Remember everything: how to start working after the New Year holidays. How to force yourself to work after the holidays? Turn off all gadgets

The period after the New Year holidays is a great time to decide on strategic issues and try to evaluate your life. Still, it will not be easy to immediately take on the solution of current problems.

First day

So, today is the first day after the New Year holidays at work. First of all, congratulate yourself on the fact that you have a job and the wave of crisis layoffs has passed by.

Secondly, listen to your feelings. Perhaps the belt presses on the stomach with a vengeance, because the waist is overgrown with Olivier and aspic. Perhaps your feelings are filled with annoyance, because you paid off the children with a tablet for all 10 days of vacation, instead of going to museums with them. Perhaps the crisis in relations with your other half, carefully hidden from each other, began to resonate more and more insistently during the holidays, because in these two weeks of forced intimacy, you both did not have the opportunity to escape into the pseudo-routine of “meetings”, “business trips”, “urgent calls to the client ".

It is very important to understand exactly how to emerge from the state of holidays into the workflow. The main thing is not to rush. Be kind to yourself and others - do not put huge tasks on the first working week. All the same, the body will spend more energy on an early rise than on the real embodiment of the commercial director's fantasies. And do not torment your colleagues with hyper-demanding: the team will not feel anything but your personal ostentation, and you will not achieve sincere motivation from people and even from yourself.

But what should be done is to work out for yourself and your subordinates, if you have them, the most practical and most realistic tasks for the future. During the working year, you probably didn’t get your hands on them, because everything was on fire and everything was needed yesterday. But in the first week after the New Year, we still did not have time to mess up enough to bring the projects to the state of “necessary yesterday” and “everything is on fire”. This is where the time comes to calmly finish the eternal jambs.

When you formulate very simple and very specific tasks, soberly assess the capabilities of your colleagues and your own, and in no case demand an instant victorious implementation of these tasks. The most effective thing is to formulate, alone with yourself or in a brainstorming (non-conflict) storm with like-minded colleagues, three very specific steps for the implementation of each of the extremely outlined tasks.

big questions

Most layoffs and divorces happen after holidays and New Year's holidays, so it's better to take a break and look at your life from the outside.

Many of us spend years running away from ourselves in the mouse fuss of everyday life (“come on, a normal job, allows you to feed your family; nothing that dreamed about something completely different”), and then make sharp, rash decisions. The most neurotic and childish of us, who have not outgrown the teenage stage, with a wild gleam in their eyes and a cry of “fuck it all,” eventually quit and get divorced.

It won't work like that: it's hysterical and back side the same irresponsibility that previously allowed a person to run so effectively from uncomfortable questions to himself.

If, after returning to work after the holidays, you feel that something does not suit you in yourself, in the team, in the company, in the leader, then do not dismiss this feeling - see it as valuable feedback for the emergence of strategic positive changes in oneself and in the system.

What exactly do you not like? How could you be more helpful? What alternatives do you see for the current state of affairs? How could you encourage these alternatives? Where does your company lie to itself, and where does it lie to the market and/or customers (no need to pretend that we are saints: we all have a shadow)?

If you do not run away from these questions, but think hard and honestly about them, then you can look for answers. On your own, with colleagues, management, a consultant, a beloved dog - whatever you like - but look for it. Develop solutions. Turn them into reality. But consciously! And not like a wild, yet not free squirrel in the dull, meaningless wheel of a normative prison. Implementing solutions after a painful search for new answers to uncomfortable questions will be difficult, but strategically much more effective.

Three stonemasons

Do you know the parable of the three stonemasons?

The traveler wanders and sees a stonemason working furiously. He asks: "What are you doing?" To which he angrily replies: “Don’t you see? I work at this damn job so that the owner gives me a bowl of beans in the evening so that my family does not starve to death. The traveler goes further and sees a stonemason turning a stone with a bold cold, even evil enthusiasm. He asks: "What are you doing?" To this the second stonecutter proudly responds: “Don't you see? My master has the best stone quarry, we fight all competitors for the best work, and we will defeat everyone, and I will earn more than any other stone cutter in the empire! After some time, the traveler sees a third stonemason in front of him. The one intently hews stoneswhistling some cheerful tune. The traveler asks this one too: “What are you doing, stonecutter?” It wasn't the first time he heard it. In the end, hardly distracted from work, he looked at the traveler with surprise and answered: “Me? I'm just building our temple."

