After many years doing the same job, it’s easy to feel stuck, uninspired, and distracted or unable to focus. You might question whether you’re making any real progress or impact or simply avoiding the inevitable. Is it time to change jobs, or is it just a matter of spicing up your current one? According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of the national bestseller Flow, it’s possible to rediscover motivation and engagement in any task by achieving a flow state.
The article was originally posted at Forbes.com by Lucy Paulise.
The state of flow, or optimal experience, is a mental state in which a person is fully immersed, highly focused, and enjoying the task at hand. This state is achieved when the challenge of the work perfectly matches the individual’s skill level, which means it is not too hard to drive anxiety and not too easy to drive boredom. The interesting fact is that sometimes it’s not so much about the task you are doing, but how you are doing it. You may find out that even this current job that you are struggling with can be turned into a pleasant one.
Here are some strategies to help you reignite your motivation in your current work.
1) Revisit Your Why or Let It Go
Remember why you took this job in the first place. Think back to the passion, motivation and enthusiasm you had at the beginning. What’s missing now? You are probably letting so many thoughts in the back of your mind cloud your judgment, such as your salary, your coworkers’ salary, that feedback from your micromanager boss or your perfectionism. If there is no reason to do this job and you feel you really don’t fit in, then maybe it’s time to let the job go and jump to the next one. But if this is still what you want, just focus on one thing that really matters to you and let the rest go.
2) Let It Flow
Now that you have chosen to stay in your current job, focus on achieving a state of flow. Although it cannot be forced, you can create the right environment for flow to occur:
- Set Clear Goals and Subgoals: Break large tasks into smaller, manageable subgoals that are easy to achieve.
- Measure Your Progress: Track how your subgoals are progressing on a smaller scale. Check on them daily, but avoid comparing them to the main, seemingly unattainable goal. Instead, compare them to your daily goal.
- Concentrate on the Task at Hand: Avoid getting anxious about how far you are from the main goal. Fully concentrate on your current task and keep moving forward. Reduce your distractors, like the phone or email, and use tools like the Sunsama app, that help you keep the focus.
- Develop Necessary Skills: Break down challenging tasks into smaller parts and work on developing the skills needed to tackle each part.
- Keep Raising the Stakes: Seek out new challenges and more complex tasks to stay engaged and interested. View feedback as a source of inspiration for new challenges rather than a reason to feel bad about yourself.
3) Let It Snowball
Initiate the snowball effect. Disclaimer! I got this idea from one of my coachees. His team needed to work on updating some files. This usually happens when the task seems too daunting, challenging, or boring. He proposed using the snowball effect. Start with the simplest task, then move on to the next task. This helps you understand the work at hand and get used to it, allowing a strategy to form in the back of your mind about how to do it more easily. By the time you approach the most challenging tasks, a work pattern is defined, making the task faster, and easier for you and for others to join and collaborate.
Flow isn’t limited to traditionally exciting activities. By applying these principles, it can be achieved in any task, from cleaning to walking. Transforming your work tasks into opportunities for flow can significantly enhance your work experience. While it might not be easy, the effort to find flow is well worth it.
If it seems that this job is no longer connected to your North Star, then maybe it is a good time to switch gears and change careers. But if it continues to be your passion, don’t let yourself go down when there is still fire burning out there—go for it!
By redefining your why, letting everything else go to flow in the task at hand and starting small, you can reignite your motivation and help you rediscover joy and fulfillment in your work.
