Staying motivated at work, whether you work in an office or at home, can be a real challenge.
For many, working at home can pose many more threats to your concentration and motivation. Apart from all the distractions around your home, many people find the lack of a manager looming over them to cause them to become de-motivated.
We’re not here to tell you to add the pressure of a manager watching over you back into your life, especially since everyone works differently. To help you defeat your lack of motivation, we’ve compiled these 3 tips to help you get back on track.
To-Do and Done Lists
Have you ever noticed how some people like to write everything down on paper while others want to be completely digital? We discussed the bullet journal method here for those of you who like paper lists. For digital project management, you can read about Trello here.
Something we particularly like is seeing how much you’ve done each week. If you don’t like keeping to-do lists, try keeping a done list. When you complete a task, write it down, and at the end of the week, review everything you’ve done. It helps give you a sense of accomplishment and can even help you become more productive.
If you like digital task management, you can try out Todoist. Enter your tasks into Todoist then set up an IFTTT filter that sends you a list of completed tasks at the end of the week. It feels amazing to read that email with all your done items!
Set Up a Reward System
Have you heard of dopamine? It’s a chemical that’s released in your brain whenever your reward system is activated. It’s a particularly powerful tool when it comes to staying motivated, although it can be tricky to manage.
Reward systems for work can either come in the form of micro-transactions or you can draw them out to allow for bigger rewards. Using a Pomodoro system is an example of a micro-transaction reward system – work for 25 minutes, get a 5-minute brain break.
An example of a longer-term reward system is to say, “if I make $1000 in commission, I will buy myself a new digital camera.”
Create a Motivating Atmosphere within Your Team
By now, you’ve hopefully decided on a way to stay connected to your remote colleagues, and, chances are, some of them might be fighting to stay motivated while working remotely, too.
Creating an atmosphere among your work colleagues where you hold each other accountable in a positive way can have a tremendous impact on the way you all work. You can do something as simple as sending encouraging pictures or memes to a group chat or setting up an accountability buddy system. The accountability system allows a way for one person to message the other to say, “I don’t feel like working” and the buddy will respond with words of encouragement.
Keep It Up!
Staying motivated when you work remotely doesn’t need to be hard. There are tons of easy ways to help keep yourself on track. Just remember to not get discouraged if one thing doesn’t work out. It might take several tries to figure out what’s the best way to keep you motivated at home.