How do you feel when the alarm goes off in the morning: happy or upset? If you choose the second option, you are not alone. In fact, between 55% and 80% of people view their work as an obligation, not an activity they enjoy, says Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas, Ph. D. and Director of Science at The Greater Good Science Center, in the article “The Four Keys to Happiness at Work”. If you often wake up upset, it’s time to try 7 ways to increase your motivation to work and allow you to continue growing in your professional career. At the end of this article, we will also list 48 of the best motivational quotes for work that can help you get through your hard day.
Types of motivation for work
However, following what the researchers Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan propose in their book Self-Determination Theory (self-determination theory) (2017), there are two fundamental types of work motivation:
Extrinsic: Occurs when the impulse towards action is generated by external factors, such as an increase in salary, a promotion or public recognition.
Intrinsic: it is that motivation that is born from internal factors, that is, when you strive to achieve something for mere personal satisfaction.
Both motivational sources have an impact on job involvement and job satisfaction. However, since extrinsic motivation is produced from an incentive that is beyond your control, it is advisable to focus on intrinsic motivation, working on internal stimuli that you can manage on your own.
Why is it important to be motivated when you go to work?
The reason to focus on this aspect is that when you’re motivated, you benefit from important advantages, among which are:
- When you are passionate about a project, you don’t mind pouring your knowledge and time into it, so that the work is much more efficient.
- In the same way, if you feel satisfaction in your job, the chances of achieving the proposed objectives skyrocket.
- Given this greater efficiency and effectiveness, when there is involvement in your work, your productivity rises by 12%.
- Likewise, having an exciting goal is synonymous with enthusiasm and energy. Why do you feel more vital when you have a challenge ahead of you that you like?
- Stress management. If you are in a state of demotivation, any obstacle seems insurmountable; instead, motivation allows you to have a more positive perspective, understanding impediments as opportunities and better managing stress.
- Among the advantages of work motivation, it is also worth mentioning that it increases collaboration and teamwork.
- Job success. As a consequence of all of the above, if work motivation is high, the success rate that you will achieve is higher.
7 Ways to Increase Your Motivation to Work
Maintaining an optimal level of work motivation is not always easy. Numerous external elements can influence your state of mind or the monotony itself can gradually reduce your involvement. Lack of new challenges or stagnation in the corporate hierarchy are often major motivation blockers.
Even yourself, especially if you are a woman, can dynamite your enthusiasm because of the so-called impostor syndrome, that feeling that makes you believe that you do not deserve your achievements and you will soon be ‘discovered’.
That is why it is important that you regularly practice techniques to improve your work motivation. Which are?
1. Find a ‘passion’
Dedicating yourself to something that you are passionate about is undoubtedly the best incentive for a professional. This is what Confucius meant when he said: “Choose a job you like and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
In this sense, carrying out an activity by vocation has many positive effects that affect psychological well-being in the long term. To discover it, ask yourself questions such as what you liked to do in your childhood, what are your wishes, what legacy would you like to leave behind, who do you admire and what goals would deserve any sacrifice on your part.
2. Accept new challenges
Human beings tend to avoid risks to ensure their safety. It’s something they’ve been doing for millions of years. But stability also has its downside: routine leads to discouraging personal and professional stagnation.
If you want to overcome this situation, Robert M. Yerkes and John D. Dodson, classic authors of The Relation Of Strength of Stimulus To Rapidity Of Habit-Formation (1908), already advised experiencing a certain degree of anxiety which they called the level of “optimal anxiety”. How? Leaving your comfort zone and accepting new challenges. A goal that will be easier for you to assume if you expand your training and incorporate new skills that you did not master up to now and that help you boost your career.
For example, in the Santander Women Scholarships | W50 Leadership – London School of Economics you can improve your negotiation skills and prepare for leadership roles. Specifically, from an eight-week online program aimed at women from a wide variety of countries and industries who have more than 10 years of professional experience, you will be able to boost your career, thanks to learning and knowledge about team leadership.
3. Increase interpersonal relationships
Did you know that, according to Gallup (2018), having a friend at work boosts your work motivation by 50%? As social beings, interpersonal relationships have an important impact on people’s moods.
If you have colleagues with whom you maintain a bond of trust or build a network of contacts to support you in the professional field, you can always count on them to encourage you in those most critical moments or give you the push you need to undertake new challenges.
4. Practice optimism
Optimism is related to greater satisfaction and well-being. “Facing each and every one of the moments of day to day, the good ones and the not so good ones, with an optimistic attitude and being positive, will help you to be happier, to improve the quality of your social relationships, and to be more at ease. I like myself”, points out Carolina G. Nombela in the Forbes article Why you should be optimistic in your work.
If you feel good, it will be easier for you to achieve your goals and boost your motivation. Also, emotions are contagious, so your optimism will spread to the rest of your circle, generating a spiral of mutual benefit.
5. Disconnect
Learn to disconnect. Many times, your fed up has no more foundation than the mere fatigue you suffer from not finding a balance between work and personal life. According to the Study on conciliation and family (2019), by Suavinex, 62.4% of women state that they have problems reconciling personal, family and professional life.
