Chapter 14

How to stay Motivated

Just look around you, it’s a beautiful world out there. Life is wonderful provided you have the time and can afford to sit back and enjoy the simple pleasures of life. This is a feeling that hits us every now and then. And then when we realize that we have to be confined within the floor walls of our office, doing some work that has no scope for imagination, we end up depressed.

Every job loses its charm after some time if nothing out of the way is done to make the job interesting. To make things worse, there are too many distractions around us. We end up thinking that this is not the job that I wanted to be doing. And when we realize that we will be doing this same job probably till the end of our lives, we will want to scream.

It is a human tendency to get bored with something after some time. When we get a new job, ten for the first couple of weeks we are like the peasant boy who walked into a new palace. Every thing is new and interesting and our interest is completely captured. We try to learn things as quickly as possible and are eager to impress and prove to the world that we are perfect for the job. But after a few months we get used to everything and slowly everything begins to lose the charm. We get bored and start looking for greener pastures.

It is at this stage that procrastination starts raising its villainous head. If the tasks that we are doing are repetitive ad monotonous, the picture becomes bleaker. Along with this, if the requires that we remain on toes all day long, then the future is sealed. It is in such situations that we need to keep ourselves motivated.

Speaking from the Organizational Behavior point of view let us take a look at what motivation is all about. The human brain as I mentioned earlier is a virtual store house of energy. There is nothing that we cannot do once we put our mind to it. Yeah, sure, all that has been proved time and again. But along with it comes a string attached. The same brain is easily distracted.

In fact our imagination is probably the one thing that can travel faster than light. And so it is no easy task to keep the brain occupied in the same task for an extended period of time. If the job is monotonous the task becomes more difficult and if the job is demanding and involves a lot of pressure to keep time then you are done for.

Motivation can be thought of as the process of channeling the surplus energy of the brain towards a definite goal or purpose.

So how long can the human mind focus on the same thing. Studies have shown that the maximum attention span of an average human being is just 45 minutes. 45 minutes? So much for those meetings and discussions that lasted for three or four hours! No wonder nothing much comes out of such meetings. In all likelihood most of the audience conked out after the first 45 minutes and after that focused their attention on staying awake.

If you have a good boss or superior, then the task of keeping you motivated rests with them. But even then you have the responsibility to keep yours self motivated, and believe me, self motivation is the best motivation because it comes from within.

So here are a few tips on how to ward boredom away and keep you motivated.

12 Tips to stay motivated and keep procrastination away

1. Never keep doing the same task for two long

2. Try to take breaks every half an hour. Get up and walk or do some stretching exercises

3. Try to alternate between two boring tasks. This will reduce the boredom in both tasks by 50%

4. If you have someone else with you who is doing the same job, try exchanging jobs with the person

5. Talk about your job to a sympathetic listener who can give you encouragement

6. Reward yourself once you have done a job well

7. If you have an uninteresting job left to do, write it down and pin it somewhere in your work station so that you can see it and get constantly reminded about it till you do it.

8. Try to make your work environment more attractive by pinning up some motivating words or some pleasant wall posters, preferably something that can make you smile. Those ‘Dennis the Menace’ posters are really wonderful for this.

9. If you are allowed to, try playing some soft music while you work.

10. Write down a list of not-so-interesting tasks that you have done and pin it up. It just tells you that if you have done it before, then you can surely do it again.

11. If possible keep a small potted plant near your work station; watching it grow is a wonderful source of inspiration. But take care to look after it properly. If you are going to watch it wilt and die, then it is going to have the opposite effect.

12. Take time to relax, just sit back and close your eyes and hum a favorite tune for a minute or two. But do not fall asleep!

Most of the points mentioned above are self explanatory but I would like to elaborate on one point that is rewarding your self.

This is one tactic that I have found to work wonders with me. If you have finished doing a job, you have every right and reason to reward your self. All the more if the task was a boring one or one that involved a deadline.

The reward does not have to be any thing great. It can be something like treating yourself to a good dinner in a favorite restaurant or it could be a simple chocolate bar if you have a sweet tooth.

But most of you weight watchers, it would be best if you could buy yourself something material that does not just go down your throat. If it is something that can be displayed in your work station, then it’s all the better.

Many such cute (but practically useless) baubles are available in most gift shops.

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