Everyone has those days. You make a great plan the night before, you can’t wait to wake up the next day and get to work! But then, you wake up… and the last think you want to do is execute the plan from the night before.

Somehow, overnight, your motivation evaporated! You’re feeling tired, sleepy, and you don’t see the point in doing anything.

The first thing to remember in those cases is that it happens to everyone. Even the most elite CEOs and highly productive people experience days where they don’t see the point or feel so exhausted that the last thing they want to see is another task list. Why is that important? Well, to understand that there isn’t anything wrong with you, and only because you feel sluggish on some days doesn’t mean you don’t have the potential to be an extremely efficient and high-performance person!

The key is what successful people do when they encounter their own discouraging inner voice. Rather than sitting back and wondering about the meaning of everything, they employ special techniques which help them swiftly spring into action and get to work. What’s more, knowing that you can rely on these techniques definitely takes away some of the stress of knowing you’re expected to perform, because you can feel safe in the knowledge that even if you experience a slow day, you have the necessary tools to cope with the situation.

So, want to know about these techniques?

Technique #1: Show up and be prepared to be average

A lot of stress comes from the expectations we have for ourselves to perform at our very best. However, the facts are that you don’t always have to do your work in perfect manner. Very often, what is way more important is to get things done, rather than get things done perfectly.

Former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg worded this marvelously by saying “done is better than perfect“.

And the thing is, very often “perfect” is at the expense of “done”, because if you can only accept perfect work from yourself, then what happens on those sluggish days is that you don’t even get down to business, because you’re afraid you won’t be able to perform at a perfect level.

The trick is this: just show up and be prepared to do an average job. The second you accept the thought that not everything coming from you has to be perfect, it’s like you can breathe freely again. It removes a blocker that prevented you from acting, and thus you can enhance your productivity on the days you feel tired or exhausted.

You know what the funny thing is? Very often, if you show up and are prepared to do just an average job, because it’s you, you’ll still end up doing way above average, even though you aren’t in top condition. So the mental acceptance of potentially doing an average job is the technique to simply get you going by relieving the pressure, but most of the time, you’ll still perform at a very, very decent level.

Technique #2: Start small

If you’re a gym-goer, you know the feeling before are heavy session where you have to do a lot of deadlifting or squatting. Nobody wants that!

These big, compound movements are difficult, heavy and scary. There are probably some psychos out there who enjoy them, but for most of us, we’re definitely not looking forward to these exercises.

So, what’s the trick here? The trick is to start small. Imagine you’re physically and emotionally exhausted before such a heavy session – the chances of you skipping it become very high. So, it’s very useful to be able to put yourself into motion through the technique of starting small.

You do that by not thinking about the big lift, or the entirety of the session – instead you begin your session with a small and easy exercise. Something that doesn’t scare you buy is even pleasant to do.

By getting yourself moving through the small and easy exercise, you get your body moving, you get your blood flowing, and you slowly easy yourself into the mood of a gym session. Tony Robbins says “motion creates emotion” – so by the sheer fact that you’re already doing an exercise, be it an easier one, you’re already starting to get the gym vibes. Before you know it, you’re ready crush that deadlift!

The technique of starting small can be applied to pretty much everything. Imagine you want to write a book. Well, if you wake up each morning and think to yourself “I gotta write a full book!”, then you won’t be very encouraged to begin, because the whole project is just too big and daunting.

So, instead of thinking about the whole book, what you need to do is break that big project into smaller tasks – in this case book sections, chapters, etc. Then when you wake up, you don’t really have to write a whole book – you only have to write a few pages! And if a few pages sound too big and scary to you, then maybe you only need to write a couple of paragraphs! The thing is that when you write those paragraphs, ideas will already start flowing and you will just continue writing on.

Technique #3: Remind yourself of your long-term goals

This is one I really like.

What we tend to do is in the beginning of the year, or some other time, we sit down and plan out these beautiful and ambitious goal. Then most people never really do anything about them, but some do. However, even those who take the initiative and start doing something towards their goals, eventually get discouraged, or slow down, or simply forget about the big goals that inspired them in the first place!

The big, long-term goals are glamorous. When you get into the day-to-day grind, things are not always glamorous. In fact, they can be pretty bleak.

So another great trick I love doing is whenever I feel like I no longer know why I’m doing what I’m doing, I pull out my list of long-term goals and get re-inspired again. I get reconnected with the big, beautiful things I dream of, and that reminds me of all the meaning behind these seemingly insignificant daily actions and tasks waiting on me.

Do not be afraid to dream and visualize the big things you want to achieve. This is a core part of getting there.

So, if you found these techniques useful, well, know that there’s a lot more which could be of use to you when it comes to reducing stress at work and achieving optimal performance!

If you’d like me to help you with that, feel free to book a FREE 15-min consulting call, or a 60-minute deep dive performance coaching session!