7 Effective Methods How to Get Motivated When You’re Feeling Tired

How to get motivated when feeling tired is one of the most common subjects that everyone faces in their life. Most people work from 9 to 5 and from Monday to Friday; and it is extremely typical for us to feel no energy, lack of motivation, tired, and exhausted throughout the day.

You have to understand that motivation is an emotion, and it comes and goes. There is no way you can maintain your motivation and stay at the peak state every waking moment. Even the most successful people in the world have times when they are feeling tired and have no motivation.

However, the problem is not about avoiding feeling tired, but it is about what you do when you’re feeling tired or having no drive to do something that truly matters.

First, you have to understand that motivation doesn’t last. And being productive and creating success is how you handle the situation when you’re feeling tired and down.

Always remember this, successful people are able to produce remarkable results in their lives because they choose to do the work even when they don’t feel like it. They handle their “down time” much better than ordinary people.

This is exactly what you need to do learn to do in order to manage your energy, willpower, and get motivated when you are feeling tired. Here are 7 great methods how you can do so.

1. Remember Your Purpose

One of the most powerful techniques to get motivated when you’re feeling tired is to remember your purpose. Why do you want to do what you want to do?

For example, you know that if you want to build a successful blog, you need to constantly update and publish great content to it regularly. And in order to achieve this, you need to write almost every single day.

The problem with most people is that they don’t feel the motivation to do so. They feel tired after they get home from work. They are tired and yet, they need to spend their time and use their willpower to write the 500 words or 1000 words article for their blogs.

So what should you do when this happens? Just remember your purpose. Your purpose is the reason why you are doing what you do.

Highly successful people like Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, etc, are highly motivated and are always in action because they always remember their purpose and why they want to do what they do.

When you have a strong purpose behind your goal, intention, or action, you will do it no matter how tired you feel.

Think about it, if you need to write a 1000 words article after you get home from work at night, you’re feeling tired and exhausted, and you don’t feel like doing it. What if someone puts a gun to your head and force you to do it? Will you do that? Of course, you will.

So it is clear. You need a strong, powerful, empowering, and emotional reason to take action. This is especially true when you are feeling tired and exhausted or feeling no motivation to do something.

Just remember your purpose. Why do you want to live your dreams? Why do you want to achieve your goals? Do you want to repeat your last year this year? Do you want to stay the same and continue to stay broke this year? Or do you want to live a better life and make your loved ones feel proud of you?

When you have a strong purpose supporting you at the back, you will never have to worry about motivation anymore. Even when you are feeling tired, you will somehow find the energy and make it happen.

2. Take Short Breaks

One of the reasons that you’re feeling tired is because you’re not giving yourself enough time to recover. When you try to do the same task over long hours, your mind feels exhausted and this makes you tired, both physically and mentally.

When this happens, your mind will trick you into doing something else that looks “more fun” to you. This is the time when you will feel tired, lack of motivation to continue with the task, and highly likely, you will end up procrastinating the task and come back to it at a later time.

Our willpower and motivation are like the battery level for our phone. After a good rest, we feel energetic and are more motivated to do things. As we go through our day to make decisions and work, we consume our willpower and energy accordingly.

And at the end of the day when you reach home at night, usually, you will have no energy left to work and you just want to watch TV or play some games to enjoy the evening. Does this sound familiar?

This is why we need to learn to take short breaks from time to time throughout the day. When we schedule breaks into our day, we are able to conserve and even replenish our willpower and energy so that we can stay motivated longer.

Therefore, whenever you’re tired, take a short break. This is to make you refresh and recharge your battery.

You charge your phone when it runs out of battery right? Why don’t do that to yourself?

A good strategy in taking short breaks is to use the Pomodoro technique. This is where you work for 25 minutes and then take a short 5 minutes break. And you continue to repeat this process for a couple of times before you take a longer rest.

This technique is scientifically proven to work. And you can customize the time frame to make it suitable for yourself. Say, instead of working for 25 minutes, you can choose to work for 40 minutes and take a 5 or 10 minutes rest.