Do you work for beans? For victory in the capitalist competition? Or are you building a temple of meanings and/or goods (services) that makes the world at least a little bit better, and every mason of your construction truly feels involved in creating something big and bright that will outlive us all? And, if this feeling is not enough for you, what prevents you personally from creating it for yourself?

These are great questions to torment yourself with effectively during and after the long holidays.

The holidays are over. It's time to go to work, but I don't even want to think about it. There are a lot of cases, but there is no desire to take them on. Common situation? How to force yourself to work right now and love your job? In this difficult matter, the advice of professional psychologists will help.

Why motivate yourself? Isn't this the business of the boss or the HR? “In my opinion, for a psychologically mature person, self-motivation to work is more effective than external incentives,” says Ilya Shabshin, counseling psychologist, leading specialist at the Volkhonka Psychological Center. In addition, the methods of motivation that the boss will apply to a lazy employee are unlikely to please him. Therefore, it is better to force yourself than to have others do it.

Folk wisdom advises to do this when bouts of laziness: open the Forbes list and look for your name there. If you're not there, run to work! However, there are other methods as well.

Operational self-motivation

As luck would have it, most often the desire to relax visits at the height of the working day. However, there are a few tricks to help you get started here and now:

1. "Swim the English Channel." Why do we find it difficult to get started on important work? “The work that you don’t want to do, as a rule, is very cumbersome, large-scale,” explains Dmitry Seinov, psychologist, president of the 5 Da! psychological center. - After all, someone who plays Tetris on a computer half of his working time is hardly bothered by his work. Complex tasks can be broken down into stages and do something easy first, then something else easy, etc. This is the so-called crushing effect.

The psychologist draws an interesting analogy: “For example, if you are asked to swim across the English Channel, you will answer: “Are you crazy?”. But if you are immersed in the pool and offered to swim the same distance, then you will do it calmly, albeit with respite. Why? You know that at any moment you can leave the pool and certainly not drown. It's the same with hard work.

If the work is multi-stage, like the editors of Rabota.ru, then you can say to yourself: "Today I will make a plan and I will not do anything else." If you have time and energy left, tell yourself: "Now I will call the experts and I will not do anything else." So, step by step, you will complete the task.

In addition, small victories give confidence and return us to the mainstream of “flow” - a state where work is both interesting and easy. In any situation, it is better to break a complex task into its component parts.

Other ways of self-motivation are even easier.

2. Chair trick. Sit upright in a chair. If you can put it in the middle of the room - so much the better. Say to yourself: “Either I get to work, or I just sit here.” After a few minutes of inactivity, the desire to do something will take its toll.

3. Priceless coins. Dmitry Seinov advises: “Very simple motivation: take a few coins, preferably of the same denomination. Then take one coin in your hand and imagine that this is something important to you. Let's say family, friends, some hobby.

“Having collected all the coins in your hand, you need to hold them for a while and imagine that if you don’t do what needs to be done now, you will lose these coins and you will have nothing left.

It's really energizing. It is clear that even if you do not do this work, the world will not collapse, and friends and hobbies will not go anywhere from you. Nevertheless, such hyperbolization works perfectly.

4. Himself a stick and a carrot. Reception is designed for people with a strong will. Promise yourself a small reward for completing a task on time. For non-compliance, assign yourself a small but sensitive punishment. For example, do not listen to music on the way home.

5. "Having given the word - hold on." Promise someone whose opinion you value about yourself that you will finish something today. The result will exceed all expectations!

6. Postpone until tomorrow what you want to do today. Let's say you're doing well today. But tomorrow morning I will again have to fight laziness. How to be?

If you feel like you can easily handle the rest of your current job, stop. If time suffers, postpone the easy and understandable part of the work until tomorrow morning - so you will quickly get involved in the next working day. And in the remaining time, it is better to do something new and more difficult.

To each according to motivation

But how to accustom yourself not to be lazy and work with pleasure every day?

