Staying motivated in tough times without losing purpose

There are two kinds of mornings in government service. On the first kind, the kettle whistles on time, the file you need is exactly where it should be, the printer behaves like a responsible adult, and the day’s first call is someone saying, “Sir, thank you, your guidance helped.” These mornings are rare, like a perfectly indexed paper book or an invoice that matches the ledger without interpretive dance.

On the second kind, which is most mornings, motivation is not a feeling. It’s an administrative decision.

I am an Indian Revenue Service officer. Which means my job description, on paper, is to enforce compliance, protect the exchequer, uphold the rule of law, and generally act as a walking reminder that the state has a memory. In practice, it also means spending a significant fraction of my professional life in conversation with three immortal forces: human nature, institutional complexity, and the humble stapler, whose entire ethos is passive-aggressive.So yes, I know “tough times.” I have met them. They have sent meeting invites.

Motivation, as practised by adults with ID cards

People talk about motivation like it’s a monsoon: it arrives, it drenches you in productivity, you frolic in purpose, and your life becomes a cinematic montage of achievement. That’s adorable. Real motivation, especially in public service, is less monsoon and more municipal water supply. It works when the system is maintained, leaks are patched, and someone shows up even when nobody claps.

In tough times, the trick is to stop waiting to feel motivated and start building an ecosystem where motivation is the default outcome. Officers understand ecosystems. We live in them. We also occasionally fight them.Let me offer you a field-tested framework from the trenches of files, facts, and the occasional existential crisis.

Replace “inspiration” with “duty + meaning”

In government, duty is the spine. Meaning is the muscle. Without both, you become a walking formality, present, compliant, but hollow.

When morale dips, I remind myself: revenue is not just money. It is roads, hospitals, scholarships, pensions, security, civilisation’s subscription fee. When you enforce compliance, you are not “collecting”; you are keeping the social contract from becoming a group project where only a few people do the work.This is the first motivational upgrade: attach your daily grind to a public-facing consequence. Not in a dramatic way. In a calm, factual, almost boring way. Boredom is underrated. Boredom is stable. Boredom gets things done.

Treat tough days like hostile witnesses: do not argue, just establish facts

There are days when everything feels heavier than it objectively is. The inbox multiplies. Deadlines breed. People say, “Sir, just one quick thing,” which is the bureaucratic equivalent of “I promise I won’t hurt you.”

On those days, I don’t debate my mood. I take my mood under Section: “Noted.” Then I proceed to establish facts:

• What is the next smallest executable action?
• What can I close in 20 minutes?
• What is waiting on me versus waiting on others?
• What must be done today, and what is merely loud?

Motivation returns when evidence returns. A closed loop is better than a perfect plan.

Win the morning, audit the evening

When life is messy, I reduce the surface area of chaos. I don’t try to “fix everything.” I try to win the first hour.

The first hour is where you set your internal tone before the world starts negotiating with it. Tough times often feel tough because you start the day in reaction mode: responding, firefighting, absorbing. The first hour should be proactive: one priority task, one decision, one win.

Then, in the evening, do a gentle audit, not a trial. What worked? What didn’t? What did I avoid? What needs a system change? Motivation grows when you treat yourself like a professional: with standards, yes, but also with process improvement.

Build a “why” that doesn’t require applause

Public service is not always rewarded with instant gratitude. Sometimes it’s rewarded with complaints, misunderstandings, and the rare honour of being blamed for the weather.

If your motivation depends on applause, tough times will bankrupt you.

So you build a “why” that’s private and sturdy. For me, it’s a mix of two things:

• A deep respect for the idea of institutions, imperfect, human, but necessary.
• A quiet pride in competence: the ability to do difficult things properly, even when nobody is watching.

Competence is its own reward, and also its own protective gear.

Learn the bureaucracy of the mind

In the office, when a system is overwhelmed, you don’t scream at it. You add structure. You standardise. You create templates. You do triage.

Do the same with your mind.

Tough times flood your cognition with unprocessed thoughts: fear, anger, fatigue, resentment, doubt. Your brain becomes a file room after an earthquake.

So you create mental SOPs:

• A short “shutdown note” at the end of the day: what’s pending, what’s urgent, what can wait.
• A “red flag list” of triggers that reliably derail you (certain calls, certain people, certain times).
• A “green zone routine” that stabilises you (walk, music, prayer, journalling, gym-choose your medicine). Motivation is not a pep talk. It’s good governance, applied internally.

Embrace the sacred power of small momentum

When cases are complex, you don’t solve them in one sitting. You break them into issues, facts, evidence, timelines, and actions. Why would your life deserve less professionalism?

In tough times, aim for momentum, not heroism.

One clean page. One call. One hard conversation. One workout. One honest meal. One uninterrupted 45-minute block.Small momentum is not small. It is compounding.

Keep your humour, because it’s a strategic asset

Humour is not denial. Humour is psychological liquidity. It helps you move through friction without cracking.In government, humour is also diplomacy. It prevents meetings from turning into courtrooms. It turns colleagues into allies. It keeps you human in the presence of machinery.

When things go wrong, I sometimes imagine the entire system as a vast mythological creature-part elephant, part printer, part spreadsheet-that must be respected, occasionally fed, and never approached suddenly from behind.Laughing doesn’t reduce the seriousness of the work. It reduces the toxicity of the process.

Remember: tough times are not permanent postings

Public servants understand postings. You may be in a tough station today, high workload, low support, constant pressure, but stations change. So do seasons. So do minds.The key is to not turn a temporary situation into a permanent identity.You are not “a person who is stuck.” You are a person in a phase, managing constraints, building capability, and quietly preparing your next move. That framing alone restores agency. And agency is the mother of motivation.

(The writer is IRS, Joint Commissioner, Income Tax Department); views are personal