How to Get Motivated to Go to Work Every Single Day

According to a recent Gallop poll, 85% of workers worldwide hate their jobs. These dissatisfied employees are described by Gallop as being emotionally disconnected from their workplaces, leaving a mere 15% who feel “engaged” by their jobs.^[1]

These sobering statistics mean a huge number of people around the world are waking up each day dreading going to work and wondering “how do I get to work like a zombie…”

What is it that makes us so unhappy with our work? Why are so many of us feeling dissatisfied with and disconnected from our jobs, or worse, hating them?

In this article, we will look into the reasons why so many of us dread going to work, and how to get motivated to work.

Why Do You Drag Yourself To Work?

There are several obvious factors that might contribute to hating one’s job, such as:

• toxic company culture
• unreasonable demands on time
• safety concerns
• lack of opportunity
• poor pay
• lack of respect
• bad leadership

And what about those of us who simply feel unsatisfied or bored with our work?

Choosing for the Wrong Reasons

J.T. O’Donnell, Founder, and CEO of WorkItDaily.com has been studying job dissatisfaction for over 15 years and sees a common thread – our addiction to praise. She believes many of us are hard-wired to seek out the “fleeting rush of validation” from impressing others rather than lasting happiness.

As a result, she believes many choose careers and job paths solely for the momentary payoff of being liked, respected, or approved of, instead of focusing on what makes them happy.

O’Donnell believes that for us to feel passionate, engaged, and happy in our jobs, we must first learn to focus on discovering and developing a more lasting intrinsic motivation for our work.

Our Primitive Brain: Short-Term Pleasure Motivator

The fact is that the vast majority of us need to work to earn a living. One might assume then that our basic drive to survive would be enough to motivate us each day, that some aspect of our primitive brain would kick in to push us out of bed and out the door.

Unfortunately, the primitive brain is very much like an impatient child – it wants instant gratification, not some lofty long-term reward. When emotions regulated by our limbic brain get involved in a decision, we’re much more likely to go for the short-term feel-good decision over some future payoff that the primitive brain can’t see or feel.

It’s the limbic brain that sets us up for our addiction to praise, and to other impulsive decisions in which we choose instant pleasure over future enduring happiness.

For instance, if we wake up dreading our work day, and the option of staying home and playing hooky is on the table, our limbic brain will tell us how wonderful we’ll feel if we call in sick, completely disregarding that nagging future possibility of losing our job.

So how do we override our animal brain long enough to cultivate the proper incentive, the intrinsic and lasting motivation to get up each day and head to work?

How to Motivate Yourself to Work

Luckily, our more primitive brains went on to develop the neocortex, the cognitive thinking part responsible for language, creativity, and executive functions. It’s this part of our brain which allows us to override the impulses of our limbic system and imagine the longer-term consequences of our actions and decisions.

We then use these imagined future outcomes, as well as our other thoughts, as motivation in our day-to-day choices.

But as we heard earlier from J.T. O’Donnell, not all motivation styles are particularly effective or even beneficial. For the best chance at cultivating lasting happiness and satisfaction in our lives, we need to create helpful, positive, and effective self-motivation strategies that serve us well in both the short and long term.

One step is to first look at what makes for ineffective or unhealthy motivation styles. In the field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), there are several ways in which we can identify and eliminate these types of self-motivation strategies, thus leaving room for us to adopt a new and more successful approach.

Ineffective Motivation Strategies

Essentially, we have two basic motivators for our choices and decisions. We are either choosing to move away from an imagined negative outcome or to move towards an imagined positive outcome.

While the avoidance of a negative outcome can be quite a powerful motivation for changing behaviors in the short-term (i.e. ‘if I eat this cake, I’ll get fat and no one will love me’ or ‘if I don’t go into work today, I’ll be fired’), they don’t tend to be very effective in the long-term. They also tend to create feelings of low self-esteem, anxiety, and powerlessness.

Unhelpful motivation strategies can be identified by paying attention to your inner dialogue in those situations in which you tend to have difficulty motivating yourself, or where you struggle with procrastination, avoidance, or fear of failure. In NLP, ineffective motivation strategies fall into one of the following four styles:^[2]

The Negative Motivator

This person procrastinates and only becomes motivated to take action after imagining some horrible consequence of waiting any longer. ‘If I don’t finish this report by Monday, I’ll be fired for sure.’

The Dictator

This person motivates themselves by issuing themselves ‘orders’ to act, usually in a stern, commanding, and often critical voice. They’ll use words like ‘must’, ‘should’, and ‘have to’. ‘Stop being lazy and get your act together – you have to finish this report on time.’

The “Overwhelmer”

People with this motivation style imagine the entire task or goal they are facing as one global mass of effort that must be accomplished all at once, instead of in manageable chunks.

They then become overwhelmed and discouraged from even taking the first step. ‘I’m going to have to write a full report every Monday for the rest of my career. How am I going to do this every week?’

The “Gloomy Imagineer”

This person imagines themselves doing some unpleasant or overwhelming task and hating it all the way through.

They imagine only how bad they will feel throughout the process, rather than imagining any sort of positive outcome. ‘I hate writing these reports. I’m going to have use the weekend to finish it, and miss the game on Sunday. My weekend is going to be ruined.’

The problem with these motivation strategies is that they often fail, or backfire. The person may feel so overwhelmed by the task that they don’t even want to start it; they may subconsciously sabotage their efforts out of defiance or resistance, or they may complete the task, but end up feeling stressed and resentful as a result.

Effective Ways to Regain Motivation

If you’ve identified some of these negative or unhelpful motivation styles in yourself, now you can take steps to replace them with more effective, and far more pleasant, strategies.

Here are some basic guidelines for creating the best motivation strategies, according to NLP:^[3]

1. Make Your Internal Dialogue Pleasant and Compelling

Be your cheerleader, not a dictator. Use positive words of possibility and encouragement such as ‘I can’t, ‘I want, ‘I desire’, and ‘I will’ instead of judging terms like should and have to.

Include a mental or physical representation of the completed task. Imagine the positive consequences associated with its completion.

2. Chunk it Down

In NLP, this means breaking a large and often overwhelming task down into smaller, more manageable steps.

3. Find Your Intrinsic Motivations

Finding work that truly satisfies us is not always easy. It can mean coming to sometimes painful realizations about our past motivations and compromises and making changes accordingly.

But making the effort to discover and develop more intrinsic motivations for going to work, such as personal fulfillment, meaning, and passion, will serve us far better than any external pressures or expectations can.

Final Thoughts

Developing smart, effective, and positive motivation strategies can help us make good decisions that serve both our short and long-term happiness.

If you’re finding it difficult to drag yourself out of bed in the morning because you dread going to work, and a change in career or workplace is not an option just yet, try taking a look at your internal dialogue and making changes to how you motivate yourself.

You’ll be amazed at the results you can achieve when you become your own best supporter of your goals and dreams.