Hey Pandas, What Are Ways You Motivate Yourself To Do Work When You're Not In The Mood? (Closed)

Music. It is the single only thing that works.

It's not motivation that helps you move forward. It's discipline and a sort of self-respect.

Like - I feel terrible these days and I lack any motivation to work, because [list all the reasons] - but I refuse to linger in self- pity. Instead, I CHOOSE to get out of bed, get a coffee and start working. Because I know that no bad period lasts forever, and consistency will pay off.

This probably won't help but my parents put a time limit on my phone so if I need to do work, they won't let me get have it till I clean. Or I can get it and it'll litterly shut off after 2 minutes 💀

I don’t. Well..when I do..I mostly just groan, think of what I can do after, and do it. I also try and watch yt while I do it to make it fun. And sometimes I just don’t even do it lol

When it's chores: The faster I'm done, the more time I got for myself or my loved ones. That's usually enough to get me going.

Go to actual work: I work - I earn money. I can take care of my wife and dog and our lifestyle. Since I like the way we're living, I'd like to keep it that way. Motivation enough. It helps of course that I actually love my job. But even then there are tough days.

Listen to music or think about how I am helping myself or my family by doing the work.

I'll first take a little break, about five minutes. I try to not go in my phone because that can very easily turn into a bottomless pit. Most often I'll find one of my dogs, pet her and sometimes rant to her (if it's my puppy, play with her). Then I'll sit back down, tidy up the space, and think about two things 1. The end product (if applicable, some projects I know are too big and tedious) and how amazing it will be when it's done and 2. Where I want to get at the end of the morning/day/night etc. If it's a lot, I then will break it down to tasks. Rinse and repeat.

Depends on the task:

High concentration needed: I'll force myself to sit down and do it for 5 minutes. Usually, that's enough to keep me going. Sometimes I know 5 minutes is not enough, then I'll set the timer to 20 minutes and try to get it done asap. If after those minutes I still can't concentrate, I'll try to find out why. Usually it's either my work environment (noisy, cluttered or - atm - the puppy) or my chronic headaches making it extremely hard. I'll try to sort these out then and try again after a break.

Low concentration needed (such as making presentations, formal corrections of word-documents, ...): Same as above but with good music. I actually even like those tasks from time to time and find them relaxing and satisfying.

There are also some nice, free apps available to help like productivity challenge timer or focus timer. One that helped me with procrastination during my thesis was New Day. Before I didn't realize that it was fear to fail and guilt I hadn't started earlier which kept me from working on it. After I understood this, I could work on it without anything holding me back.

I try to focus on what's immediately in front of me to do. As a very simple (but useful, especially if I'm feeling crippled by anxiety or depression) example: I might tell myself, "just get out of bed," and try to focus on only the goal of standing up; once I'm standing, I'll tell myself, "okay, let's get dressed." It's hardly foolproof (I still have days where I accomplish little to nothing, but they're fewer) and definitely takes practice. But it's one of my most useful coping mechanisms.

Paying my bills… if I didn’t work I couldn’t look after my family. All the motivation needed