High-Gear Motivation How to Hit Your Peak Day After Day

Posted on February 27, 2017 by Ken Abrams, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

As challenging as your work life can be, sometimes the biggest challenge of all is just staying motivated. We have a hundred tasks vying for our attention. Or perhaps we work with difficult people but lack the authority to effect any change. Events happen in our personal lives that can get us off course. They can all take their toll on our motivation levels.    
And yet these days, most of us don’t have the luxury of performing at anything less than our peak. Hitting that peak day after day is a challenge in its own right. But if we pay attention to the basics, and lock them into place, we can stay on a strong course.    
The very first place to start is to assess whether you really believe you can achieve your goals. This may seem obvious, but the importance of this point is easy to overlook. You simply cannot achieve something you don’t believe you can achieve. A related point has to do with making sure your work is aligned with your talents and your values. To work at your peak, what you do must, over time, be in sync with what you enjoy doing and with what you believe in.      
Even when you are completely in sync with your goals, you are still bound to hit occasional psychic roadblocks when you look at the piles of papers, the seemingly endless to-do list, the voicemail light flashing, the email alert blinking and it all seems too much.     
Here are some ideas to get going and stay going at a peak level:
Start each day with a review of your goals. In a 24/7 world, it’s easy to lose sight of where you ultimately want to go. Take the 30 minutes at the beginning of each day, when your mind is still clear, to review your goals. Start with your big goals and then put today’s work in the context of achieving them. If there is a chronic discrepancy between your long-term goals and what you are planning to work on today, it will unmistakably emerge in these early morning sessions.
Figure out your “next actions. When you are overwhelmed with a seemingly endless to-do list, many motivational experts recommend starting with anything in order to “get some points on the board” by checking something off the list. While doing something may be better than doing nothing, doing the right thing is better still. Identifying the next physical action required for each of your open projects works. That way, your to-do list is not encumbered with everything, but just with the “next things.” No matter what you do on the list, you will be accomplishing something that matters.
Do nothing. Another way to sustain your motivation is to periodically do nothing. Turn off your phone, hibernate your computer, shut down your iPod—actually take 20 minutes or so to truly do nothing but sit and relax. If you are unfamiliar with this process, the first time will seem like torture after about five minutes. But with a little practice you will find that a brief respite of real quiet can be tremendously rejuvenating. Look to your energy levels. Too much work stresses and you may perform below your peak. (Too little mental work will cause the same result, but not many of us face that issue.)
Having these strategies in place doesn’t guarantee smooth sailing, but it does set you up to have the best possible chance for sustaining a level of motivation that will contribute positively to your success.