Why is motivation important in the workplace?
Starting hard or boring work is tough—and that's completely normal.
Being well organised (Part 3) and doing what you can to eliminate distractions (Part 4) and procrastination doesn't simply result in focused work. If we can't stay motivated then we often procrastinate and spend less time on the really important work that we should be doing.
Why do we procrastinate?
Our brains are always looking to get a quick hit of dopamine. So when we get to difficult and/or boring work we often procrastinate and find easier, faster sources of dopamine.
Behind this there is a simple evolutionary explanation: The 200000-year-old human brain has spent the majority of its existence evolving to help the hunter-gatherer thrive. In other words, our brains are mostly designed to help us thrive in the resource-poor wilderness, not in the incredibly resource-rich modern civilisation.
Let's say you have a choice between these two options:
- focusing on a big assignment (the long term valuable option)
- checking email (the lazy option)
Option 1 requires more mental effort, which is why option 2 often wins. For the quickest hit of dopamine the brain often wants to work on the option which will be completed faster (in most cases it is the lazy option). It's completely normal to gravitate toward easier tasks like checking emails or organizing your desk—they give quick wins and feel productive in the moment.
This is why it is typically so much more difficult to make progress towards long-term goals compared to short-term easy goals.
In practice, willpower alone rarely cuts it — our environment is very good at pulling our attention elsewhere. Likewise, we cannot expect to only have to do things we enjoy and find intensely motivating by themselves.
7 ways to increase motivation for your work and avoid procrastination
Here are some robust strategies to stay motivated on whatever it is we want or need to, even if it's boring.
1. Cheat yourself out of needing motivation (using habits)
Behaviours are one-off actions that require motivation, the ability to do them, and a prompt. If you can learn to build your own habits you can make these behaviours more automatic and consistent. In other words, habits can do some of the hard work for you and reduce the need for as much motivation. What if you had the goal of writing more? You could just try to remember to write and wait around for the days when you are motivated enough to do it or better yet, build a habit like writing 1 blog post every single day.
So the obvious question is how do you build new, good habits? If you want to dive deeper into habit-building, Atomic Habits by James Clear has a solid framework. The key concept is to make the behaviours that you're trying to turn into habits Obvious, Attractive, Easy and Satisfying.
Here's what it might look like for you to create a successful habit to focus more every day.
- Obvious: After finishing my morning coffee (a habit stacking technique)
- Attractive: Want to check social media/email? Only let yourself check it afterwards (temptation bundling)
- Easy: Focus on something important for just 5 minutes
- Satisfying: Tick it off your to-do list and smile
2. Make big tasks seem easier
Have a huge project you'd like or need to do, but it just keeps getting moved back to another day?
You can make it much easier to get started on, right now, by breaking down big tasks into at least a few small sub-tasks (sub-tasks that will take around 20–30 mins are ideal, e.g. break down 'presentation' -> 'first slide'). This great little hack can provide quick hits of dopamine when working on a long-winded project, to make it an attractive alternative to high-dopamine work activities like checking email. It can really help to get over that initial hurdle and start gaining some momentum.
3. Reimagine work as a challenge
Often tasks that may be repetitive, boring (the opposite to above) can be reimagined into a challenge as a very effective way to get into a deep state of focus. If you're creative you can create an infinite number of intrinsically motivating challenges anywhere you look. Trying to get through a bunch of boring emails? Why not challenge yourself to do 1 email per minute?
Here's another idea that works for some people when stuck on a boring topic. Or try finding one genuinely interesting angle within the boring topic—even a small one can help.
4. Reward yourself
Work can be intensely rewarding in the long term, so we just need to work some magic to carry over that motivation to the short term too. In essence, we want to reward ourselves more when we're doing the things we want (in this case, focusing on work). This can be as simple as tracking your progress towards your work goals or the tasks you're working on, whether that's with a to-do list or another tool.
Even if the work you need to do isn't very rewarding, you can always periodically celebrate all the small wins in other ways — a healthy snack, a walk, coffee with a friend. Even more subtle things like a simple smile can be incredibly powerful and beneficial. Smiles release feel-good chemicals, they're infectious to others and best of all they're free! Even faking a smile can trick your brain into making you happier.
While you're at it, surround yourself with positivity. Make your desk a place where you are happy to be. Decorate it with photos of your favourite people and places. Treat yourself with a few flowers or a little pot plant or a succulent. The scientific beauty of flowers has a profound positive effect and looking at anything we love boosts our happy chemicals. Researchers have found that happiness increases dopamine activity and also activity in certain regions in the brain which handle decision-making, learning and processing.
5. Be nice to yourself
Your self-talk could be hurting you. Harsh self-talk like 'just do it' rarely helps. It can actually make tasks feel more daunting than they are.
Seth Godin suggests rephrasing your self-talk, with the addition of the word 'merely' in front of 'do it'. 'Simply' also works well. This seemingly minor distinction upholds your self-respect for what you're doing and implies that it just won't be as difficult as you anticipated.
Having strong self-talk like this and a strong mindset sets you up to be more motivated regardless of how difficult something is.
6. Take frequent breaks
Not just a mini-reward for doing work, breaks also offer a chance to split up the day so you can de-stress a little and give your mind some time to recover so you can keep your motivation high. Studies have shown that breaks reduce stress, keep up performance through the day and maintain long term vigour and energy levels.
Breaks work best when they're genuinely restful—not just switching from work screens to social media screens. It's a good idea to get off screens for this time. Our favourite suggestions are: having a glass of water, reading a book, having a stretch or going for a short walk.
7. Supplements to increase motivation
When all else fails and you need an easy pick-me-up, you may rely on coffee. But that's not the only thing you can do.
Matcha tea is known for being one of the best sources of caffeine for focus, given the other beneficial nutrients it has in it. Specific parts of your diet, such as your omega 3 consumption, are important for maintaining dopamine production in the brain so you feel sufficiently motivated. Recently Nootropics such as Alpha-GPC have been gaining popularity as a way to boost focus, however studies suggest that they only provide marginal improvements to focus and for some Nootropics we do not have much data on potential side effects.
Pick whichever strategy feels most doable right now. One is plenty—the rest can wait.
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