In our closing blog of 2011, YES! Your Human Resources Solution talked about ways to improve your time-management skills in the new year.  Prioritizing, organizing, and streamlining are all great ways to make the most of your work time, especially to prevent work hours from spilling over into personal or family time.  Improving your time management can give you a great start to 2012, but even the perfect schedule won’t save your productivity if you lack motivation.

We all get stuck in the occasional rut that keeps us from moving forward in our business.  You know that feeling—when you suddenly realize you’ve spent the last 15 minutes staring glassy eyed at your computer screen, or when you work in a coffee break to deliberately avoid a project.  Although it happens to the best of us, prolonged lack of motivation can hurt your productivity, work quality, and morale.  So how can you help yourself through the doldrums?

If you find yourself in a slump, try our helpful tips to take back your motivation.

• Step away.  Have you ever been stuck on a puzzle, such as a maze or a riddle?  You might have agonized over the answer and come up blank, only to walk away and return with a sudden “aha!” moment.  The same principle holds true for work.  If you’re stuck in a rut over a work problem, try stepping away for a while.  Concentrating on something else allows you to return to your work problem with a renewed attitude and a fresh approach that you might not have thought of before.
• Change up your hours.  Most people wouldn’t wake up at 2 a.m. to compile a critical year-end report, because they’d barely be able to keep their eyes open.  During the wrong hours of the day, squeezing stellar work from your brain can be like squeezing water from a stone.  So how about mixing up your schedule to optimize motivation?  If you pop out of bed bright eyed and bushy tailed, your most productive hours are going to be in the early AM, so try to work on the most important projects while you’re at your best.  This can also involve arranging to start work earlier in the day.  Then you can save more routine tasks, such as e-mail and invoice payment, for after lunch when your brain is less agile.  On the flip side, if you can’t face the day without six caffé lattes, you can try the opposite schedule: starting with routine duties until your brain fog clears, and then working up to the tougher tasks.  This might involve arranging to start work later in the day.
• Give yourself some incentive.  Just between us, we know that some people are best motivated by rewards.  If that sounds like you, you might benefit from some self-bribery.  Start with a work-related goal for the day (or week), and when you complete it, treat yourself to a predetermined reward.  This could be a night out with your spouse, a new Blu-ray movie, or an extra slice of cake—whatever works best for you.
• Tackle tinier parts.  A key culprit for why we procrastinate or get stuck in a rut: an assignment so important and so overwhelming that it looms before us like all 29,000 feet of Mount Everest.  It looks insurmountable, so we’re afraid of starting the ascent, or maybe we don’t know where to begin.  In these cases, instead of looking at the project as your personal Mount Everest, break it down into smaller climbs from staging camp to staging camp.  For example, if you’re working on a business plan this year, you’ll need to tackle milestones such as determining the plan’s purpose, defining your audience, and then creating each part of the business plan, from the mission statement to the marketing plan.  The business plan is your Everest and those milestones are your staging camps.  Set goals for yourself as you climb from camp to camp, and you’ll reach the summit in no time!
• Keep on truckin’.  It might not be the answer you want to hear, but sometimes pushing through a project is the best way to get it done.  Think of yourself as a writer with writer’s block.  Just sitting down and typing, even if those first words aren’t the next James Patterson best seller, starts you working on the project and can get your creative juices flowing.  The simple act of immersing yourself in a project, even if you don’t feel like it, can bring about the motivation you were missing.

Loss of motivation trips everyone up from time to time, bringing productivity to a screeching halt.  But that doesn’t have to be the end of the line!  By using our handy motivational tips, you can explore new ways to get excited about work again.

Whether your 2012 business goals include motivating your employees or launching a talent search, the professional HR consultants at YES! Your Human Resources Solution are here to help your business start off on the right foot.  We can help with all your business’ HR-related needs, from HR leadership building, to recruitment and retention, to compliance and compensation.  Take a look at our Services page to see how we’ve helped our clients harness the power of saying YES!

Like what you see?  Contact us today for a free consultation to find out how your business can best benefit from our services.   We can’t wait to help you thrive in the new year!