Just try out and see what works best for you and then stick to your schedule.

3. Make Use of Power Naps

Another great way to get motivated when you’re feeling tired is to do according to what your body and mind want, to take a short nap. It is called a power nap because the nap is short and it is aimed to refresh and recharge your energy.

Well, according to Dr. Phyllis Zee, a sleep expert from Northwestern University, he says that the best time to take a power nap is between 1pm to 3pm. And your power nap should be something around 15 to 30 minutes.

You do not want to sleep longer than that, say about an hour because you don’t want to fall into the deep sleep mode. When you fall into deep sleep, you may wake up feeling even more tired and groggy.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Famous scientist Albert Einstein took nap each day even though he slept more than 10 hours at night.
• Leonardo da Vinci took many naps during the day and slept less at night.
• Thomas Edison was often found taking short naps in his lab.
• John D. Rockefeller, the oil industry billionaire napped in his office every afternoon.

If you still think that taking power nap is not going to work, read this article from WebMD, you’ll be surprised by the secrets of power naps.

I know that you understand about taking power naps during the day, but it is almost impossible to take nap if you are in the office and everyone is watching you, right?

Don’t worry, it is about your will and commitment to take power naps rather than how to make it possible. When there is will, there is a way, remember? Check out these 5 suggestions from Inc.com.

Hence, whenever you’re feeling tired, take a power nap. For just a short 15 to 30 minutes, it energizes and refreshes you to go for long hours, a worthy trade.

4. Go Extremely Small

Whenever you’re feeling tired and have no energy to do the work that you’re supposed to do, the best way to handle it is to do the work in an extremely small chunk.

For example, if you know that you need to do 50 push-ups today but you’re feeling so tired and no motivation to do it, just commit and tell yourself to do 5 push-ups.

The point is to make the task so small and so easy to do so that you’ll never feel the resistance. If you are required to write 1,000 words article and you don’t feel like doing it, just tell yourself and commit to writing 300 or 500 words. And if 300 words are still too much for you, just go for 100 words.

When you do so, you are making the task into smaller and more manageable action steps that you can tackle right away. This will greatly lower the resistance and improve your motivation.

Not only that, this technique is powerful because it focuses on getting the things started rather than waiting for the motivation to do the whole thing.

Just like how momentum works. As long as you get started, the motivation will come when you are in motion.

Your primary goal is to write 1,000 words article, but because you feel tired and no motivation, so you decide to just write 100 words. Guess what, once you took action and started writing the 100 words, the energy will come and with the motivation.

Usually, once you have hit the 100 words target, you already in a more motivational state and at a higher momentum, and highly likely, you will continue to write the article to hit a much better target.

This is because a task may seem stressful, big, and difficult to you before you work on them, but once you started them, you’ll often feel that they’re less difficult as you imagined.

Here’s an interesting article from Psychology Today that you should read. The psychologist discovered:

“Once we start a task, it’s rarely as bad as we think. In fact, many participants made comments when we paged them during their last-minute efforts that they wished they had started earlier – the task was actually interesting, and they thought they could do a better job with a little more time.”

This is what exactly you should do when you feel tired. Just go small. Do the tiny things that are easy and require no motivation. When you are in action, the motivation will come.

5. Create the Commitment and Be Accountable For

Nobody likes to look bad in the presence of others, hence, making a public commitment and accountability works.

Of course, you don’t have to shout or share your goals out loud with everyone, but if you want to, that’s fine too. Beware, some people may think that you’re overly ambitious or you’re just someone who likes to show off. But that’s their problems, not yours, you just need to mind your own business and live your own life.

A good method in making a public commitment is not about sharing your goals, but your tasks. Just tell your colleagues or manager what tasks you want to get done today. When you tell other people you’re going to make 50 prospecting calls, you will feel the pressure right away.

It is not easy to publicly commit to a goal, but when you do, you are putting yourself on the line and your reputation is at stake.

Thus, you will get the work done even when you’re feeling tired and no motivation.

