A Guide to Motivating Yourself at Work - Harvard Business Review

To read the full Harvard Business Review article, please click here.

Imagine landing your dream job. The title sounds impressive, your LinkedIn looks sharp, and your parents are finally proud.

Now imagine six months later. You’re exhausted, underpaid, uninspired, and the thought of Monday gives you chest pain.

Sound familiar?

You’re not alone. A recent Gallup study found that 60% of employees feel emotionally detached from their jobs. Half are stressed daily. And nearly 40% of Gen Zs want to quit within two years.

But here’s the twist: quitting isn’t always the smartest move. Sometimes, the best way to reclaim your motivation is to redesign your relationship with your work. Here’s how.

1. Find the thread: Why does your work matter?

Early in your career, it’s hard to connect the dots. You’re building decks, answering emails, sitting in meetings with acronyms you don’t understand. It feels… abstract.

So here’s the move: ask the bigger questions.

• What problem are we trying to solve by doing these tasks?

• How big is the problem?

• How frequently does the problem occur?

• How am I helping contribute to the solution?

Marie, a client success associate, once asked her manager why she had to pull the same customer reports every week. Turns out, those reports fed directly into investor dashboards. Just knowing that gave her a reason to care, and a reason to improve the process.

Once you know the impact of your work, pick one area or project and overdeliver.

2. Don’t hustle for everything. Hustle for what matters.

When you’re starting out, it’s tempting to give 110% to every single task. But that’s the fastest road to burnout. Instead, shift your focus to what matters most to your manager, your team, and your organization. That’s where effort gets noticed.

Mark, a junior marketer, was juggling blog posts, campaign briefs, social content, and internal reporting. After a conversation with his boss, he realized the upcoming product launch was top priority. He dropped the nice-to-haves, doubled down on the launch, and finally felt energized, because he was playing where it counted.

Ask this in your next 1:1: Where should I be putting my biggest efforts this quarter?

3. Build micro-habits that protect your energy

You don’t need a complete mindset makeover. You need a few daily tools to buffer the lows.

• Establish a gratitude practice: It can be big (being thankful for your health) or small (being thankful for a great cup of coffee).

• Prioritize acts of kindness: Holding the door for a colleague or greeting a peer in the morning, is most effective.

• Leverage your signature strengths: These are the strengths that feel most authentic to you, that energize you and bring you joy. If you’re energized by beauty, tidy up your workspace. If you love learning, listen to a podcast on your commute.

• Celebrate your accomplishments: Don’t just check the box. Feel it. Let it land.

Build habits that help you move through the stressful moments.

4. Craft your job from the inside

You might not be able to quit. But you can tweak the way you work. Job crafting is about making small changes to center your strengths.

Alex, a customer success manager, realized he loved client calls but dreaded back-to-back admin work. He rearranged his calendar to start his day with energizing conversations. It gave him momentum and reframed the rest of the day.

Ask yourself:

• What parts of my job give me energy?

• How can I do more of those in the morning, when it counts most?

Amplify the parts of your job that you do enjoy.

5. Find meaning outside your job

Here’s your permission slip: your job doesn’t need to fulfill your soul. Sometimes, work is just work. And that’s okay as long as you know where else your meaning lives. Maybe it’s a writing project, a running group, your role in your family, a future you’re building in parallel. When you know what truly matters to you, you make better decisions, you protect your values, and you stop expecting your job to give you everything.

You’re not broken. You’re just human.

Feeling bored, disillusioned, or stuck doesn’t mean you’re weak or in the wrong job. It means you’re normal.

But here’s the opportunity: instead of numbing out or checking out, you can re-engage with intention. Not by pushing harder, but by pulling smarter.

Small mindset shifts. Clearer conversations. A few new habits. That’s how motivation grows, not in giant leaps, but quiet recalibrations.

Because sometimes, staying is the most powerful move of all.

To read the full Harvard Business Review article, please click here.

Source: Ravishankar, R. A. (2023, July 28). A guide to motivating yourself at work. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2023/07/a-guide-to-motivating-yourself-at-work