How to be motivated to get down to work

Getting down to work means getting down to work—with the word “work” being the operative word. Here’s one of many elementary motivational strategies which show you how to get into the work quickly and start being productive without falling prey to window gazing.

One of the ways of getting more done is to jump into a project whenever you have some spare time and work on the project—even if you can do only a little. These short bursts of effort can make for substantial progress in a project and are an effective part of the time management arsenal. But what is often difficult—and this applies regardless of the time available—is actually getting “into” the work.

We know that once the work begins to flow, once we get into our stride, we can make a lot of progress. But just how do we get into our stride in the first place? We’ve all had the experience of sitting down to work in the morning, filled with good intentions, only to find ourselves staring at a blank sheet of paper for a few minutes… which stretches into another few minutes… and then after a bit of cursory doodling we find we’ve been at work for almost an hour and achieved nothing.

Then our motivation disappears, and the next thing we know we’ve gone to make a cup of coffee, we’re checking emails, leafing through papers and the morning is heading toward the afternoon, with nothing to show for our “sitting down to work” but a few scribbled ideas and a headache. This lack of motivation is deadly for entrepreneurs, who often work alone and can be more prone to distractions. Motivation in entrepreneurship is essential.

No momentum means no motivation

One of the biggest reasons that we often find it difficult to start work on a project is that we have no momentum. We’re starting from a standing start . What we need is a way of getting moving quickly, of jumping onto an already moving train instead of pushing the wagon ourselves.

One of the best ways of getting momentum is for the work to be already in progress before we start to do it. We’re much more likely to overcome our lack of motivation if we see that things are already moving.

It sounds impossible, but there is a way, and that is to make sure you don’t finish the work totally before you stop at the end of the previous work session.

When we work, we tend to have the idea that it’s best to finish a project there and then. This works fine for small projects that can be totally wrapped up and forgot about—and this is an element of good time management, by the way. But longer projects—which comprise the majority of projects—are a different animal completely. They consist of many smaller pieces, and the tendency is to try to complete everything we can of that section of the project in the time available. As we work, we often get new ideas as to what we need to do next. Once we’re moving, we feel that we want to keep going as long as possible. Once we’re motivated, we don’t want to stop. Sure, we should use the motivation to get as much done as we can. But completely working ourselves out has the effect of leaving nothing to be done the next time.

What happens then is that the next time we sit down to work we have no momentum because we stopped the train. No momentum means no motivation. The trick is to realize that when you are coming to the end of your work session, you shouldn’t try to get everything completed. Finish the work session just before you complete something—or just as you have completed something and already started the next section of a project. Leave your work with a clear idea of what needs to be done next, and even jot down a few notes to give a framework for the next work session.

Use human nature to achieve natural motivation

Human beings like a sense of completion. We hate for things to not be brought to their natural conclusion. When you leave a project with something not quite finished, you’ll have a desire to get it finished as quickly as possible, and that desire will still be with you the next time you sit down to work. The momentum for the work will already be there, and there’ll be no staring into space wondering how to get started. And once you are started, you’ll be able to use the momentum and motivation—created by getting started quickly—to achieve even more in the time available…

The next time you work on a large project, make sure you don’t completely work yourself out or work until you feel “finished”. Leave something to be done the next day, and use it to ignite your next work session and overcome your lack of motivation without even trying.