It’s never fun, that feeling of getting to work and not being motivated to get started. The smallest tasks turn into feats of willpower and leave you more empty than before. How does one pick themselves up and break the cyclical feeling of defeat?

I recommend trying to break up your problems into small achievable goals. Make a list of things you want to achieve for the day. These need to include some tasks that can be measured by yourself as being complete. Learning how to break up problems in this way seems to help boost my motivation.

Find the people who care about your work. This one seems to be a huge win for me. Having someone tell you that something has to be done doesn’t seem to feel as great as having the actual users who want the features you’re creating. Understanding and being able to relate to them is an amazing feeling.

Shut out the world. The surrounding conversations sometimes seem to distract us and I find myself partially paying attention to them. Instead of letting all of those distractions cloud my work I’ll throw on my headphones and basically tell the world to get stuffed for about an hour or so. Giving yourself the time to not hear others seems to do amazing wonders.

These always seem to help the most for me and maybe they’ll work for you as well. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that nobody can keep a full tank forever and eventually we all find ourselves near the “E”. Don’t let yourself keep running on fumes. Find whatever you can that refills your tank and gas up!