Lacking Motivation: How to Restart Your Testing Brain

I came in to work today and had one of the things I dread hit me:

A lack of motivation.

This is hardly new. Everyone's had a lack of motivation.

Sometimes it's chronic (in which case, I suggest researching why and fixing that if you can!).

Sometimes, like mine is, it's probably caused by a bit of a feel of repetitiveness in my work lately, combined with not having as relaxing a weekend as I wanted.

But somehow, this morning I still got a decent amount done.

In the hopes that it can help someone else in a similar spot, here's what I did:

Get Focused

First, I cleaned out my normal drinking cup and got some water. I've found that some minor cleaning or other non-mental work helps prep me for doing something mentally engaging.

Get A Quick Win

I had two tasks that were in my queue this morning. One was going to be long, monotonous (as I have to do the same checks across various platform combinations).

I took the other one. It was a straightforward bug, simple to test for, but with some neat little edge cases I could prod.

Springboard off the Quick Win

After I felt good about the main path through the bug, I started on those aforementioned edge cases. While I didn't find anything crazy, it did fire up my mind, bringing my motivation levels back up.

Now it's on to the bigger, more intensive task, with more confidence and energy than I could have given it otherwise today.


So, what do other people do when they're really unmotivated?