a task, a project, or even a career might feel like pulling yourself out of a swamp by your own hair. We appear to have an innate aversion to sustained effort, which no amount of caffeine or motivational posters can overcome.

Motivation is, to some part, a personal thing. What gets you going might not get me going. And some people appear to be more committed to their goals than others. My team and I, however, have identified many tactics that appear to work for most people—whether they're attempting to lose weight, save for retirement, or undertake a long, challenging initiative at work—after 20 years of research on human motivation.

I encourage you to read on if you've ever failed to achieve an attainable goal due to procrastination or a lack of commitment—and who hasn't? These four strategies can assist you in moving forward.

Design Goals, Not Chores

The value of goal setting has been well proven by studies. Salespeople who set targets, for example, close more deals, and people who make daily exercise commitments are more likely to improve their fitness levels, according to studies.

Abstract goals like "doing your best" are rarely as helpful as realistic goals like bringing in 10 new clients per month or exercising 10,000 steps per day. As a general rule, any goals you create for yourself or that you agree to should be specific.

When at all possible, goals should elicit intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation. When an activity is perceived as its own end, it is intrinsically motivated; when it is seen as serving a different, ulterior purpose—earning you a reward or allowing you to escape punishment—it is extrinsically motivated. Intrinsic motivation predicts achievement and success more than extrinsic motivation, according to my research.

Take, for example, New Year's resolutions. We discovered that those who selected plans that were more enjoyable to pursue at the start of the year—for example, enrolling in a yoga class or setting aside phone-free Saturdays—were more likely to keep them in March than those who chose more important but less enjoyable goals. This is despite the fact that New Year's resolutions are notoriously difficult to keep; if they weren't, there would be no need for a resolve!

Of course, if the external motivation is strong enough, we will persevere through even the most difficult jobs. Chemotherapy treatment is an extreme case. Many people stay in their employment for the money, feeling like "wage slaves," in the workplace. However, in such cases, they frequently perform the bare minimum to achieve the aim. Extrinsic motivation is unlikely to help us achieve true excellence.

In an ideal world, we would all seek out employment roles and places that we enjoy, thereby maintaining high levels of engagement. Unfortunately, many people fail to do so. For example, my study reveals that most employees say yes when asked if positive connections with coworkers and managers are important in their current role.

However, they have no recollection of workplace morale being vital to their success in previous jobs, nor do they believe it will be in the future. Simply remembering to think about intrinsic motivation when choosing professions and initiatives can go a long way toward ensuring long-term success.

When it isn't possible—we don't all obtain jobs and tasks we adore—the idea is to concentrate on the aspects of the work that you do enjoy. Consider how completing the assignment could be satisfying—for example, by allowing you to demonstrate your abilities in front of your company's leaders, develop vital internal relationships, or provide value to consumers.

Finally, try to counteract drudgery with activities that you enjoy—for example, listening to music while clearing up your inbox, or undertaking tedious duties with friends, family, or your favorite coworkers.

Find Effective Rewards

Some jobs or even stretches of a career can be quite taxing, thus it might be beneficial to develop external motivators for oneself in the short to medium term, especially if they complement incentives provided by your employer. You could reward yourself with a vacation if you accomplish a project or a gift if you lose weight.

However, be wary of perverse incentives. When you care about the quality of your performance, one mistake is to reward yourself for the number of things performed or for speed. An accountant who rewards herself for completing auditing work fast may be prone to errors, while a salesperson who prioritizes sales over repeat business might expect some dissatisfied clients.

Another common blunder is to select incentives that work against the aim you've achieved. If a dieter's reward for losing weight is pizza and cake, he'll probably reverse some of his efforts and revert to old habits. If you reward yourself for doing well at work one week by allowing yourself to slack off the following, you risk undermining the good impression you've made.

Goal attainment, according to research on what psychologists call balance, sometimes allows people to succumb to temptation, which sets them back.

Furthermore, certain external incentives work better than others. In experiments, researchers have discovered, for example, that most people work harder (invest more effort, time, and money) to qualify for an uncertain reward (such as a 50% chance of receiving either $150 or $50) than they do for a certain reward (a 100% chance of receiving $100), possibly because the former is more challenging and exciting.

Uncertain rewards are more difficult to implement at work, but they are not impossible. You can "gamify" a task by keeping two envelopes at your desk, one of which contains a more valuable gift, and selecting only one at random after the job is completed.

Finally, loss aversion—preferring people for avoiding losses over gaining comparable gains—can be exploited to create a powerful external motivator. In a 2016 study, University of Pennsylvania investigators encouraged participants to walk 7,000 steps every day for six months. Some people were given $1.40 for each day they met their target, while others were penalized $1.40 if they didn't.

