Blog written by recruiter Koreena Geisler-Wagner.
Everyone has had moments where outlooks appear grim and thoughts of “what’s the point?” wander into our minds. It can be difficult to push yourself to finish a project or undertake something new/experimental, but progress and development (of any kind) come only to those who constantly push, try, and refuse to give up.
In her article “4 ways J.K. Rowling’s advice can inspire you at work,” Allison Hirshlag discusses how one can overcome a constant barrage of self-doubt and other perceived obstacles. Inspired by Rowling’s latest series of motivational tweets, Hirshlag suggests that the best ways to stay motivated include:
- Finding the underlying passion that inspired you to start a project in the first place. This could be anything from a new career search to introducing a new system/process/idea to your boss.
- Keeping your sense of entrepreneurship alive: being able to initiate and follow-through, to build something from the ground up. It doesn’t matter what you started and finished, just showing potential or current employers that you possess the self-motivation necessary to pull off such a project is enough to impress them.
- Creative, outside-the-box thinking shows that you’re not interested in simply showing up to clock-in, clock-out, and do the bare minimum.
- Be somebody who does rather than someone who tries. Seeking new challenges and actually accomplishing something will become a “good kind of addiction” that leads to new and further success. In the words of J.K. Rowling, “you’ll have turned yourself from somebody who’s ‘thinking of’, who ‘might’, who’s ‘trying’, to someone who DID.”
Photo: “The Making of Harry Potter” by Dave Catchpole, available under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.