Ways to Stay Motivated at Work

Understand What Motivates You and Others

While everyone faces challenges to their motivation at times – whether it’s a workout goal, a career goal or some other personal ambition – motivation is even harder to maintain when the work is not stimulating or feels overwhelming. Working in the field of addiction treatment can sometimes feel like shouting into the void: you give so much personal and professional energy and still find yourself wondering if you’re doing any good. Or, even worse, you’ll see dramatic – sometimes tragic – setbacks that challenge your resolve and commitment to this intense work.

However, addiction treatment can also offer some of the most rewarding moments anyone could hope for in a career. So, if you can find ways to power through periods of waning motivation – and help your team do the same – you’ll have a career you can be proud of. More than that, you’ll have the power to change many, many lives.

Understand What Motivates You and Others

An article in Harvard Business Review, called Keeping Your Team Motivated When the Company Is Struggling, reports: “Human motivation is complicated. A person’s motivation is a complex set of emotions, including excitement, joy, desire, passion, and hope. And those emotions are derived from a set of skills and traits, including resilience, optimism, self-confidence, and ambition. When motivation flags, those emotions and traits aren’t gone, but they get covered up or substituted. Emotions like fear, anger, anxiety, sadness, even a sense of futility and self-doubt crowd out motivating factors. Your job is to find out what might be at the root of an employee’s lost motivation and help them make the necessary choices to rediscover theirs over time.” 

Identify your employee’s motivations so that you can remind them of these things when they’re disheartened. Often, when we lose sight of our goals or lack the drive to work towards them, support from others can give us the nudge we need. However, it can be important to recognize individual differences in motivation. For example, some people find failure motivating, using it as a learning experience or dare. Meanwhile, others can be so discouraged by disappointment as to be paralyzed.

“Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 49,” according to the Washington Post. “From 2019 to 2021, fatal overdoses surged 94 percent, and an estimated 196 Americans are now dying each day from the drug… More lives each year than car accidents, suicides or gun violence.” 

For some professionals in the addiction field, the life-or-death significance of the work can be a source of motivation. Those people, big problems and frightening statistics like the one above can drive them to work harder. For others, the immensity of the problem can be daunting, and they can feel like their efforts are too insignificant to make a difference. Those workers would probably find more inspiration from personal stories of people they’ve helped: testimonials from satisfied clients, photos of individuals who are succeeding because of their efforts.

Understanding your professional motivation is not an abstract concept. It has a very practical function to – pardon the French – light a fire under your ass. Find tricks and tools to keep your motivations front and center. That can mean decorating your office or car with things that inspire you, like inspirational quotes or putting reminders in your phone that say “you’re doing a great job!” It can be creating playlists that energize you when you’re dragging or funny videos that make you laugh when you’re taking things too seriously.

Tips to Stay Motivated at Work

Regardless of individual motivations, there are some general tips for staying motivated that can help just about anyone.

• Get up and move. Research shows that exercise can improve depression, increase energy, burn off anger and anxiety and help your mental focus. Make exercise a part of your life, whether it’s a workout at the gym or pushups in your office – even if (and even more when) you’re feeling unmotivated.

• Take a break. When we’re exhausted or overwhelmed (whether emotionally or physically), it’s a natural to seek relief. If we don’t provide ourselves (and our employees) with that opportunity, we risk burn out.  

• Break things down into smaller tasks. “It’s easy to look at the huge amount of work it will take to reach the goal and get overwhelmed with how much there is to do… But the good news is that every task, no matter how big, can be broken down into smaller, more achievable steps.” - 5 Tips for Staying Motivated at Work

• Check things off your to-do list. Nothing feels better than the sense of accomplishing something. Even if it’s just catching up on emails or packing all your lunches for the week, provide yourself that little ego boost.

• Reward yourself! The donkey-and-the-carrot works just as well for people, whether it’s yourself or your employees. Maybe you allow yourself 15 minutes of Youtube bingeing for every four hours of administrative work. Maybe it’s a donut or coffee drink, or even something more extravagant like a massage. 

Most of all: Celebrate all successes. Even “little” accomplishments can provide big fulfillment in the challenging and rewarding field of addiction recovery.  

I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life and career, and that is why I succeed.

 – Michael Jordan