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Squiggly Careers

Squiggly Shortcut: How to Boost Your Motivation in a Knotty Career Moment

Squiggly Careers

AmazingIf

Management, Careers, Business

4.9838 Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2026

⏱️ 5 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this Squiggly Shortcut, Helen shares three simple ways to boost your motivation when you’re stuck in a “knotty moment” at work. Whether it’s unexpected feedback, a tricky project, a difficult relationship, or even feeling stuck in the wrong role, these situations can quickly drain your energy and momentum. This episode gives you practical, in-the-moment ideas to help you reset, regain a sense of control, and keep going even when things feel hard. Episode 544 🦞 Learn Like A Lobster: 🇺🇸PRH US - https://bit.ly/3KxTeBn 🇬🇧 Amazon UK - https://bit.ly/46lj8Av  For questions about Squiggly Careers or to share feedback, please email helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 📩 Download our free career tools: https://www.amazingif.com/toolkit/ 🦞 Join the Learn Like a Lobster Sprint: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNQl9gsac8BXnWe2qoGuHkLKwsygjP_Ma&si=l7kODG3JpopH0Irz 📮 Get Squiggly Careers in Action in your inbox: https://bit.ly/SquigglyCareersInAction 📚 Read our books: The Squiggly Career and You Coach You: https://www.amazingif.com/books/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hi, it's Helen from the Squiggly Careers podcast and you are listening to another one of our squiggly

0:05.3

shortcuts. These weekly quick episodes are designed to help you with something you might be dealing with right now

0:12.5

so you get some very quick ideas of action. And what I want to talk to you about today is how to

0:17.2

boost your motivation if you are in the middle of a naughty moment.

0:22.0

What do I mean by naughty moment?

0:23.8

I mean a situation for whatever reason it feels like it's a struggle right now.

0:29.2

And that might be because something unexpected has happened.

0:32.5

There's been a change to a project you're working on, for example,

0:35.6

or maybe you've had some feedback that you

0:37.5

weren't expecting and, you know, you thought it was okay, but now it feels really difficult to do.

0:42.1

Or maybe it's a situation that's been going on for a while. And what makes it naughty is that

0:48.2

you know it's not going to end really quickly. That could be, you know, like a naughty moment can

0:52.7

sometimes be a person that you're working with and you can't see them, you know, going away. Or it can, I think sometimes it can actually be the job that you're doing when, you know, you want to do a good job, but you know this isn't the right job, but you can't do anything about it. I think that can feel like a naughty career moment. So hopefully you get that we've all got naughty moments and

1:12.8

in fact, probably most of us have got some kind of naughty moment right now. And the point is that

1:17.4

these can be energy sapping situations. And so having some quick boost for our motivation can be

1:24.4

really helpful when we're experiencing them. So I've got three things that I would recommend

1:29.0

that you do if you are in one of these moments right now. The first one is a bit of a dopamine

1:35.3

hack. Now, you can't rely on this for that long, but if you just need a bit of a boost in the moment,

1:40.6

I'd really think about either music, have you got a go-to track that you feel

1:47.1

like gives you a bit of a boost? Honestly, I will put it on sometimes in my office and I will just sing

1:51.3

that track really, really loud and it does something to the chemicals in your brain. It makes you

1:55.8

feel better for a moment. Now, it could be going for a walk, like a really, really fast walk,

...

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