How to be More Productive When You're Feeling Unmotivated

How to be More Productive When You’re Feeling Unmotivated

Here is the complete transcript of the podcast

Welcome back to Success with Srini. Happy Monday morning to you, we start the week with an interesting topic today with this podcast, which is how to become productive at a time when you are less motivated, there is no motivation. But still, you have to become productive. What you have to do, this happens to the best of the best people, best of the best professionals, regardless of whichever trade they are in or whichever profession they are in. You wake up in the morning, and you see I don’t want to go to work, I don’t want to do this anymore. And maybe you planned to do something to start a project. But then you’re not finding yourself. And you’re waiting, you know, you can do it. But then you’re waiting for something to happen so that you get back into the gear, get back into the, into the zone. This is something I’ve dealt with myself numerous times, sometimes I have these great ideas that I want to do. And I want to put them into play. But then, for some reason, they don’t happen. And I’m like, Yeah, I’ll wait for something to happen before I do it. What it means is that I’m losing my momentum, that’s what it comes down to.

One of the key elements of peak performance is you got to keep doing what you’re doing, regardless. And every time somebody asks me, I’m lacking motivation. And my immediate response to them is, that you shouldn’t be looking for motivation for a professional. That means you’re not a professional. If you wake up in the morning, and you control your David the mood, if you’re not a professional, you’re not destined for success. So, and you heard me say this multiple times on this podcast, which is you got to have your day figured out. You got to have your week figured out, you need to figure out your month, your quarter your year, upfront. And that’s why this podcast and every other podcast and that’s why so many books on self-improvement and there’s so much of literature, so much of knowledge, so much of stuff everywhere around if you are seeking, okay, so how do we go about this because this happens is a common syndrome.

The first and foremost thing is you got to find out the source of your lack of motivation, the source of your lack of motivation, and what is the source? Let’s talk about symptoms for a second. It’s very natural to become unmotivated. Even in the middle of the act, people check out mentally. How once you are checked out, how long are you checked out? This question is important to question even in therapy, we asked this question. Let’s say you realize you woke up this morning, you realize that yeah, you know, I’m not feeling motivated, how long? The sense of lack of motivation stays with you for how many days? You got to establish a pattern. You got to figure out how long you stay unmotivated days weeks, or months, how long? It’s question one. Question two is how have you recovered in the past? What is it that you do to recover? Because recovery happens whether you like it or not very unnatural that you woke up 30 days at a stretch and felt unmotivated. If that’s the case, then something else is going on. Maybe for two or three months, you wake up every day unmotivated, doesn’t work that way, there are good days and there are bad days and they happen randomly. So what is it that is going on, on a good day with you? That is not happening on a bad day, you got to find the difference. So recovery ism, we need to understand recovery. And that comes relapse relapses. You know, you have a great thing going for you. And something happens for you to go back into a previous pattern. That means everything’s exciting, everything is happening. You’re optimistic, you’re hopeful, all that is great. But then you use something happens and you drag yourself back and saying is not worth it. I don’t feel motivated anymore. So there is something that is triggering this regression with your regressed back into usually some unresolved emotions, repressed emotions, usually. And maybe some events have happened in the past from which you have not clearly moved away. And you still are processing these thoughts in you.


Unfortunately, the brain is an incredibly powerful processing machine. There’s no other processing machine in the world that can that is as effective as the human brain is. So we do we process events from our past and then we get either demotivated or motivated in this case demotivated. So, the source of luck or motivation has to be identified as step one. Now, you do that, that you do that in parallel. But then the real question we are addressing here is, I woke up this morning, and I’m unmotivated, what should I do? Okay, the first and foremost thing is you need to have some support systems in place. Regardless, whoever you are, doesn’t matter how good you are, how great you are, and how much of incredible talents you have in you, you got to have a good support system in place. What are the support systems? What kind of support system that you need to have in place? The first is the most immediate source of motivation, what do you go to? What’s your first line of the source of motivation? For me, it’s music. That’s my first line of motivation. I could listen to a piece of music and I get motivated. For you, it could be a book, or maybe a movie, maybe a good conversation with a friend.

