Losing motivation during the pandemic and how to get it back
I already have issues losing motivation — as far as my interests, I can be pretty fickle and that means I have a lot of half-thought out side hustles and hobbies gathering dust in my closet.
That never used to be a problem when it came to work though. I was always surrounded by productive people in the office and the environment itself was so conducive to work that slow days were few and far between. But, with no home office or coworkers around to keep me pushing, I’ve been having a lot of trouble maintaining my usual big picture focus. Days become repetitive lists of tasks to be checked off rather than the proactive problem solving and learning that I’m used to.
Once I’m stuck in a rut like this, it becomes increasingly difficult to break out. But this time around, I did it basically on accident.
I’m an analyst, so I’m mostly expected to run support on tasks rather than spearhead any myself (at least according to the job description). But my boss recently did me a solid in asking me to spearhead a proof of concept that I’ll eventually be presenting to another team. And nothing kicks me in the butt like the impending possibility of embarrassing myself badly if I don’t know my stuff.
In fact, my anxiety and nerves about the whole thing were what ended up getting me out of my rut. It sparked a fight-or-flight reaction that gave me enough adrenaline or energy or something to kickstart me out of autopilot and into researching. I actually started looking into the tools I was using on my project beyond the bare mechanics of what I was using them for, and once I actually implemented what I learned, my confidence started climbing. That’s always how it’s been for me — my anxiety ratchets up when faced with the unknown and the only way for me to fight it is to learn and learn and learn.
So I need Docker for this proof of concept? You got it — I just found a handbook all about it. I need Kubernetes too? No problem, I’ve got it downloaded and I’m messing around with it now. Anything I can do to turn this anxiety into confidence, I’m going to try. And then I noticed something else:
The more competent I felt, the stronger my ambition became.
Suddenly, I was looking into other DevOps projects to see what skills they needed because, even though I like the project that I’m on, I wanted to be competitive. I started looking at salaries for DevOps engineers down the line in more and more senior positions and, for maybe the first time since I switched into tech, I stopped thinking I had to pivot into software engineering. Something inside me clicked and I realized there are job prospects for me here, in this field. And now I’m specializing in DevOps and infrastructure and cloud providers instead of getting distracted with the “maybes” and “eventuallys” of software development.
The change feels good. And looking back on it, I realized that it was the goals that motivated me. The proof of concept I needed to feel secure about. The cool job prospects at big companies like Apple and smaller ones like Slalom with descriptions that were starting to sound more like me and less like pipedreams. That’s infinitely more motivating than just learning because “I should probably know this.”
Now I’m trying to keep that motivation. I made it a point a year ago to start a weekly meeting with new joiners on my project to make sure we were all synced up and helping each other where we could, but now I’ve been adding a new focus: where do you want to be when this ends? When the project is over or you’re rolling off, what skills do you want to have? What do you want to be able to say that you’ve accomplished?
Keeping that big picture in mind and coming back to it every week is probably the most motivating ritual I’ve had all quarantine — and that goes for outside of work too.
