Chase your passion! If you do what you love you could work for free! And other great sayings about motivation at work. We know all of them. Things on the ground are a little different right now though. It’s a different type of motivational challenge we are facing. Working from home is bringing out the cockroaches. On the one hand, I am making serious gains in taking care of myself- exercising more, praying more, sleeping enough and eating fruits regularly.
On the other hand, I miss my whiteboard. I love coming up with ideas in a big space and turning to the next person to banter and build it up. I get so excited by the big picture and the many amazing ways it can go. The downside of being a doer is that when I’m in the office, I am constantly derailed by walk-in requests. “This was discussed here, what can we do about it?” “This looks good, how can we do our own?” ” I have this in two days I need your help!”. Now the time away from the rush and general office whirlwinds has given me pause on how far I have moved towards my vision for my current position. Despite the fact that marketing thrives in a highly collaborative environment, I find myself learning a lot more about internal marketing and it’s hard to do that when you are, well, outside.
There is a post going around on social media that if you don’t come out of the quarantine having upgraded yourself in a way, you always lacked the discipline to do it.
So now I have to find new motivation to get things moving with some cogs missing. One thing I am dealing with right now is trying to get the results I envisioned with different resources from what I had planned with. Budgets are definitely getting cut, the marketing focus must now shift and the change in the mode of operation needs a different level of adaptation. Then there are all these tips on how to be productive at home and finally ticking off your aspirational bucket list. There is a post going around on social media that if you don’t come out of the quarantine having upgraded yourself in a way, you lacked the discipline to do it. The rebuttal has been that we are dealing with it in different ways and one doesn’t have to ‘work’ to be productive. I agree with the first part, mostly.
If you are part of the blessed few who has a job that didn’t shut down immediately, you cannot run with the second part. From both Outwitting the Devil (I mentioned this book in the last post) and at a function I attended, it is a fact that in every situation- good or bad- there is an opportunity if you put your mind to it. Granted there is the day-labourer on the other hand who doesn’t have a backup plan, it’s still a window to force one to think differently. If you are on leave, reorganise your workspace- categorise your files in a new easier way. Dust off ideas that never materialised, one of them could be more relevant now than it was before. If you are still on the clock, follow through on all those stuck projects. You will thank yourself later.
Dust off ideas that never materialised, one of them could be more relevant now than it was before.
My bottom line is that if you were motivated in your work before, it will show in your efforts in this period. What was your driving force before? What goal had you set at the beginning of the last chapter? Did you achieve it? Could this be the downtime to follow through? There is no hiding behind office hours and random emails to show you are present. Now is the time to be productive. Focus on doing something.