In fact, this lack of disconnection generates a feeling of boredom, apathy, stress… In short, demotivation, so have you tried asking for a few days off? Or go on vacation? Or organize yourself better so as not to have to excessively lengthen the working day?
6. Organize and plan
In the same way, if chaos prevails in your day to day, start to change your habits, because order and discipline also contribute to improving your work motivation.
People with high self-discipline and organization are happier. This is because, thanks to this planning and order, you will be more efficient, avoiding overload, which in the long run becomes demotivation. In addition, you will be able to manage conflicts and make faster and more rational decisions.
7. Expand skills and competencies
Finally, to face this renewal, it is essential that you acquire skills progressively throughout your career, looking for programs that adapt to your situation and your needs. A clear example of this type of training is that offered by Banco Santander through the Santander Women Scholarships | W50 Leadership 2022 – London School of Economics.
In this way, when you incorporate new skills and competencies, you increase your job options and, at the same time, you feel you have enough knowledge to embark on new projects. But regardless of them, the improvement of abilities will make you feel greater personal fulfillment, which will positively affect your intrinsic motivation.
This “recycling” habit is carried out by more women than men. Thus, an investigation carried out by Zenger Folkman in 2017 showed that in the first years of working life there is no significant gender difference. On the other hand, as the career advances, professional women maintain the level of continuous improvement, while this interest in constant development decreases in the case of men.
Motivational quotes for work
Here’s a list of 48 of the best motivational quotes for work that can help you get through your hard day.
- “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”
– Babe Ruth - “If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.”
– Benjamin Franklin - “I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
– Thomas Jefferson - “I have learned that real angels don’t have gossamer white robes and Cherubic skin, they have calloused hands and smell of the days’ sweat.”
– Richard Evans - “Greatness is sifted through the grind, therefore don’t despise the hard work now for surely it will be worth it in the end.”
– Sanjo Jendayi - “A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.”
– Colin Powell - “My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.”
– Indira Gandhi - “Happiness is the real sense of fulfillment that comes from hard work.”
– Joseph Barbara - “Hard work keeps the wrinkles out of the mind and spirit.”
– Helena Rubinstein - “No great achiever – even those who made it seem easy – ever succeeded without hard work.”
– Jonathan Sacks - “Hard work helps. It has never killed anyone.”
– Unknown - “The highest reward for man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.”
– John Ruskin - “You learn the value of hard work by working hard.”
– Unknown - “Nobody’s a natural. You work hard to get good and then work to get better. It’s hard to stay on top.”
– Paul Coffey - “Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.”
– Jim Rohn - “All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.”
– Calvin Coolidge - “Talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.”
– Patrick Suskind - “The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.”
– Jimmy Johnson - “If I told you I’ve worked hard to get where I’m at, I’d be lying, because I have no idea where I am right now.”
– Jarod Kintz - “Too many irons, not enough fire.”
– S. Kelley Harrell - “Patience can be bitter but her fruit is always sweet.”
– Habeeb Akande - “If you don’t burn out at the end of each day, you’re a bum.”
– George Lois - “If you try and lose then it isn’t your fault. But if you don’t try and we lose, then it’s all your fault.”
– Orson Scott Card - “Embrace the pain to inherit the gain.”
– Habeeb Akande - “The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.”
– Harry Golden - “I hope the millions of people I’ve touched have the optimism and desire to share their goals and hard work and persevere with a positive attitude.”
– Michael Jordan - “Goodness and hard work are rewarded with respect.”
– Luther Campbell - “Everything yields to diligence.”
– Thomas Jefferson - “When I meet succesful people I ask about 100 questions to find out who they attribute their success to. It is usually the same: persistence, hard work and hiring good people.”
– Kiana Tom - “Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goals: my strength lies solely in my tenacity.”
– Louis Pasteur - “I don’t have a blue-collar job. It’s more of a green collar, because of all the yellow sweat stains mixing in.”
– Jarod Kintz - “No one ever drowned in sweat.”
– USMC Officer - “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”
– Beverly Sills - “If your dream is a big dream, and if you want your life to work on the high level that you say you do, there’s no way around doing the work it takes to get you there.”
– Joyce Chapman - “I do not care about happiness simply because I believe that joy is something worth fighting for.”
– Criss Jami - “Hard work without talent is a shame, but talent without hard work is a tragedy.”
– Robert Hall - “A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain.”
– Mildred Struven - “You were hired because you met expectations, you will be promoted if you can exceed them.”
– Saji Ijiyemi - “Inspiration is the windfall from hard work and focus. Muses are too unreliable to keep on the payroll.”
– Helen Hanson - “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”
– Beverly Sills - “Do the things you like to be happier, stronger & more successful. Only so is hard work replaced by dedication.”
– Rossana Condoleo - “Only cooked time tastes well.”
– Dr. Zeeshan Ahmed - “Nothing in life comes easy.”
– Unknown - “Change is hard work.”
– Billy Crystal - “Once you have commitment, you need the discipline and hard work to get you there.”
– Haile Gebrselassie - “Sometimes it takes a lowly, title-less man to humble the world. Kings, rulers, CEOs, judges, doctors, pastors, they are already expected to be greater and wiser.”
– Criss Jami - “Work hard and be patient. The rest will follow.”
– Unknown - “Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
– Saint Francis