It is necessary to answer the question: why can there be indifference or aversion to work at all? Sometimes we just don't see the point in what we do. Here is what Ilya Shabshin says to this: “There is a general answer to the questions of how to self-motivate yourself and fall in love with uninteresting work: you need to find in it a meaning that is really meaningful for you personally, that is, answer the question: “Why am I doing this? "".

Ilya Shabshin and Dmitry Seinov independently used the following parable as an example: “One traveler passed by a grandiose construction site. He approached one of the builders and asked: "What are you doing?". He replied: "I'm laying stones." The traveler asked the same question to another builder. He replied: "I earn my living." The traveler asked another builder about the same. He said: "I am building the most beautiful cathedral in the world." From an external point of view, all builders did the same thing, but for each of his activities had a different meaning and, consequently, different self-motivation.

Each of these settings has the right to life, except, of course, the answer "I'm laying stones." If you perceive your work as an aimless activity (“I write words”, “I sort pieces of paper”, “I add and multiply numbers”), work will get bored very soon.

The goal for each employee can be different: to earn their own bread and butter (then - with caviar, and in the long run to get into the Forbes list), to become a big boss (in the long run - the biggest one), to realize themselves in their favorite business. The main thing is that it exists.

Dmitry Seinov identifies three principles of self-motivation. Ilya Shabshin added one more item to the list. Here is what, according to psychologists, makes us work:

1. Interest.

2. Team.

3. Money.

4. The desire for self-development.

Let's consider each of the points in more detail.

Work for Interest

If you work with passion, work time flies unnoticed. How to make work interesting? There are two approaches.

Find your mission. This is what Dmitry Seinov advises to do. The builder of "the most beautiful cathedral in the world" succeeded. But not everyone can see the mission in their work, so history knows many examples of how employers instilled a high goal in employees. The most striking example is the construction of communism.

A little imagination. If work turns into a routine, you can look at your business from a different angle. Do the same as always, but a little differently.

Ilya Shabshin gives an example from life: “A young man worked as a manager in a company that sold jewelry. Once a shipment of goods was brought in - more than fifty gold rings, and he had to weigh and measure each ring and write down the data on the tags. Tedious, mechanical, uninteresting, but necessary and inevitable work.

What did he do? Before weighing and measuring with instruments, the manager began to try to determine the size of the ring visually, "by eye", and the weight - in the palm of his hand. It turned out to be funny. Gradually, the accuracy grew: by the end of the game, he determined the size of the ring by eye with an accuracy of half a millimeter, and the weight - with an accuracy of a tenth of a gram. The task was completed without boredom and even with interest - because of finding a way to get involved in this work.

Young employees find different ways to abstract from everyday life and present their work in a romantic setting for a while. For example, a PR-manager may imagine himself a herald, and a copywriter - a medieval monk who argues with heretics.

Colleagues and wallet

“The second strong motivation factor is the team,” says Dmitry Seinov. “If there are friends, acquaintances, like-minded people in the team, then you can focus not on work, but on the presence in the team.” Pleasant society - why not go to work in the morning with joy?

“If the team did not work out, and the work is not interesting, then money is the simplest motivation. Let people dream and plan how they will spend the money they earn,” says Dmitry Seinov. The main thing is not to forget, thanks to which they get to you.

Work on yourself

“Self-motivation is often based on self-development,” emphasizes Ilya Shabshin. If you consider any work as work for your future, you can do it with great zeal.

“Even in an uninteresting job, you need to look for an opportunity for your development, set yourself individual tasks,” the psychologist advises. - They can be directly related to the work itself (improvement of certain criteria for its implementation) or wear psychological character. For example, can I, a hotline employee, talk calmly with an angry client, not succumb to his aggression and even try to calm him down?

It's a good idea to visually celebrate your accomplishments. Write down your tasks, and when completed, put a bold checkmark in front of them. The collection of completed cases is not only pleasing to the eye. She seems to say: “You are doing well” and motivates you to further achievements.

1 -1

Our psychologist Natalia Morgunova has prepared 10 ways for you to make yourself work after the holidays. While the Russians are resting on New Year holidays, Belarusians and many others have already gone to work. What to do to force yourself to work if there is no strength.

