Motivation SOS

Oliver Burkeman tells us how to find an emergency flash of inspiration if we find ourselves hitting a slump at work

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Motivation SOS

The idea

Even if you love your job, there are times when the day-to-day is hard work.

Most tasks feel like wading through molasses and your efforts to โ€˜psych yourself upโ€™ just make things worse. The answer is to stop trying to get motivated, and find ways to act without motivation. Soon, youโ€™ll see the truth in the adage โ€˜motivation follows actionโ€™. Wait for the right mindset and youโ€™ll wait forever; act and the mindset will come.

How to make it happen

Let yourself feel unmotivated

โ€˜Feel your negative feelings without telling yourself a long story about them,โ€™ says Buddhist teacher, Susan Piver. Most of our suffering does not come from our emotions โ€“ but from fighting them. Instead of telling yourself you ought to be brimming with โ€˜get up and goโ€™, focus on the physical sensations of being bored, frustrated or even angry โ€“ and your suffering should relent.

Change your surroundings

If in doubt, go for a walk. Our environment influences our thoughts in countless ways, and we are not even aware of the shift most of the time. Itโ€™s widely known that even five minutes in a park can improve mental health, but even a walk to the office kitchen might help; any movement will jolt your attention away from the self-reinforcing spiral of negative thought.

Make your list of jobs โ€˜physicalโ€™

Every task can be rephrased as physical action; so โ€˜organise training eventโ€™ actually means โ€˜turn on computer; click on file; pick up phone; dial so-and-soโ€™s numberโ€™ and so on. Usually, we do all that instinctively but, when youโ€™re mired in demotivation, breaking things down into physical steps is a lifesaver. โ€˜Feel motivatedโ€™ might sound impossible to achieve but โ€˜turn on computerโ€™ is doable.

Oliver Burkeman is author of โ€˜The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Canโ€™t Stand Positive Thinkingโ€™ (Canongate, ยฃ8.99)

Photograph: iStock

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