What is motivation at work? What simple tips can you put in place to stay motivated at work? Is the impact on your long-term projects that important? What can you do to regain motivation?

Whether you’re working in a company or on your own, motivation is one of the essential qualities (if not the most important one) needed to bring your projects to fruition.

You know the most important key to success? Perseverance!

The least we can say is that, without motivation, you’ll never be persistent! It may seem simple, but the consequences are… devastating!

Why motivate yourself to work?

The answer to this question may seem perfectly logical: you have to be motivated to work in order to… work well!

Okay, we won’t get far that way!

Let’s turn the question on its head…

What are the consequences of a lack of motivation at work?

That’s where it gets a lot more interesting…

Remember, at the beginning of this article I explained that motivation is one of the essential qualities for perseverance. As it happens, perseverance is (in my opinion) the most important key to success when it comes to bringing projects to fruition.

By “projects”, I mean all kinds of projects, whether you work in a company, have set up your own business or are in the process of setting up a personal project that could be compared to a so-called “professional” project.

A brief personal aside: when I started Full of Happiness, I never thought of it as anything other than a professional project. Even though at the time I wasn’t making any money from it.

Only the person who defines and executes the project can decide how important it is. It’s by acting seriously and intelligently on a project you’re passionate about that you’ll succeed in bringing it to fruition. Don’t listen to what other people think about your project – they don’t have the same vision as you!

Motivation is a major success factor for projects you consider important. It guarantees perseverance and consistency over time.

By the way, remember I spoke to you recently about the importance of motivation?

But motivation is vague… Even more so when it comes to work, and therefore to the performance of certain tasks… which are as boring as can be!

Do you know what psychological levers we’re going to act on to guarantee your motivation even for the most boring tasks?

I’ll tell you right now…

THE LEVERS OF MOTIVATION IN THE WORKPLACE
Don’t forget: I use the term “company”, but it doesn’t just apply to projects as an employee. Think of yourself as an entrepreneur. Whether you’re an employee or not, and whether your project is personal or professional. All that matters is the degree of importance you attach to your project. The rest is irrelevant.

In any case, motivation is a key factor in the success of your business.

The keys to ensuring your motivation when you’re working are set out to activate 3 very specific psychological levers. They will enable us to exploit several characteristics of motivation at work.

Once these levers are activated, they will multiply your motivation.

Let’s take a closer look at the following three levers:

The psychology of success, using the rules for breaking down a project.
Daily habits and automatisms
The small element that triggers a series of actions.
Here are the keys to motivation at work…

1ST KEY: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GOALS
Most people who carry out a project make this mistake: they constantly focus on the goal to be achieved. Many personal development websites talk about visualizing goals, affirmative repetition and so on. These are all good tips, but they should not be used any old how.

Want to know why? I’ll tell you…

When you carry out a project, you define three types of objectives:

Short-term objectives: I set these objectives for a period of 1 to 2 weeks. Some are boring but essential, others moderately motivating and others highly motivating. In terms of motivation, there’s a bit of everything here.

Medium-term objectives: I define these objectives over a period of 1 to 3 months. They represent the milestones on the road to the long-term goal. These objectives are motivating because they represent important steps and intermediate objectives to be reached if your project is to succeed.

Long-term objectives: I define these objectives for a period of 1 to 5 years. They represent a vision. They’re the reasons why you get up every morning.

If your project is correctly defined, you should have identified and scheduled objectives that respect these criteria.

When you’re working, carry out your task without ever questioning your medium-term objective. If the short-term objective is not motivating, focus on the medium-term objective. Direct all your thoughts towards this goal. When you become demotivated (which is natural), ask yourself: “Why am I doing this? The answer will always be: your medium-term objective.

Why not motivate yourself by thinking about your long-term objective? I was sure you were going to ask me that.

The long-term objective is a vision, it’s what makes you tick. The major disadvantage of this type of objective is that it’s very frightening. Often, when you think about your long-term objective while you’re unmotivated, you focus on the mountain of things to do instead of on your current goal. You quickly become discouraged and disorientated.

If you’re feeling demotivated, focus on your medium-term objective. On the accessible and not too distant reason that perfectly justifies you doing the activity for which you’re feeling less motivated.

2ND KEY: THE 3 DAILY HABITS OF WORK MOTIVATION
I’d now like to talk about daily habits. More than habits, I’m going to ask you to set up 3 daily rituals to stay motivated at work.

What’s the most irritating and demotivating factor at work? Interruptions.

Now that’s really unbearable!

Whether it’s your phone, Facebook, an e-mail, a question from one of your colleagues, etc., it’s always hard to get back to work afterwards.

It takes about 10 minutes to get back to work when you’ve been disturbed…

Just 10 minutes!

If you’re disturbed 10 times during the day (which is very realistic), you lose 1 hour and 40 minutes!

Here are 3 simple rituals you can put in place to multiply your productivity and increase your motivation tenfold:

Work in 50-minute blocks: it’s impossible to concentrate on one task for hours on end. The ideal is to work in 50-minute blocks and then take a 10-minute break at the end of each block. If you prefer, you can also apply the Pomodoro technique.

Eradicate all forms of interruptions: when you’re in a block of work, limit anything likely to emit notifications: Facebook, your e-mail client, your phone (switch to silent mode!). If you can, put a “do not disturb” sign on your office door and unplug your landline phone. If you follow these instructions for 4 blocks of 50 minutes a day, you’ll get more work done than you ever have before, and your motivation will be at an all-time high.

Plan a catch-all hour: of course, you’re going to receive phone calls, e-mails, notifications of all kinds and so on. And, of course, you have to deal with them! Plan 1 hour a day to deal with all these “unforeseen events” at once.
Implement these 3 new habits. If you stick to them long enough, you’ll be able to measure their benefits for yourself.

3RD KEY: THE JUMP-START TO STAY MOTIVATED ALL DAY LONG
This last key is highly effective if you follow the first 2.

Implement what I call the jump start!

The first activity of the day you perform will be the one on which you’re most efficient. You’re fresh, your brain is uncluttered, you’re wide awake and your mind is sharp.

It’s the time of day when you’re most motivated!

Your new rule of life:

The first activity you perform will be the one that is most important to your medium-term goal.

What do most people do when they arrive at work in the morning?

They check their e-mails…

From there, you can lose hours of your time. Your mail client is open, notifications are constantly coming in, you’re interrupted, you’re not working efficiently and… your work motivation suffers!

This rule also applies to people who don’t work on a computer, of course, but they have the advantage of being a little less solicited. I think the computer is the worst enemy of motivation at work.

So remember, when you arrive at work in the morning, start with the activity you feel is most important.

The rest can wait!

That’s how I do it, and that’s how I’ve multiplied my motivation and production capacity compared to when I started my project.

Give it a try, you’ll see!

It’s up to you!