Get a good night's sleep the night before. During the holidays, we are used to going to bed well after midnight, and then waking up no earlier than noon. To make it easier to force yourself to work, a day or two before the start of workdays, start going to bed and waking up early.
Come up with a ritual for the morning. Let it start somehow in a special way, not like before. Take a contrast shower, exercise, prepare a new delicious meal, listen to pleasant music, turn on an aroma lamp or citrus-scented scented candles. All this will invigorate and help to force yourself to work.
Change your image. There is no need for global changes like a shaved head. It is enough just to change the usual styling or makeup. Put on a new suit, take a new purse, put a new diary in it. New pen, stapler or stickers - novelty effect - good way how to force yourself to work after the holidays.
Take a new route to or from work. Let it take you more time, but it will distract you from the usual annoying views. You will see and learn something new, it will invigorate and cheer you up.
Remove your workspace. Send all Christmas trees, balls, lights, tinsel in a box until next year. Arrange new stationery, flower vases, stylish accessories - for sure, you have been given a lot of pleasant little things for the holidays. Let them please your eye in the workplace and help you get yourself to work.
Start your day nice. No need to rush to complete complex projects. Have a cup of coffee or tea with colleagues, treat them to homemade cakes or sweets from New Year's gifts, remember how fun the corporate party was, give everyone a trifle like stickers or pens. Surprises and good mood are a win-win option on how to make yourself work.
Write a to-do list. Do not start with the most difficult, plan everything correctly, gradually increasing the load. At the same time, do not just write a to-do list, but set specific deadlines. This will help keep yourself in line and force yourself to work.
Take breaks. After completing a small task, reward yourself with a candy or a tangerine, take a walk around the office, drink a glass of water, drop by your colleagues. May your first day be relaxed. You may do less, but the joy of achieving your goals is an effective motivator on how to make yourself work.
Consider office remodeling. For a year, or even more, for sure, a lot of things have already bothered you and depresses you. It is unlikely that it will be possible to remove the wall and make another window, but rearrange the tables and shelves - for sure. So it will turn out to change the situation and organize the workspace more rationally. And that's a good way to get yourself to work.
Make plans for future holidays. During your lunch break, think about new solemn events: a colleague's birthday, an anniversary of the company, March 8, etc. Pleasant thoughts will distract you from everyday routine, cheer you up and increase your desire to work.

These are 10 simple ways how to force yourself to work after the holidays. In general, if you absolutely do not want to go to work, and it seems to you a place of torment and torture, then you should think about it. Maybe it's time to change the type of activity. After all, when you do what you love, you don’t have to force yourself to work, everything turns out easily and simply by itself.

Folk wisdom advises to do this when bouts of laziness: open the Forbes list and look for your name there. If you're not there, run to work! However, there are other methods as well.

Operational self-motivation

Other ways of self-motivation are even easier.

5. "Having given the word - hold on." Promise someone whose opinion you value about yourself that you will finish something today. The result will exceed all expectations!

6. Postpone until tomorrow what you want to do today. Let's say you're doing well today. But tomorrow morning I will again have to fight laziness. How to be?

To each according to motivation

But how to accustom yourself not to be lazy and work with pleasure every day?

Dmitry Seinov identifies three principles of self-motivation. Ilya Shabshin added one more item to the list. Here is what, according to psychologists, makes us work:

1. Interest.

2. Team.

3. Money.

4. The desire for self-development.

Let's consider each of the points in more detail.

Work for Interest

If you work with passion, working time flies unnoticed. How to make work interesting? There are two approaches.

A little imagination. If work turns into a routine, you can look at your business from a different angle. Do the same as always, but a little differently.

Colleagues and wallet

Work on yourself

“Self-motivation is often based on self-development,” emphasizes Ilya Shabshin. If you consider any work as work for your future, you can do it with great zeal.

“Even in an uninteresting job, you need to look for an opportunity for your development, set yourself individual tasks,” the psychologist advises. - They can be directly related to the work itself (improvement of certain criteria for its implementation) or be of a psychological nature. For example, can I, a hotline employee, talk calmly with an angry client, not succumb to his aggression and even try to calm him down?

