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Have you ever just felt like a lifeless zombie brainlessly going through the motions of your day-to-day work? If you’ve been feeling like you’re in a creative slump or recently lacking motivation to achieve your goals, here are 3 expert tips to help you stay motivated to succeed even when you’re not feeling inspired. 

3 Easy Ways To Stay Motivated Even When You're Not Feeling Inspired

How To Stay Motivated

Maura Thomas is a speaker, trainer, founder of Regain Your Time, and author of Personal Productivity Secrets and Work Without Walls: An Executive’s Guide to Attention Management, Productivity, and the Future of Work. Maura is a TEDx speaker and has also been featured in magazines, newspapers, and online sites, such as US News and World Report, The Harvard Business Review, The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, and Fast Company. In today’s career guide, she shares 3 easy ways to stay motivated (even when you’d rather just get back in bed and call in “sick”).

1. Keep a list

You can’t remember everything so you need to keep important things out of your head. In addition to your to-do list, have a “Project” list, containing your big-picture objectives. 

3 Easy Ways To Stay Motivated Even When You're Not Feeling Inspired

2. Be specific

If your goals are written in broad terms, such as, “Lose weight,” “Get healthier,” or “Grow the company,” you’ve set yourself up to fail. How do you know when you’ve achieved those things?

For achieving goals, first, you have to turn them into a “Project.” A Project has a specific beginning and end. So “Grow the company” might become “Add two new salespeople by the third quarter.” Then you must ask yourself, “What’s the very first thing I need to do to move that project forward?” Specific action steps might be: “Review the budget to allocate the funds,” or “Request meeting with Sales VP to discuss resource allocation.”

The idea is that if you had five minutes, and wanted to move that project forward, you’d know exactly what you’d need to do. If you don’t have a specific action identified, that task is less likely to get done, and as a result, that project is less likely to move forward. 

3 Easy Ways To Stay Motivated Even When You're Not Feeling Inspired

3. Control your attention

How much of your day is spent being reactive? If you often feel like the day flew by but you didn’t make any real progress on your plans, you might be allowing too many distractions to steal your attention. If you’re always distracted, you’ll get used to being always distracted, and you’ll find yourself bored in the “quiet times.” And as a result, you’ll unintentionally seek out the distraction! Ensure that you have times in your day when you can support your focus.

Put your devices on Do Not Disturb, close your email, and spend time working on the things that are important to you – find your flow! 

Now that you’re feeling inspired and motivated to succeed, the next question is – 

What are you going to accomplish today?

For more career tips and expert advice on how to succeed and stay motivated, check out the Career section on Inspirations & Celebrations.


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