How to get motivated after a vacation to work - Get motivation when you're not feeling it

So I’m super excited to be live today. Happy Lunar New Year to everyone who celebrates it. I really hope that you are enjoying the festivities.

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How to get motivated after a vacation to work – Video Transcript

For those of you who don’t celebrate Lunar New Year, I think it has to be one of the most exciting times of the year. It really is Christmas, New Year, Easter, Birthdays, and every amazing celebration in one.

And the best thing about Lunar New Year in my view is that unlike the January 1st New Year celebration, Lunar New Year goes on for 15 days. So you have two whole weeks of celebrations which is pretty amazing.

So I’m really excited to be here. And today, I really wanted to talk about a topic that I think is really relevant. So in January this year, I went away with my family on holidays over the Christmas-New Year break, and it was an amazing trip.

I went to Da Nang, Vietnam, which I think is completely underrated, it’s such a spectacular place that has so much to see and do. The people are beautiful, they’re so friendly and the food is amazing, what more could you want from holidays?

And I’ve been back for probably about two weeks now and it’s been a bit, I’ve been on struggle street. I’m going to say it, I’m kind of, I’ve been on struggle street in trying to get back into the flow of things. So I’ve gone from eating and just waking up and saying, “okay, what am I going to eat today? What am I going to do today to have fun?” to having like everyone else after their return from vacation? How do I, you know, get back into it? So let’s, I’m going to walk you through five tactics.

So these are things that you can do right away so that you can get back into the flow and get productive again so you can start working your business. You can start studying and working towards the goals that you’ve set for yourself. So I’m just going to go ahead and share you some slides.

So just bear with me while I do this little transition because it’s not always flawless. So let’s have a look. So hopefully now– just give me a second. Nothing like the power of live. Let me move it here so I can see you

Okay, we’re in business. I can see the slides, I can see that you can see the slides And it’s all about ‘How do you get motivated after a break’. So let’s walk through the five strategies that you can do, five strategies, five tactics that you can implement so that you can get back into things, get back into the swing of things and start achieving the goals that you set for yourself earlier in the year.

So for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Sara Nguyen, and I’m a content and course creator and I help small businesses grow using social media and tech. So I do a lot of product reviews, I do a lot of social media marketing training, and I’m really here to help small businesses grow and to take away the tech stress and the tech, I guess, overwhelm and my whole goal is to make life easier for you in terms of the social media or the tech side

and the online side of business and marketing. And it’s definitely a shameless plug for my course, they’re Facebook Live impact, and if you’re interested, I’m going to drop the link in the description. I’m also going to put links into the description for everything mentioned in this video, so please check that. If I mentioned something, check there if I forgot, please just leave a comment and I will add it back.

So the first strategy in terms of helping you get back into the swing of things, helping you get motivated to do things is to start by taking small steps. And I feel that when you get back into work, it’s, it’s really easy to say, “okay, I’m going to do the big things, I’m going to tackle that big project”.

And I think that what you really want to do, particularly, and I’m not saying to do this forever, but start with the easy wins. I know that in terms of productivity coaches and transformational coaches, they talk about tackling the things that make you money first, which may not be the easier things.

But I think you know, a bit gentle on yourself when you’re just getting back from holidays when you’re just getting back from taking a break, get yourself motivated by working on the easy stuff and the smallest stuff first.

So Mark Zuckerberg famously said, “If you start doing the things that are easy first, you actually make a lot of progress.” and I think I’ve completely butchered his saying, but he said something like that and I’d completely agree with it, particularly when you’re looking to get motivated and back into, you know, your mojo.

So start with the easy wins. Start you know, get your task going and pick the things that you can tackle, that you can check off your list easily because this will help you feel more motivated because you’re making some progress.

And then you can start tackling the bigger ones after that. So the first, I guess, suggestion and the first tactic is to start by taking small steps for things that you have to do.

