feeling unmotivated? how to boost productivity & regain motivation

Being productive when you’re not motivated can be challenging. It’s not easy to get things done when you’re feeling uninspired. You can tend to get overwhelmed, discouraged, and start beating yourself up.

Sometimes, you wake up and dread being creative or doing anything at all. Like me today. I’m a freelancer who recently lost a big client to the current economy, and work has been frustrating lately. I’m supposed to research potential new clients, reach out to them, and generally plan for the future. Today, I don’t feel like doing any of this. I just want to sit on the couch and watch YouTube videos.

How am I going to motivate myself when I don’t feel productive at all?

Addressing lack of progress, overwhelm, and disconnect

Over the years, I’ve pinpointed a couple of common reasons for my lack of motivation:

Lack of progress: I’ve been looking for new projects and contacting potential clients for months now. It’s hard and it’s frustrating. Especially on days where paid work is limited, I tend feel like I’m just fooling myself. What if all my client outreach doesn’t lead anywhere? What if I never find new ways to make money? If what I do doesn’t have a point, I could just as well watch YouTube.

Overwhelm: There is so much to be done. I need to finish my existing projects, house chores, cook a meal for the entire family, find every single potential client who exists on earth, constant all of them in a personalised way, keep track of it all, call my grandma, find a present for a loved one, make money now, and then pick up my kids at 4 pm. It’s a lot.

Disconnect: It’s easy to be unproductive when I don’t even know what I’m working towards. And sometimes, when the initial motivation has worn off the the success is nowhere to be seen, everything can feel pointless.

There are a couple of solutions for these.

First, you need to get up and get moving. No matter what you do, just don’t lay on the couch. It’s much easier to stay in motion when you’re already up! For me, anything goes: doing yoga, dancing around to music, going on a walk, doing some chores at home.

Then, it’s time to address the bigger issues.

Visualize your success

Imagine the future you could have if your actions were successful. For me, it would mean more financial stability and also not needing to do as much client outreach anymore! That definitely sounds motivating.

If you decided to do something, you probably had a good reason for it. Writing this reason down or saying it out loud makes your brain actively reprocess that information. Visualizing your success in every little detail will remind me why it’s worth it, even if it’s hard. If your goal is exciting to you, you’ll feel more a lot motivated after this exercise!

What if no matter how hard you try, you cannot find any good reason for doing what you’re supposed to do? Well, maybe it’s not that important after all. Maybe you’re following an old goal of yours that isn’t aligned with you anymore. In that case, it’s time to re-evaluate instead of doing something that actually has no point.

Prioritise to combat overwhelm

Making a to-do list is a great way to organise your thoughts and all the different tasks fluttering around in your head. Make a to-do list, but make it short. If you’re not feeling motivated today, you might not have the most productive day in the history of time. And you know what? That’s okay. No one is productive every day, and accomplishing things even on your worst days is a great achievement in and of itself!

So, pick the tests that are the most important for your future success, as well as those you can’t ignore. And be sure to be precise and realistic. No one can do everything all at once, so it’s important to set quantifiable goals you can achieve without stress.

For me, this would mean prioritizing my existing projects, finding 5 potential clients to reach out to, as well as picking up my kids. We’ll just eat pasta for dinner and my grandma will receive a wall in the evening while my children are playing. As for the present and the chores, I’ll ask my husband to help.

So, you create your to-do list and start on it right away.

Find ways to believe in yourself

One of the hardest parts to address when you lack motivation is the lack of progress that leads to discouragement and frustration. Unfortunately, there’s no easy fix for this. But I have found some strategies that help me:

Remember past victories: Remind yourself of all the times you worked towards a goal and achieved it, even when it felt impossible. If you’ve done it before, you can do it again!

Celebrate small wins: Every step in the right direction is worth celebrating. For example, despite feeling like a failure at times, I have actually found a couple of new clients already.

Use EFT tapping to stay positive and focused: To be honest, EFT tapping is my answer for almost anything. But it really does help me address the feeling of hopelessness, figure out how I might actually be self-sabotaging by being afraid of success (it sounds weird, I know, but it happens!), and generally see the abundance in the world.

Bonus: use rewards!

When you’re unmotivated to be productive, you usually crave another (probably unproductive) activity. Don’t do it now, but do it as a reward as soon as you’ve finished a small to-do list. You’ll enjoy it a lot more after having accomplished something! Rewarding yourself feels much better than lounging around and feeling guilty.

Now, let’s do it together. We’ll both just finish this sentence, get up, and get to work. Ready when you are!