If you have no idea how to do this, start with finding an accountability partner. Look for someone who shares similar goals and value with you, and then commit to him or her that you will be sending a daily or weekly report to show your progress.

Dr. Gail Matthews, a professor in Dominican’s Department of Psychology in the School of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, conducted a survey and discovered that as much as 70% of the participants who sent weekly reports to an accountability partner either completely accomplished their goals or were at least halfway there.

In other words, when you get yourself an accountability partner and you send your progress report to him every week, you have a higher chance of achieving your goal and are in the right direction.

So what are you waiting for? Go and get yourself an accountability partner and start making the commitment right now.

6. Change the Environment

I believe that you have always known that your surrounding can influence and impact your decision, and the environment you’re in can even define your destiny.

Scientists have discovered that when the mineral water vending machine was moved closer to the cashier and the soft drinks were moved away from it, people tend to drink water more than soft drinks, without even thinking about it.

In fact, this is exactly what has happened and has been published in The American Journal of Public Health. When bottled water place closer to the cashier and the soft drinks were away from it, the soda sales dropped by 11.4%.

As you can see, the environment and the surrounding you’re in have tremendous power to shape your life, and your motivation too.

If you leave all your work on the weekend, you’ll find it extremely difficult to come up with motivation when you see everyone else is enjoying but you need to work.

So create a supportive environment and surrounding that will motivate you to do the work, even when you’re feeling tired.

When you’re tired but there’s work that you need to get done, just turn off your phone and the internet (if you don’t need it), close your office door, and focus on getting the work done. Get rid of all possible distractions and create an environment where you will want to work.

In my case, I prefer to work at home since I’m a writer and also a blogger. I used to believe that I need to work in coffeehouse like Starbucks, but oftentimes, when I’m in Starbucks, I either can’t find a good place, or it is either too noisy, or the lights are just too dimmed and I can’t focus on writing.

I don’t really go to Starbucks anymore these days. I just stay at home and concentrate on my work. Plus, I have also invested in a coffee machine. Cheers.

7. Stay Active

When you’re feeling tired and no motivation, what should you do? Get active. Exercise. Get sweat. Yes, there are many benefits you can get from exercise, and one of them is to improve your mood.

It has been scientifically proven that when you exercise and move your body, the physical activity stimulates various brain cells that may make you feel happier and more relaxed.

Not only that, exercises also able to boost your energy. When you exercise, you deliver oxygen and nutrients to your tissues and help your cardiovascular system work more efficiently.

As for myself, I try to maintain my daily exercise habit of doing some simple stretches every day. And every Monday, I will go for jogging for about an hour. And for Wednesday, I go for badminton with friends.

What about you? Everyone knows that exercise and living an active lifestyle is important, but most never do anything about it. Despite knowing the fact that exercise is crucial, still, most people don’t do it.

Try this when you’re feeling tired sleepy: Stand on the ground and do some jumping. You will feel motivated and energetic almost instantly.

The reason is that when you move your body, your blood flows faster, you pump up your heart rate, and more importantly, you change your physiology. And when your physiology changed, your focus and attention will change, as a result, your motivation level will be affected as well.

So get moving and stay active, my friend.

Conclusion

Time to recap what you have learned in this article. So whenever you are feeling tired, here is what you can do:

1. Remember your purpose, revisit your goals, and imagine getting and living the results you want.

2. Take a short break. You’re tired, so why not just take a short break and come back later? Use the Pomodoro technique to handle your tasks.

3. Take a power nap. Your body is telling you that it is tired and needed some rest, so take a short power nap and stay refreshed after that.

4. Go small. Make the task so small and easy to do that you will never say no to it.

5. Make a public commitment and find an accountability partner. When someone’s watching you, you will do it no matter how tired you are.

6. Change the environment. If you need to focus on your work, just lock yourself in your room and focus on getting the task done. Get rid of distraction and change to a more relaxed environment if you need to.

7. Get active. Just do something jumping and stretching out whenever you feel tired. When your physiology changed, so will your mood.