Losing motivation in a creative job: how to get your enthusiasm for work back. Even people who turn their passion into a profession know what it is like to lose motivation. We show you why joy can turn into a chore – and the concrete steps that will help you win back your enthusiasm.
Photo: Carlotta Steinkamp
We all know it: motivation that slowly drains away. Whether it’s a brilliant idea, a project or just the spring clean we’ve been putting off forever, at some point we lose the desire to keep going. A quick look at the research shows the number of people losing their motivation is rising. While thirty to fifty per cent of students in Germany struggle with motivation, the figure in the working world is around fifty to sixty per cent.
The reasons vary: stress, burnout, being under-challenged. As I see it, the fact that several wars are raging around the world, that right-wing extremism is on the rise in Europe and that all our futures are uncertain at best, if not doomed, paralyses even the most motivated people from time to time.
That probably sounds thoroughly depressing and demotivating. Still, I want to look at what we can do to overcome this feeling and this state of mind. So I went looking for people around me who lose their motivation now and then. How do they deal with it, and what are their methods?
Photo: Max Schlag
When Kristin’s motivation deserts her, she first looks for new stimuli in nature
For Kristin Floruß, 24, motivation is something that often only kicks in when her deadlines are within reach. The trainee interior designer takes a fairly pragmatic approach to her work and often only starts when she feels it really makes sense.
I ask her whether she ever actually loses her motivation. ‘Never,’ says Krissi with a mischievous grin. The irony is impossible to miss. Over time, she has found a few ways to handle it when her motivation goes. Her first reflex is to get outside – ideally combined with buying something sweet. Most of all, she likes to meet friends to work together and escape the stress a little.
Put your phone down, lock Instagram and get back out into real life!
Kristin Floruß
Photo: Max Schlag
Thomas Müller Vahl first steps back from the task
Thomas Müller Vahl, 25, studies Visual Journalism and Documentary Photography in Hannover. When motivation is lacking, he advises always stepping back a little from whatever you are supposed to be doing. Like Krissi, he finds it helps to talk to other people.
As someone who works creatively, he finds that how he is feeling has an enormous influence on his work ethic. ‘What I always notice is that it’s linked to how you’re doing. Whether the lack of motivation comes from the work itself or whether the reasons lie elsewhere.’
For Hermann, motivation depends on the seasons. He would describe his current state more as a serious loss of focus.
Lying around with no desire to do anything is more of a winter thing for him, says the 28-year-old maths master’s student from Berlin. When I first ask him how he generally gets on with motivation, he has to laugh. ‘What do you think?’ he fires back in his blunt Berlin way. What helps him, though, is getting physically active. Most of his tasks are mental, so one solution might be a quick jump in the river, some stretching – or simply not forcing himself. Or deliberately putting something off for a while.
Photo: Max Schlag
For me it’s fine to do something else in that moment, as long as I really do get my actual task done later.
Thomas Müller Vahl
From my own experience, I can say that motivation can disappear as quickly as it came. I usually mourn it a little, try my hand at pointless tasks, get lost in what I actually wanted to do and then end up at rock bottom.
In moments like that, I sometimes find it almost easier to resolve to do nothing productive at all. That usually only works for a short while anyway, but everything I manage after that feels like a bonus.
Even if it isn’t motivation in the usual sense, time pressure is also a wonderful driver for getting things done. But what helped me most last year was talking to other people. So often we are overwhelmed by the feeling that we can’t manage something – often together with a sense of shame, because everyone else seems to cope somehow, don’t they?
Losing your motivation now and then is completely normal and, in my view, perfectly fine. Sometimes the feeling may simply be a signal that it’s time for a short break. Rather than presenting the one solution for getting our motivation back, my advice would be to talk about what we are feeling.
We all have different ways of dealing with it. But in the end, none of us is alone in this!