I’ll tell you, my second line of motivation is the photo album that I have with me, all my old photos from my childhood, my parents all that I have a photo album. And that’s my source of inspiration. What I do with those photos is my photos tell me where I came from, and where I am today. It shows me my past in front of my eyes, and my incredible love and appreciation for all the people who stepped into my life. And as a result of their cumulative effort, I am here doing what I’m doing. So I have this frame, an incredible frame of gratitude. Immediately, the minute I feel unmotivated, I go back to my album. So in my mind, I have photos of all my relatives and all my friends. Totally in my mind, because I see these pictures all the time. Then I have a third line of the source of motivation, which is an authority figure. Somebody who knows more than me, somebody who has done better things than me, somebody who has accomplished and who I look up to. This could be a teacher in your life, this could be a parent in your life, this could be a big brother in your life or a big sister, whoever that is, you should be having an authority figure in your life, at some point to tap into some motivation from them. And I also have my fourth line of motivation, which is my peers, my friends, sometimes my coworkers in the past, and sometimes your employees today, some people who I work with the two of my co-workers, I lean on them sometimes. So support systems. Now, even bigger than this. Let’s say you can’t tap into your source of, you know, deem your source of lack of motivation. Let’s say you don’t understand the duration, how long you stay unmotivated, you have no idea how you recovered, and you don’t know when you relapse, you have no control and all that, let’s say let’s take that as a case study. And then also look into that. Let’s take let’s make an assumption, that you don’t have any support systems. What can you do? You need to have a goal sheet. This is a must. Your goals have to be in front of you. You need to know why you wake up in the morning and what you do every day. Why do you wake up? And what do you do? You need to have these answers in place. I have kept on saying this on this podcast. I wake up in the morning I do this podcast. This is one of my goals. My daily goal is to do this podcast, you need to have your daily goals in place. In fact, you need to have your big goals in place. An incredible book, The Power of Less by Leo Bob, is the incredible book is he talks about a less is more in that he says you know God had a big goal in place.


And from there, you need to have multiple smaller goals that add up to that big goal. And from that, from those smaller goals, you will have each one of your smaller goals need to have multiple tasks beneath them. And then when you wake up in the morning, you have time blocks within which you are getting things done. And these tasks have to be marked into those blocks. And they need to be accomplished. Incredible model. You need to have a goal sheet. This is how you become powerful and even more productive at a time when you’re demoted because you need to get these things done. These are scheduled. People who are unmotivated or people who don’t have a schedule. See the truth. I can bet my life on this. They don’t know what to do with that time they wake up, they don’t know they wander all over the place. Imagine a doctor unwilling to go to work. I mean, there were enough reasons for doctors not to go. I mean, they had families they have, they have their life, they could have said we don’t want to go to hospitals, because there are patients there who have COVID, my our families would get COVID. They didn’t say that. I mean, there was, there was absolute motivation not to go to work. But they didn’t. They did, they did go and probably have difficulty controlling my voice here. You know, how many doctors lost their lives to this COVID. Scary, scary, if you think about it. They did go to work. Imagine them saying I’m demotivated to go to work, I don’t know what, and in fact, they were Ultra productive through all this. And a product with their life to give up their life’s to say people might take that fame for a second, just that frame for a second. And you think you and I are doing something more important than that. I don’t think I’m doing anything more important that none of the work that I do is as important as wasn’t what these heroes did. So once you have that frame, now, for them, it’s also routine. for them. It’s also the same, the same thing every day, there’s no variation. There is no fun in what they do. But they do go and save lives. So imagine that frame for a second, and structure that frames into your thinking, and start leading the day. How can you be unproductive? And how can you lack motivation in when you approach something through that frame? Part to lack of motivation. That’s all for now. I hope today’s podcast is helpful.

Hopefully, this motivates you to go and start doing whatever you’re planning to do and whatever your success trajectory is, you apply yourself to it. And before you know it, I’ll be here again with another incredible podcast. Another idea another concept and the strategy is at least tomorrow. So stay focused, stay safe wherever you are, and keep your eyes completely aligned to the work that you’re doing that will take you to the success that you deserve. That will take you to the success that you desire and deserve. Thank you.

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