What’s even harder than getting up and going to work on days when you just feel like hiding under your covers all day? Getting up and going to work even though your bed and couch are in your general vicinity all day long.

Every person in the world has days from time to time when they are feeling a little off and their motivation is in the toilet. But not every person has to try and be productive on these days while they are sitting in their own home. Now that takes some doing.

Mama told me there’d be days like this but she didn’t really tell me how to deal with them. Luckily I’ve figured out a few tricks that help me keep my motivation on bad days.

There were times in my not-so-productive days when a bad day would be written off as just that and I wouldn’t get anything done. Some people call these mental health days but for me, they didn’t really do anything but make me feel guilty about all of the things I neglected to do.

It seems that I’ve been able to pull a few tricks from up my sleeves that allow me to get through these bad days and still be productive:

  • Pull yourself out of bed, get yourself groomed, get yourself ready for the day down to your shoes – The only thing you are going to accomplish by staying in your PJ’s is to subconsciously be ready to dart back to bed.
  • Have some caffeine – if you’re into that sort of thing. Skipping coffee when you are used to having it will only make you feel worse.
  • Prepare a list of the necessities that you need to get accomplished today. Remember…just the imperative things. Everything else can wait until you are back to your normal self. So how many imperative things could you really have for the day? We’ll say four.
  • Start with number one. Work all the way through until it is completed. You will see that completing this first task has made you feel like you are getting something accomplished. Oooh, just think how it will feel to finish another thing on your list!
  • Go for number two and then take a well deserved break. Eat your lunch, take a walk, whatever you can do to make yourself feel a little refreshed.
  • Now finish with number three and number four. Guess what – you did it.
  • Collapse!

No matter how you want to deal with a bad day the key is to have a plan in place BEFORE the bad day hits. It could be like my plan or completely different. The point is not how you get things done but that you do get things done.

The last thing you want to do on your bad day is to remind yourself that even though you weren’t feeling up to it, you got done what you needed to get done. You should also remind yourself that today is over. No matter how annoying, sad, aggravating or miserable it was…it’s over.

Tomorrow is a new day and today has no impact on tomorrow other than a positive one because you didn’t leave things hanging over your head. Good job.