Every week I sit down to meet with a number of direct reports in the workplace. While the plan for these meetings can differ from person to person, the usual direction of our time centers around anything that the individual employee wants to discuss. A few weeks back, the topic of choice from a young manager to me was: “You’ve been in the same role now for 10 years. How do you keep from getting bored and losing motivation?”. My immediate response off the top of my head was to share 6 different motivating factors that prevent any risk of stagnation.

6 Motivators

1. Keep your job. This one should be obvious. People do not care about what you or I did in the past. Most folks operate out of a “What have you done for me lately?” mindset. If you begin to let off of the gas pedal, you risk losing your job completely. Jobs exist for employees to receive compensation to produce an agreed upon level and volume of good work. Cease to do this, and whoever is on the decision-making side of things might decide to end your employment in response to you no longer holding up your end of the bargain. 
2. Prepare for the future. Even if there does not appear to be any direct return for effort today, those who are wise understand that a long-term return will come on the investment. Hard work, care, and effort in a job do reap a harvest later on, much like money grows interest over time. Think about retirement, providing for a future family, whatever…but aim at a target further out and use that today to push you to put in the work.
3. Dish out impact. Every day other people are counting on us. This might be a boss, a coworker, a customer, or any other person. Others need us to efficiently get things done at a high level so that they can receive the benefit. Just go to the DMV or to a poorly managed restaurant and you will see an obvious need for someone to care about impacting others. Even if you receive zero benefit today from giving your best, certainly someone else will benefit. This reason alone should be enough to push us to work diligently so that the lives of other people are not made WORSE because they came into contact with you. 
4. Display integrity. We all have personal missions and values, even just these are just vague ideas in the minds of some. These should guide you, like a compass. Even if circumstances around you do not provide a challenge, the values do. As Larry Winget put it, “Every time you’re tempted to slack off or do or be a little less than you could, remember that you are a person of integrity who lives by the simple creed: do what you said you would do, when you said you would do it, the way you said you would do it”.
5. Land the next opportunity. You never know when a promotion or new opportunity might come along. If you are just treading water and giving mediocre effort, when the chance for more comes along then you will not be at the front of the line. There’s always a potential next mountain to climb, but you don’t want to miss out on it! Stay sharp and stay prepared and ensure that you are competitive for whatever might come next.
6. Grow continuously. Even when doing mostly the same tasks each day, there is always a new way to try them that might be better. There are new systems that can be created to streamline things. There are ways to delegate tasks or to grow others in their roles. There is new content to be absorbed. All of this promotes your daily personal growth! As they say, if you aren’t growing then you are DYING.

In Closing

While there could be 1,000 motivators, these are a few for me personally. In the end, it really is all about PERSPECTIVE, high STANDARDS, and about thinking LONG term. What are your current motivators? Do you have enough of them? If so, are they strong enough to keep you engaged and giving your best week in week out?