Now this, so, oh, I’ve got some more slides for you there. So start with a small task. And when you do a small task and you can achieve that, it really is a small win. So it makes you feel really great and it makes you feel like you are progressing.

It feels like progress. And when you feel like you’ve achieved something and you feel like you have progressed, you are more motivated to do more and to tackle the bigger things later.

So the second tactic that I have to help you get motivated after a break is to remove all distractions. I get it. I was on holidays, I was watching a lot of TV and movies in the downtime.

I was doing things that were not business-related because that was the whole point of going on holidays. It’s not work. It’s not I think about things that, you know, you do every single day, and when you come back to everyday life, I really don’t, I prefer to call it everyday life as opposed to reality because you know what, when you were on holidays, that was your reality at the time.

And when you’re back it’s just, you know, a different scenario. It’s not necessarily not reality, it’s just everyday life. So when you get back to everyday life and once again, you don’t have to rule these things out, you know, for the rest of your life.

But in the first few weeks, the days and weeks that you’re trying to get back into rhythms, trying to get back into the habits and your, and the, I guess the feeling of things, turn off the distractions. So yes, TV and that includes all television, you know, Netflix, Amazon, Prime, anything on-demand, even free to air,

if you watch free to air television, turn it off so that you can focus. Same with hobbies. I have a lot of time-sucking hobbies. I love sewing, I love cooking and I’m not saying throw away your hobbies and never have any balance.

I’m saying, put them away for a week, a couple of days a week so that you can get back into the swing of things. And this also includes the biggest time-suck of all, social media. So if you’re always scrolling on Instagram or if you found yourself scrolling, even more, when you are on holidays or taking a break, cut it out.

So remove it from your phone for a week just for a little bit while you’re trying to get your mojo back. Stop the distractions because that will really help you clear away the things that are taking your time away so that you can get back to focusing on your business.

You can get back to focusing on your studies and the things that you need to do to progress. So the third tip that I have is to clear your space. Now isn’t that a beautiful Zen photo? I really– I’ve gone a bit too far.

Clear your space. So it’s a really Zen photo and I, and there was really, I think, I think there is a connection between having a clean space and a clear desk and a clear mind. And it really is really peaceful when you have things out of the way that you’re not riding on top of like all this, let’s call it stuff so that you can get things done.

And I really believe in the saying that ‘a clear desk is a clear mind’. So tidy up. And this is not, you know, me telling you to suddenly go KonMari your house and empty everything out and then take three weeks off cleaning your house. No. If you need to do that schedule time to do that later.

But this is just clearing the space that you work in. So it’s a smaller space, whether that’s just your desk or whether that is just the room that you work in or the area that you work in.

Just clear it so that you can, you know, have a bit of breathing space and get stuff done. And I really love, I love a lot of things, but I really love Bobby Berk from Queer Eye, and there was an episode of Queer Eye where Bobby said, I’m just going to read it out ’cause it was really powerful to me.

They were visiting someone who was really depressed and he said something along the lines of “if your house is dirty and untidy, and you wake up in that every day, you start your day with a sense of defeat. When you wake up in a home that you feel proud of because you’re maintaining it, you’re respectful of your life.” and I really feel that this applies particularly to getting yourself back into being motivated, getting yourself back into to the flow of things is to have a neat space.

And some people may be like, “How does this really apply?” and I do believe that if you can just focus on starting with clearing the space that you work in so that you can work, then you can feel proud of that space.

You can be happy to go to that space to work. And that’s what this is all about. And really if it’s great enough or good enough for Bobby Berk from Queer Eye, it’s good enough for all of us. I really think that having a clean space helps you be more productive and helps you get back into the swing of things.

So clean things up. If you really want to KonMari your stuff, go ahead and KonMari, but don’t use that as an excuse to not get back into your, the business work that you need to do.

The fourth tip that I have for you is to let it be perfectly imperfect. I really think that in the first week when you’re getting back into the swing of things with the first few tasks that you’re doing, it’s okay for it to not be the greatest piece that you’ve ever put out.

