Staying Motivated at Work

• 2018/11/18

Staying motivated as a professional

How is your motivation toward work these days?

It is easy to feel pumped when your work environment changes or a brand-new project kicks off, but keeping motivation high all the time is really hard.

Here are the things I do to keep myself energized:

• Read books that are not directly tied to my day job.
• Read blogs written overseas.
• Work on personal projects and own a tiny product of my own.
• Write posts like this one.
• Toy with startup ideas.

Let me walk through them one by one.

Read books that are not directly related to work

Everyone can pick up a book. Most of us studied from books when we entered this industry. Never forget your beginner’s mindset.

The key here is to read things unrelated to your daily tasks.

For example:

• If you usually work on the backend, try studying design.
• If you are an infrastructure engineer who can write shell scripts but rarely touches web development, learn how the web side works.

Saying “it doesn’t help my job, so I won’t study it” is such a waste. Knowing a little about areas outside your scope broadens your view.

Read blogs from abroad

I highly recommend this—and make it a habit to read in English.

I started to build up my English skills that way and soon realized most articles are more approachable than I expected. My go-to sources are:

• Reddit
• TechCrunch
• The Verge

They are mainstream picks, but they are easy to digest. Take the chance to study English while you are at it.

Own a personal product

Use your favorite language, a language you are learning, any framework—whatever makes you happy.

Having a sandbox where you can do anything you like is simply fun. There are no deadlines or constraints, and you can quickly try whatever you are curious about. That is incredibly valuable.

Write

In my opinion, you should write.

Let me borrow a quote from Einstein:

If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.

I interpret that as: if I cannot write about it, I have not truly grasped it. By publishing my thoughts, I believe my understanding deepens.

It is not about chasing page views. You can write for yourself, dump your thoughts, or keep a daily log of what you did. Any form of output is meaningful.

Think about starting a company

This one is pure fun. Ideas depend somewhat on how much you know, but they are not bound by it. Generating lots of ideas is a good thing, so share them freely.

Wrapping up

To grow our skills, we need to take action. These are the actions I am taking.

What do you do to level up your skills?