 We all have some good habits and some bad habits, while good habits will help boost your productivity. Bad habits can weaken our motivation. Eventually, practices that destroy motivation will affect success in life. In this video, I will share with you 13 habits that are destroying motivation. If you are new here, consider subscribing to this channel for more awesome videos. 1. Fill into said goals. Many people start work without first setting goals, thus they don't even have a direction or destination. Even embarking on a journey without any destination in mind. How do you think that journey will be? Meaningless. People who have no goals waste time and energy for a few days and then leave work because they don't have a purpose. Lack of concrete plans can discourage you from doing productive work. Life without practical goals is like driving along a highway without a direction. You will keep going the wrong places until you lose the zeal to keep going. Clear goals give your life purpose and motivation. 2. You take too much time to finish simple tasks. Taking 6 hours to write a simple 1 page email is not the best way to use your time and energy. Putting in more hours into work doesn't always mean you will get better results. When you spend so much time doing one thing, you are prone to either get distracted and wander away unknowingly or lose enthusiasm to finish the task. Sometimes you should stop what you are doing if it is taking more than the required time and move on to something else no matter how uncomfortable it may be. The tendency of having your motivation to carry out other activities wrecked is high if you allow yourself to get stuck in one thing. 3. You are too hard on yourself when you don't complete tasks. There will be times when you cannot complete your work in a timely fashion. What do you do when that happens? Do you brace yourself up for the next day? Or do you feel terrible about yourself? Often, your inability to complete a task at a said time is not your fault. It could be because of work, family or other kinds of emergency. If this is the case, don't harp in situation. Instead, get yourself refocused, pick up where you last left off and continue with your work. Complaining and beating yourself up won't get things done. You only end up losing motivation. 4. You multitask. Editing a report, surfing the internet, talking on the phone with your client and texting your boss, all at the same time is task overload. Many people regard multitasking as a great skill, well it is still. But then, research shows that only 2% of the world's population can correctly multitask. What does this mean? That a whole lot of individuals who think they are multitasking is only stressing their brains and messing up their jobs. Little wonder why after a period of futility, many people go back to their drawing board and start with one thing at a time. On the other hand, some of their individuals end up sending wrong messages, making mistakes in reports and eventually, disoriented. Stop trying to do so many things at once. You'll get your work done faster if you do things one at a time, carefully. 5. Morning Rush. How often do you have those mornings when you're rushing to the office, barely having time to do break fast? How does your day turn out when you have mornings such as that? American actor and film director, Michael Dolan once asserted, find peace in the morning rush and you will have a good day. What does it mean to find peace in the morning rush? Well, don't get involved in the dash at all. Being involved in morning rush can bring a negative impact on your motivation, which may also influence your overall productivity throughout the day. So by waking up a little early, you get enough time to start your day with a quick meditation session, a well-placed preparation, and a proper break fast. All those things are a recipe for a motivating day. 6. Doing the easy things first. American writer and humorist, Mark Twain is famous for the quote, It a life frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day. Due to the fear of handling the challenging task, many individuals push the most strenuous activities further down there to do least, before taking the tough stuff. It is only natural that you would prefer to finish up the easy task first, but the opposite is right for your motivation and productivity. Confronting the difficult task first is better. This is because, according to research, your brain is much better at handling the most challenging task when it is more focused at the start of the day. Also, completing the problematic task will often motivate you to finish the others, but the opposite is rarely the case. 7. Planning too much. Do you stare at your schedule thinking about how best to use every last minute of your day? Do you spend hours upon hours adjusting project spreadsheets and gown shards? While planning is an integral part of work, it is not the only part, and too much of it can be toxic, when you are always focused on planning alone. You might lose sight of the fact that you need to carry out those plans. Even as you plan, you also have to take action and do those things if so carefully planned. Lay the least aside and get to work. 8. Skipping meals. You need food and water to survive, and you need good nutrition to stay healthy. This is an unchangeable fact. If you are not eating meals regularly, you may not be as productive as you could be. The reason is that your body system will be weak and not be able to function to its full capacity. Just skip meals in the place of working, and be sure to take your complete meal breaks while you are at it. Get away from your workspace and eat somewhere else, like a cafeteria, outdoors, or in a public park for a break from the office. If you want to remain motivated and productive, you must fill your production capability, your body, with healthy meals. 9. Checking your phone first thing in the morning. One of the worst habits that many of us in today's era share is checking our smartphone lasting in the night and first thing in the morning. Apart from the fact that our minds are instantly polluted with the negativity of the outside world, another problem is that, when we do so, we're instantly put in a reactive mode. Our thoughts, ideas and focus are immediately hijacked by the new messages, emails and notifications that we've received, which forces us to think about that stuff instead of on our goals, and causes a lack of motivation to carry out our said goals. 10. Being busy rather than productive. Rightly differentiating the essential task from the non-important functions is one of the surest ways to destroy your motivation. Australian American Management Consultant, Educator and Author, once affirmed it, there is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. Imagine using all your strength to carry out an activity and later realizing that the task worth nothing. Your morale will drop down to zero. Remember, not all jobs are created equal and being busy is not the same as being productive. Some tasks are much more valuable than the other tasks. When you carry out the valuable ones, you will be highly spirited, but when you do the less useful ones, your motivation will drop. 11. Not believing in yourself. Do you know your beliefs directly affect your motivation? Most people possess the enthusiasm to take action at the beginning stage of work. However, after a while, self-doubt becomes an obstacle. When you stop believing in your abilities, you lose motivation, get discouraged and even quit. If you don't control negative self-domaining thoughts and overcome self-doubt, you'll lose motivation. Time is precious and priceless. Never waste your valuable time thinking down on yourself because that will make you a failure. 12. Putting your to-do list in mind. Although you might think it is right to have at least of the things you want to do at the back of your mind, it is not. Storing all your task and to-do list for the day in your mind is an outrageous habit that destroys your focus and motivation. Instead, take one minute of your time to externalize your to-do list, write them down. Your brain is not made to be a storage place for ideas or tasks. Instead, it's meant to focus, think critically, and solve problems. When you store all of your to-dos in your mind, your attentional space is filled to the brim, so much so that there is barely space to focus immensely on your work. Besides, storing your to-dos in your head can cause you to be overwhelmed about the number of tasks you have to carry out. Being overwhelmed can make you demotivated. 13. Refusal to learn new skills You can profit enormously from learning a few new skills, ways of doing things that relate to your everyday work. The truth is that there are days when our day-to-day jobs and routine becomes boring, to the extent that, if not properly handled, can lead to having a fruitless day. New patterns don't have to be complicated. They can be simple, everyday things, such as learning how to type, use the photocupier, etc. As it has always been said, variety is the spice of life. Spice up your job with various methods of completing tasks. Motivating yourself is a vital aspect of productivity, although you must find ways to boost your motivation. It is also essential to recognize the things that may be diminishing your motivation, so you can do something about them.