Whether that’s writing something, whether that’s producing a video, whether that’s, you know, making something or producing something, it’s okay for it to be a little bit fugly. So freaking ugly.

And the reason for that, the reason, the reason I encourage that and use this as a tip to get yourself back into the swing of things, is that perfection really is going to be the death of people. And if you use perfection as a way to sabotage yourself and not get anything done at all, you’ll find that you continue to not make any progress and you won’t get back into the swing of things.

So just let it be not as perfect as you normally would have but let it go anyway, whether that’s creating social media graphics, whether that’s writing your blog posts because remember just get started and then you can go back and refine. And I think it’s a great tip and I had this really neat little video if it plays.

Here we go, and here’s the biggest piece of advice or the biggest takeaway from this, letting it be perfectly imperfect, is that no one is perfect. So if you get hung up on the details of making it exactly the way that you envisioned it in your mind you’ll never get anything out.

And this first week really is about momentum and doing something so that you can get the ball rolling. And the fifth and final tip that I have for you is to create, create your to-do lists.

Now, when people get back into work or whether that’s working on the business or whatever plans, you know, exercise or whatever it is that I took a break from during their vacation, they always ask, “Where do I start?” and I really think it is about looking back at the goals that you set for yourself in the previous quarter, in the previous month, in the previous year, and starting to realign yourself with those goals.

Now, if you don’t have any goals set, go and set them. I will put links in the description to some goal settings, ‘how to set your business goals training’, and some other related training to help you do this if you haven’t done this.

And that’s okay if you haven’t, just know that there’s support there that you can actually watch tutorials to help you get it done. Now, once you’ve realigned yourself with the goals that you’ve set for yourself, then take a look at what you need to do.

And in terms of your daily to-do list, first of all create one, and then second of all on this daily to-do list, that is just a breakdown of all of the goals that you have, have one goal that is a non-negotiable for the day, whatever that is.

So you agree to yourself, you make the commitment to yourself that I’m going to do this one thing with no matter how small it is, whether it’s I’m going to post one status update on my Instagram account telling people something or it’s I’m going to create one single graphic, have one non-negotiable for the day and then make sure you tick that off by the end of the day.

Do whatever it takes to tick off this one thing and I’m not saying just have one thing on your list forever. I’m saying of the things that you write for yourself to do for the day, have the one non-negotiable in there.

The rest, you know, you get to them. And this one non-negotiable will help me move forward because once again it’s about setting those small tasks and it’s about seeing yourself make progress.

And then it’s about making a commitment to yourself of what you, you know, say that you will actually do. So that essentially wraps us up for today’s live stream.

And we talked about strange order there, nothing like live to make you look at things a little bit quickly. So we talked about five things we talked about.

Firstly, taking small steps, small steps, small actions so that you can get yourself back into the swing of things. We talked about turning off those distractions, turning off social media, turning off the television, stopping those hobbies for a little bit so you can get back into the routine of things.

I talked about clearing your space and having the environment that you are happy to come to and so that you can create and do the business work that you need to do. I talked about letting it be perfectly imperfect because no one’s perfect and it’s okay to just get it out and refine it as you go.

And lastly, I talked about creating a to-do list with a non-negotiable. And they’re my tips for helping you to get back into motivation, you know, how to get motivated and how to get back into the swing of things after a vacation or a holiday.

Now if you found this video useful, give me a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel. And if you’re looking for more ways to grow your business, make sure you grab a copy of my Social Media Checklist.

I outlined all of the things that you need to get started to set up your social media for business so that you can start leveraging the power of social media to grow your business with ease. I’m going to put the links to everything.

You’re seeing some links on the screen right now, and some links in the description to the checklist. And that essentially wraps up today’s live stream.

And I hope that you found it really useful, and I hope that you like this format, something else that I’m testing out. And I hope that you have an amazing day and I’ll see you in the next video.