Why do you think people lose the thrill to work? They literally started with all gusto and enthusiasm but along the line, they just seem to be lethargic and uninterested. Could it be termed as incompetence or maybe laziness? According to Gallup, approximately 85% of employees say they are not engaged or are actively disengaged at work. This statistics should scare employers because if your staff become uninterested, then productivity drops drastically.
What is the main cause of this work epidemic? The major orchestrator is lack of work inspiration. The human brain tends to get bored when doing the same thing repeatedly, hence, leading to poor concentration, lethargy and reduced efficiency.
It seems like there’s little one can do to salvage the situation as you only do what you’re asked to do right? And if this analogy of the brain is true, then you’ll eventually be uninterested on the long haul.
Another leading cause is lack of creativity. Regardless of how monotonous your work can be, there are creative ways you could carry out your obligations that’ll make it seem fun and interesting.
However, there are few things to one can do that’ll keep you inspired and motivated at work regardless of the monotony of your job description.
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How to Inspire Creativity
Creativity is very important as it’s a function of work inspiration. As an employer, if you want your team to be fearsome, insightful, productive and efficient, you need to ensure every team player is at their creative peak.
How then can you inspire creativity in the workplace?
Encourage Flexibility in Your Work Schedules
Being flexible involves you restructuring the mandatory “9-5” working hours. Sometimes, this may also mean allowing flexible hours, work from home or unlimited vacation.
According to Entrepreneur.com, studies have shown that flexible work schedules lead to higher levels of productivity and job satisfaction from employees.
However, the whole idea is to have some degree of flexibility to accommodate people of different personalities.
Allow Breaks
Going back to the anatomy of the brain and how it detests monotonous work descriptions. The one good thing to do at that point is to take a break. It could be a short walk, lunch break or something to distract you for that moment before going back to it.
Breaks have proven to increase creativity, productivity and job satisfaction as it gives your work culture less of a “grindstone” feel and more of a choice.
Promote Team Mentality
It is most likely rare that a creative idea just instantaneously drops to someone’s head. From experience, the best business ideas usually erupt from discussions with partners, investors and team members.
In order words, creativity is a team sport. Therefore, you have to ensure your team members work together. Encourage team exercises and bonding so as to improve trust and help bring new ideas to life.
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How to Improve Work Inspiration
As an employee, how can you stay inspired at work in order to keep offering value back to your employer? Work inspiration is rather elusive because sometimes, you feel it and other days, it’s just not there.
You could be staring at the screen but forcing yourself to type as your mind goes through the motion and you barely care about your work productivity. Here are a few ways to improve work inspiration so you can get your mojo back and keep delivering top quality.
Eliminate the Work Mentality
If you look at the project as work rather than an exciting challenge then you will obviously look interested. Take a game freak for example, how do you think they perceive the latest edition of an adventure game to be? Boring? Not at all!
If the game is adventurous enough, they’ll keep playing. That’s why you need to view your work as an adventurous game and not with drudgery. Once you can eliminate the work mentality and adopt the challenge mentality, the energy to execute the project will come easily.
Create Small, Bite-Sized Goals
Probably never heard of this before, but it’s very much effective when it comes to promoting work inspiration.
Completing a large project can not only be a daunting but cumbersome task as well especially if you don’t know where to begin. Is there any hope or guarantee of success if you don’t even know how to begin?
Cutting your projects into tiny stages/pieces can help immensely improve work inspiration as you tend to be more motivated when you achieve and complete each tiny goals.
The task at that time may be so small compared to the whole project, but the inspiration and motivation it gives will help spur you onto the next until you fully complete the project.
Stop Caring About Irrelevant Things
You should take a critical look at your to-do list and scratch off anything that is demotivating and totally unnecessary. That is, anything not pertinent to your objectives or goals should be avoided.
This is because you will find it hard to finish a project if you spend time on irrelevant things. You’d also lose motivation to complete the project if you spend all day caring about things that do not matter.
Celebrate Your Success
Take for instance a big project that has been cut into tiny bits. Ensure that you take time to celebrate each completed bit of the project in your own way. This drastically promotes work inspiration as you’d be eager to complete the next task so you can celebrate again.
Treat yourself no matter how little. Don’t underestimate the inspiration that comes with celebration.
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In Conclusion
Work inspiration must be maintained in order to keep delivering quality work and ensure you improve your productivity. The moment you become unproductive, you become a liability hence giving your employer reasons to dismiss you.
Also as an employer, always keep looking for ways to increase creativity amongst your employees or team members as creativity is relevant for efficiency, motivation, and productivity.
Whenever a new challenge comes up, and you have to turn your attention to it, your task management system will be there to guide you back to what needs to be done next.
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