Hypnosis and Motivation at Work
The report is due tomorrow. You've known for three weeks. You open the document, you check your messages for two minutes, and an hour later you've answered seven unimportant emails while the report is still on its first line.
You are not lazy. By evening the tiredness is there anyway: putting things off costs energy, continuously.
This page starts from something that runs against most of what you'll read: you don't wait to feel motivated before getting started. The drive usually comes after you begin. The rest is a matter of knowing exactly what's missing — and of telling apart what is down to you from what is down to your organisation.
What it's like
By evening the tiredness is there anyway. That's the paradox of a day where you did none of what mattered: you're exhausted regardless, because putting things off costs energy continuously.
You are not lazy. A dip in motivation reaches almost everyone at some point in a working life.
The starting mistake: waiting to feel motivated
It's the most widespread idea and the most expensive: first you'd have to get the desire back, and then you'd get going.
In practice it's often the other way round. The drive generally comes after you've begun, not before. Waiting to feel motivated before acting is like waiting to feel warm before lighting the fire.
That's why the approaches that work best don't try to manufacture desire: they lower the cost of starting. Five minutes rather than a morning. The first sentence rather than the report.
And deciding in advance when and where you'll get to it — not "I'll get round to it", but "Thursday at 9, I open the document" — is one of the best documented strategies in the psychology of action: a meta-analysis covering 94 studies and more than 8,000 participants finds a moderate to large effect, precisely on getting started.
The sorting to do before anything else. "I can't get myself going any more" can cover three very different things, and one simple test helps: does it stop when you're not at work?
If your drive comes back at the weekend and on holiday, it really is about work. The question is then whether what's missing is the impulse to start, which is this page, or meaning, in which case see our page on brown-out.
If you're exhausted to the point where rest changes nothing, see burnout instead.
And if the emptiness follows you everywhere — hobbies, relationships, sleep, appetite — it is no longer a question of motivation: loss of drive is a central symptom of depression, and depression is treatable. Talk to your doctor, and see our page on depression.
Our practitioners make no diagnosis.
What it costs, and where it comes from
The signs are nearly always the same: persistent tiredness, trouble concentrating, careless mistakes, the feeling of enduring your days, procrastination, irritability, withdrawal from the team. And the causes, as the people concerned describe them: excessive workload or overly demanding hours, lack of recognition, repetitive tasks, loss of meaning, no prospects, deteriorated working relationships or oppressive management.
Look at that list: it is mostly organisational. Individual support can help, but it isn't enough — France's INRS puts it plainly: prevention "aims to adapt the work to the person and not the other way round". No amount of work on yourself replaces correcting a lack of recognition, an impossible workload or failing management. What can change is your room for manoeuvre inside it, and your capacity to decide what comes next. Support that led you to believe everything depends on your state of mind would have you carry a responsibility that isn't entirely yours.
And there are avenues that few people know about.
In France, you can ask for an appointment with the occupational physician yourself, at any time and without justifying it: article R4624-34 of the Labour Code states that such a request cannot ground any sanction. What is said there is covered by medical confidentiality, so your employer will never know its content — though a visit during your working hours generates a summons that your employer sees, so ask for a conversation outside your working time if you would rather they knew nothing. Your manager or HR when the climate allows, and the works council, remain open too.
In Quebec, your employee assistance programme: confidential, short-term counselling, funded by the employer, whose content is never disclosed to them. And if it is your working conditions that are at stake, the CNESST is the reference body for psychological health at work — it recognises five risk factors: decision-making autonomy, workload, recognition, support and organisational justice.
What exists besides hypnosis
- A doctor, as soon as the loss of drive spills beyond work or your sleep is lastingly affected. We have a page on sleep problems, which weigh on drive more than people think.
- Psychological support, if a depressive state sets in. In France, the Mon soutien psy scheme covers sessions with a participating psychologist; in Quebec, mental health care is free in the public system.
- Career support or a skills assessment, to examine a plan rather than daydream about it.
- Organisation methods: break things down, schedule short slots, move the phone off the desk. Unspectacular, very effective.
