Have you ever woken up in the morning dreading going to work or even just getting up? Do you feel like you know what you will be doing during the work hours because it is exactly what you did yesterday? Do you feel tired and frustrated? These are all symptoms of mild depression or more commonly known as “stuck in a rut”.

Many people feel this way at one point or another in there jobs from my experience people tend to exhibit the aforementioned symptoms after the first 12 to 14 months in a job then come and go some lasting longer. For me they tend to come and go depending what is going on at work and the overall moral of the company. I exhibit the same symptoms as everyone else when stuck in a rut and becomes very noticeable when someone asks me how I’m doing and I respond with “oh you know, busy… nothing really new”.

How do we break out of ruts at work? How can we go from dreading getting up for work to leaping from your bed ready to take on the world with more confidence then Tony Robbins? Well, I look for new personal ways to motivate me, such as:

• Speaking to someone new at work
• Eating healthier
• Buying a higher quality article of clothing (people notice)

All those are examples of some of the smaller things I do to help get myself out of the three day ruts. Two week ruts are a different story altogether. I find after two weeks and you still feel like you are in a rut you need to start looking at ways to change your life and overall thinking. This can include:

• Thinking about what you want to accomplish in your life then looking at what you need do to get there.
• Changing your mentality on how you think about your tasks
• Joining extracurricular activities
• Finding a mentor or a new mentor
• Breaking vices’

Many of theses tasks can feel like uncomfortable choices and often take a lot more work to break that rut. Once you do you’ll be asking yourself why you hadn’t done it in the past. I would be interested in hearing from others on how they break ruts at work.