Imagine if you could work harder and still be super productive. And you know what the best part is? In this case, you would not have to force yourself to work.
There are people who have it that way. They can just sit and work, without any anxiety or violence against themselves. Moreover, they work with pleasure. The good news is you can learn it too.
Let's start.
Most people have negative feelings about their work. They think work is unpleasant as opposed to play. Work is perceived as an annoying activity that prevents people from doing what they really want to do. People also believe that rest and total idleness is the ideal state that they would like to be in all the time. Such thinking leads to the fact that a person begins to think that he needs to force himself to work through force, and that work is very difficult, and only an iron willpower will help to cope with it.
It is easy to understand why we have such an attitude to work:
- People usually want to do what they don’t have and think that their neighbors have greener grass.
- Everyone around them says that work is very hard.
- - , , , - — .
In fact, many people who are idle for too long experience boredom, depression, and apathy. Even wealthy people who have “achieved everything” return to work pretty soon. People who amuse themselves all the time soon realize that it is only devastating. When a person has a lot of free time for an extended period, it does not create a sense of satisfaction in life.
On the other hand, there is a group of people who work and enjoy their work. Let's call these people doers... By this concept, we do not mean workaholics who do not live, but only work all day. Doers have a healthy balance of work and play. What is special about them that those who hate their jobs do not have?
First of all, they have a different attitude to work.
For them, work is a pleasant cycle of positive feedback. Workers perceive work as a source of energy and satisfaction . From their perspective, work allows them to truly enjoy their well-deserved rest. Rest makes them happier and motivates them to get back to work.
Second, their job is usually:
- Interesting
- Significant
- Understandable
If there are even one or two points, something amazing happens:
You no longer need to force yourself to work.
It is easy to enjoy work if it is understandable, meaningful, and especially if it is interesting.
Non-doers often think that doers are just lucky enough to find such a job. In fact, people take a long time to make their work interesting.
How to make your work more interesting
This is the most important factor in whether the job gets done or not.
For a job to be interesting, it doesn't have to be very meaningful.
Even if your task does not have a clear and understandable algorithm of actions, it is very confusing and complex - curiosity will help turn it into an interesting activity.
So how do you develop a curiosity about work?
You need to give your job a chance to be interesting to you. How? Use three steps:
1. Reduce the degree of your entertainment
Video games, long internet browsing, porn, alcohol, drugs, and other such things make the job harder. Why?
They set a certain level of brain stimulation. Anything that isn't as fun will seem boring.
Unfortunately, work often falls into the bad category. Compared to games or social media, work seems dull and annoying.
You may disagree by saying that there are people who are great at work and still drink alcohol, play video games, and so on.
However, it must be borne in mind that there are two types of people: those who can control themselves and know their measure, and those who cannot. The latter are most often referred to as addicts.
In general, if you have an addiction to something that is a lot of pleasure, but does not require any mental or physical activity, please give up these activities, at least for a while. This will help restore the right attitude to work. There are no other options but to temporarily change your habits. If you are addicted to video games, you can read the article on gambling addiction .
However, for some, games are an uncontrollable weakness. Here are a few signs that entertainment is negatively affecting your work:
- You are in a hurry and leave things unfinished in order to quickly do your favorite pastime. When I was addicted to games, I was irresponsible about everything during the day and left them unfinished in order to start playing as soon as possible.
- You constantly put off and forget anything that is not too important in your opinion in order to pursue your passion. You have a book that you want to read, but it remains unread.
- Everything around you gradually becomes a mess when you start to engage in your harmful hobby. The room is becoming a mess, you skip gym workouts more and more, stop cooking, eat cheap carbs more and more, and don't plan your day.
If you recognize yourself in these points, you may need to stop doing this hobby of yours. At least for a while.
Once your brain is out of constant stimulation, everyday activities such as work and cleaning will become much more interesting.
2. Get bored more often
When you're bored, things get more interesting.
Don't believe me? Do a simple experiment. Disconnect all devices. Set a timer for 15 minutes. Sit in a chair and look at the wall. Don't move. Do not receive any incoming information. Do not speak. Don't write anything. Just look at the wall.
If you are not a Zen master, after a few minutes you will want to take action. Usually, in such situations, the imagination is turned on, and the brain begins to sort out different thoughts. The first minutes can be while away pleasantly enough, thinking about the events that happened that day. However, after 5 or 10 minutes your hands will itch wildly to get down to something real as soon as possible. Suddenly, activities like building a website, writing an article, or drawing a picture start to feel more interesting and fun.
If you feel like you can't stop scrolling and consuming content all the time, plan to spend 15 minutes before work tomorrow, just sitting and doing NOTHING. Use boredom to your advantage.