The second group achieved their daily goal 50% more frequently. StickK.com, for example, allows users to set a goal, such as "I want to quit smoking," and then commit to a loss if they don't achieve it: they must, for example, contribute money to an organization or political party that they dislike.

Sustain Progress

When people work toward a goal, they usually experience a surge of motivation at the beginning and then a slump in the middle, where they are most likely to stall. Observant Jews were more likely to light a menorah on the first and last nights of Hanukkah than on the other six nights, according to one survey, despite the religious custom of lighting candles for eight days. In another study, participants who were tasked with cutting paper shapes cut more corners in the middle of the project than they did on the initial and end shapes.

Fortunately, research has shown a number of strategies for combating this habit. The first is what I call "short middles." There's less time to succumb to that irritating lull if you divide your goal down into smaller subgoals—say, weekly sales targets instead of quarterly sales targets.

A second method is to alter the way you think about your accomplishments. When we've made progress, the objective appears to be within reach, and we tend to put in more effort.

Customers in loyalty programs, for example, tend to spend more as they get closer to receiving a reward. You can take advantage of this tendency by thinking of your starting point as being further in the past; perhaps the project began when it was originally proposed, not when you first took action.

Another mental trick is to concentrate on what you've already accomplished up to the halfway point of a task before shifting your emphasis to what's left to complete. This alteration in perspective, according to my research, can boost motivation. In a frequent-buyer program, for example, emphasizing completed steps (“you've completed two of ten purchases”) raised initial sales, whereas stressing missing stages (“you are two purchases away from a free reward”) increased consumption as buyers approached the target.

This strategy can be used for both rote activities (such as sending out 40 thank-you notes) and more qualitative objectives (becoming an expert pianist). The individual who is sending the notes can stay motivated by counting down how many she has sent until she reaches 20, at which point she should tally down how many she still has to complete.

Similarly, a beginner pianist should concentrate on all of the scales and techniques she has learned in her early stages of development before moving on to the remaining technical hurdles (arpeggios, trills, and tremolos, for example).

Harness the Influence of Others

Human beings are sociable animals. We're always looking around to see what others are up to, and their activities have an impact on our own. Even sitting next to a high-performing coworker can help you work more efficiently. However, when it comes to motivation, the situation is more complicated.

When we see a colleague breeze through a work that frustrates us, we either become encouraged and want to emulate that behavior, or we lose motivation because we assume we can delegate the task to our colleague. This isn't completely irrational: humans have flourished as a species by specializing and capitalizing on their comparative advantages.

The problem is that we can't always delegate, especially at work. However, we can still take use of social influence. One rule is to never passively observe ambitious, efficient, and successful coworkers; the risk of demotivation is too great. Instead, ask these friends what they're aiming to achieve with their hard work and why they think it's a good idea.

People are more likely to buy a product if a buddy recommends it, but not if they simply learn that the friend bought it, according to my research. Listening to what your role models have to say about their ambitions can help you get more motivated and set higher goals for yourself.

Giving advice rather than receiving it may be an even more efficient strategy to overcome motivational weaknesses, as it builds confidence and so encourages action. In a recent study, I discovered that people who were having trouble achieving a goal like getting a job believed they needed professional advice to succeed.

They were actually better off sharing their knowledge with other job seekers because they were able to lay out realistic strategies that they could follow themselves, which has been demonstrated to enhance motivation and achievement.

Finally, know that the people who will best motivate you to complete specific duties are not necessarily those who will do the tasks well. Instead, they're intimate friends and family, as well as mentors, who share a big-picture aim with you. Thinking about those people and our desire to succeed on their behalf might give the intense intrinsic motivation we require to achieve our objectives.

A lady may find dullness at work enjoyable if she believes she is setting a good example for her daughter; a man may find it easier to keep to his fitness program if it makes him feel more lively around his friends.

CONCLUSION

In those instances, it can be beneficial to use internal and extrinsic motivators, properly arrange rewards, shift our emphasis back or forward depending on how near we are to the finish line, and use social influence. Self-motivation is one of the most difficult qualities to master, yet it is essential for success.

Flow is defined in positive psychology as a mental state in which someone is fully involved in a task, with energized focus and enjoyment. Unfortunately, in ordinary life, that feeling might be brief or elusive. We often feel like Baron Munchausen in the marsh, unable to make progress toward our objectives. In those instances, it can be beneficial to use internal and extrinsic motivators, properly arrange rewards, shift our emphasis back or forward depending on how near we are to the finish line, and use social influence. Self-motivation is one of the most difficult qualities to master, yet it is essential for success.