“Correctly found self-motivation not only leads to interest in one's work and naturally delays the onset of fatigue,” Ilya Shabshin sums up. “It gives a sense of control over the situation and the ability to consciously move forward, to new professional and personal achievements.” Such control over the situation, moving forward, successful employment and interesting work and we wish our readers in the coming year.

Did you also wake up yesterday from the sound of an alarm clock, not understanding why it was ringing? The New Year holidays are over, and no matter how much we complain that they are too long, this first week of work is very difficult for all of us to enjoy life. "Gazeta.Ru" made a selection of rules, following which to return to their usual working life it will be much easier.

Photo: iStockPhoto

1. Don't be too hard on yourself.

No need to think that after two weeks of holidays you will be able to go into work mode on the go. This is impossible, which means that you do not need to reproach yourself for not being able to do this.

First, remember that holidays are not only relaxation, but also stress. You had to do things you wouldn't normally do: prepare holiday meals and worry about whether they worked out; choose gifts and worry about whether those who are intended will like them; communicate with not always beloved distant relatives and worry, worry, worry.

Secondly, in two weeks your body has rebuilt and got used to the new regime - you probably slept longer, ate more often and walked more.

So expecting to be able to return to work in the first week is pointless. Do not aggravate stress with self-criticism. Give yourself time to recover and gradually get into a working rhythm.

Try to keep the first working week as unloaded as possible. All business meetings that can be postponed for a second week should be postponed. Also try not to stay late at work for at least the first few days.

2. Find the positive side of the holidays being over

It may be hard to see, but there is a lot of positive. Remember, you were going to start a new life this year, just as soon as the holidays were over? Here they ended.

And since you have not had time to get tired back yet, you have a real chance to improve your life at least a little. Remember what you promised yourself there in new year's eve? Gym? English courses? Dancing?

Whatever it is, now is the time to start before the enthusiasm dies down. The same goes for your career plans. Have you wanted to start a new project for a long time, but kept putting it off? Start right now!

3. But don't feel guilty

Keep in mind that the most common cause Post-New Year's depression is exactly point 2. You promised yourself to start a new life from the new year. Moreover, at the moment when you promised yourself this, you directly believed very much that this time you will succeed. And now New Year came, and you, it turns out, have not changed much. And everything that was hard for you to do last year is just as hard this year.

You begin to feel guilty about the fact that the year has just begun, and you are already breaking promises. At the same time, you forget the main thing: the year has just begun! And it is entirely at your disposal.

No matter what you think about yourself on New Year's Eve, you won't be able to change abruptly and immediately, no matter how much you want it. So what? Do everything gradually. Choose from a mountain of promises made to yourself one and at the same time as simple as possible. Things will start to move from place to place, and it will happen more slowly than you would like. But nevertheless, you will see progress and feel much better.

4. Focus on pleasure

In less than a week, you will be swallowed up by routine again. Work, household chores and the exchange rate of the ruble will again begin to occupy all your thoughts. So before that happens, take one hour, sit down and write yourself a list of a hundred pleasures. What do you like? Got ice cream? Read books about the ancient Greeks? Run? Watch cartoons? Lying in the park? Learn something new? Go to the theater? Doesn't matter. The main thing is that it should be something that brings you joy.

And note, we are not compiling a list of useful things. We are compiling a to-do list. So it may well include items such as "roll on the couch" and "eat fried".

After the list is ready, hang it in a prominent place. Now, throughout the year, you will remember that sometimes you need to break out of your usual routine and do something that is pleasant, and not “useful” and “necessary”. You have 100 "pleasures". This means that if you do something from this list once every three days, it will last for a whole year. And when you sum up the results of the year on the next New Year holidays, you will find that you have accumulated many pleasant memories.

5. Assemble the tree

The Christmas tree and all other Christmas decorations made your home especially cozy and brought you joy. But now, when it's time to get back to work, the tree in the apartment is a source of sadness. Looking at her, every time you think that the holidays are over.

Why are you torturing yourself? Collect the Christmas tree and generally put the apartment in order. No need to be sad that the holidays are over. You need to rejoice - the new year has begun, and you thought that it would be better than the past?