3. Dive into the topic
It's great to grasp the relationships and see the big picture. When we know more about something, we get more pleasure from it. Oh, but how, it turns out, this historical event influenced the development ...
The more we begin to understand the topic, the more interest in it lights up in us. Here's the secret of curiosity.
Try taking the time to watch a documentary related to your area of expertise, read a book on your professional topic, or search for multiple articles. You will have more information. You will begin to see the big picture.
Next time you want to spend a free evening watching something interesting, instead of watching random videos or reruns of old TV shows, look for something that is relevant to your work.
Give yourself time to get interested.
How to make your work more meaningful
It is difficult to maintain high motivation if you have no personal interest in doing something.
However, “meaningful work” has become an idea that everyone is obsessed with.
Everyone is trying to find value and meaning in their work. These efforts can be wasted, especially if you work in a regular position with no special prospects or are an office worker. We're talking about this so that you don't get stuck and upset that you can't figure out how what you are doing can help save the world.
Either way, whatever you do, you can make the job meaningful enough to get started.
Let's imagine that you need to prepare for an exam in a subject that you are not particularly interested in. Reminding yourself why you chose this direction in education and why learning is important to you, it will be much easier for you to convince yourself that it's time to get started.
The fact is that some things just have to be done. It is much better to try to find a compelling reason why you personally need to do these things than to put them on the back burner forever.
When an activity seems boring to you, ask yourself: "Why do I need to do this?" Find a reason for which you are working - it will become the ground under your feet.
How to make your work easier to understand
When you have a step-by-step recipe on hand for how to prepare a dish, it's usually pretty easy to follow. You know exactly where to start and what to do in the process.
In today's creative world, this is often not the case. There are no recipes for the work tasks that we need to do, or they are, but they are so complex and confusing that they do not make the job easier.
What's more, we often don't give ourselves the chance to feel enthusiastic about an activity when we make lists of vague and useless tasks such as "writing an essay" or "making a video."
There are so many steps involved in making a video that this phrase alone causes anxiety and procrastination.
It is not for nothing that they say that the most difficult thing is to start working, and to continue working is very easy. Therefore, getting started can be made easier by determining how and where to start .
The more accurately you determine when to start working on something, the easier it will be to complete the task.
There are three main steps to follow:
1. Always state exactly which action will be the first.
This means recording the next physical action to take.
Need to write an essay?
Next physical action: open scientific research and start reading.
Or: Create Document → Sketch a Raw Draft in 15 Minutes.
The next physical action will be like this: open the site freecodecamp.org → Start doing the first task.
It may seem rather silly to write the next physical action to be performed, but it is not silly at all. It is easy to define and it can be done very quickly.
What is the next physical action you need to do?
2. Work on the first task for 5-15 minutes
You don't feel like writing a diploma on a topic that you know practically nothing about.
You don't feel like running a marathon.
But you may want to select a few pictures or articles for your presentation.
Or you might want to write one or a couple of paragraphs before your lunch break.
Or you might want to walk 1 km.
You need to go to big achievements in small steps.
We often underestimate the importance of small steps, but they are very important because they help us comfortably start a new business.
If you start running a few kilometers every day, you will easily get used to it and gradually want to increase the distance, this is a natural course of events. Ultimately, you can get to run a full marathon run.
Small steps seem small only in the moment, but it is they that eventually gradually lead us to go a long way.
If you have a difficult task, try to complete it for 5-15 minutes. Everyone can do it.
3. The first draft may be crude - don't have high expectations
You may have high expectations for the results of your work.
You want to write a really great book, not just a good one. Or create a great piece of art, or build a big business.
All these expectations place too much burden on your shoulders that you cannot bear. More pressure often equals more procrastination.
You can avoid the burden of these expectations by deliberately starting a new activity without trying hard .
Write a chapter of the book by hand without editing anything - you know this version will not be published.
Start drawing your poster with a simple marker on paper instead of using the latest high-tech graphic design software.
Make a rough draft of your product bad, you never show it to anyone.
Getting started becomes much easier when you know you don’t have to come up with the very best in the world right from the start. And it’s easier to keep going, too.
Conclusion
If you apply these tips, your job will become much easier. There is even a chance that you will like it.
- To make work more interesting, give up your harmful distractions, let yourself get bored more often, and give yourself time to develop interest.
- Find meaning in your work, if possible. If you're not saving the world in your job, just find a few personal reasons why you are doing it.
- Determine exactly where you will start. What is the next physical action you need to do?
Start applying it today.
Advertising
Epic servers are VDS for hosting sites from a small online store on Opencart to serious projects with a huge audience. Create your own server configurations in a couple of clicks!
