It’s time to find more motivation by asking yourself a few questions. With our previous conversations, you’ve set your priorities and mindset in order and you’re crushing your day to day action items.

How do others find their inspiration?

I love to hear what motivates people. It’s such a fascinating topic.

Last week, our Managing Director mentioned that her secret to being a good person at work is getting her gym session in. If she doesn’t hit that goal first thing in the morning, she has a bad day.

My colleague Michael often speaks of the joy he feels when he goes home to a hug from his daughter. My other colleague Sam has recently pursued his new found passion for golf, a great outlet outside of work.***

Moi? My motivation is mostly intrinsic. I’m motivated when I’m learning new things and when I know I’m doing a good job. I’m more about the process than the glory of the end result. For a while there my motivation was saving every penny and day of annual leave for adventures in Europe.

Find more motivation with these 4 questions

Motivation is different for everyone. The key is to you understand what energises you and how to leverage that every day. There’s a great HBR article on how to motivate yourself with goals and rewards. If you’re really struggling to feel motivated I’ve often found it helps to ask the following questions:

I used these questions to find more motivation

Those of you who read my blog know risk remediation and policy reviews are not my area of expertise. In my new role I’m operating way outside of my product marketing comfort zone. I could easily hide behind excuses and give in to my fears.

Instead, I’m choosing to focus on the positive: I’m broadening my skill set. Who knows where that’s going to take me? I’ve dreamed of being the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) since high school. Guess what the RBA does a lot of? Policy! Now I’ve motivated myself!

That’s just one example of how the above questions can help.

Great people leaders understand the power of motivation

I once worked for someone who was extrinsically motivated by status, promotions and chasing the big bonuses. There’s nothing wrong with this. The mistake this person made though was assuming that everyone was motivated by the same things. It was an absolute punish to work for this person because they didn’t understand how to get the best out of me.

The frustration built up and one day I exploded. I tried to explain that all I wanted was a bit of recognition and they said “But you got the Leadership award, what more do you want?!” Each month there was a morning tea where they presented awards in front of the entire office for different things. I won two of them.

I didn’t care about the glory of the award or the $500 bonus. You don’t get recognised or promoted solely by awards. Your leaders need to be advocating for you. This person beat me down jab after jab. They refused to advocate for me and consistently took credit for my work.

After this episode, they responded to EVERY single email I sent with “Thank you Amy”. It was beyond a joke and that annoyed me even more. Sigh.

Never stay in a job where you aren’t allowed to shine. It will cripple your motivation.

***Michael & Sam found out about this blog last week. Their response was positive and very funny – they were both worried about whether I wrote about them in my blog! Now I have, so if they read it then they’ll see this!

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