- Sleep and physical activity, whose effect on drive is real and underestimated.
What actually feeds motivation
Motivation at work can't be decreed: it is fed. And it rests on a few needs that are simple to name. The first three come from self-determination theory, the reference in the psychology of motivation; the fourth is an addition of ours, because it is what people describe, and because France's INRS and Quebec's CNESST count conflicts of values and lack of recognition among the risk factors at work.
- Autonomy: having a say in how you do your work, not merely carrying it out.
- Competence: feeling capable, making progress, seeing the result of what you do.
- Belonging: mattering to someone, being recognised within a group.
- Meaning: that what you do serves some purpose, and that it fits what you care about. A job can be interesting, well paid and well surrounded, and stop carrying you because it has come into conflict with your values. Researchers have tested the hypothesis of a fourth need of this kind and did not retain it; we keep it in the grid anyway, because it is what people name first, and because its link with engagement at work is well established.
When those needs are fed, motivation comes more or less by itself. When one of them is lastingly missing, no technique manufactures it.
It's a very practical grid, because it lets you name precisely what is missing rather than conclude that you've "gone off it". A reorganisation that took your decisions away touches autonomy. Work whose effect you never see touches competence. A lack of recognition touches belonging. And a company whose practices no longer match its words touches meaning.
The answers are not the same. Some are negotiated with a manager, others call for a change of post, and others still don't depend on you at all. Knowing which one is at stake saves you from looking for the solution in the wrong place.
What Hypnosis can offer
It doesn't create desire on demand, doesn't make an uninteresting job interesting, and corrects no organisation. It guarantees no result, and we promise no improvement in performance or productivity. Nor do our practitioners pronounce on whether a health problem is work-related: that is for a doctor.
What the work aims at:
- Lowering the cost of starting. That's the main lever, and it's concrete: working on what happens in the minutes before the moment you should be getting to it.
- Procrastination, which is rarely laziness. Most often it's the avoidance of a discomfort: fear of doing it badly, a task that's too big, boredom. Identifying which one changes the answer.
- Installing an anchor you can use at the moment of starting.
- Easing the background tension, which uses up the energy available.
- Undoing the inner phrases of the "I'll never manage" or "I'm hopeless at organising" kind, which cost drive before the first line is written. That's the subject of our pages on impostor syndrome and self-confidence.
- Clarifying what is missing among autonomy, competence and belonging, which points towards very different decisions.
- Holding a situation you can't leave, for financial or family reasons. It's common and almost never addressed.
What the research says
There is to date no study on hypnosis and procrastination, nor on difficulty getting a task started. A single randomised trial, published in 2026, looked at hypnosis and meaningful work among employees with low engagement: the result points the right way, but the trial is a pilot and tiny, thirty-one participants, and permits no conclusion.
What is genuinely documented on the hypnosis side is its effect on anxiety, and better as a complement to other approaches than used alone. Our page on what science says about hypnosis goes through it subject by subject.
Two exercises to try right now
The energy anchor. Pair a simple gesture, clenching your fist for instance, with the precise memory of a moment when you were fully engaged in something. Reconnect with the sensation, then repeat the gesture. Do it again in the morning, or when you feel you need it.
The first step. Instead of picturing an ideal day, choose the smallest possible action on the task you're putting off, and commit to five minutes only. Open the document. Write the title. Most of the time you'll carry on past it; and if you stop at five minutes, that's already more than zero.
An example: Mélanie's case
*An illustrative example, built from situations we meet often. It is not one real person's account.*
Mélanie (name changed), 38, an IT technician, no longer recognised herself. Flexible hours, three days of remote work a week, nothing to fault in the conditions, and yet every morning was a negotiation with herself. Her days filled up with small tasks while the important files waited, and by evening she was tired from work she hadn't done. What decided her to consult wasn't the tiredness: it was no longer recognising anything of the colleague she used to be.
The work began with sorting: her drive came back at the weekend, which pointed clearly to the work side. It then emerged that what was missing was neither interest nor recognition, but autonomy — since a reorganisation, she had been carrying out decisions taken elsewhere. The rest focused on the minutes before starting a task, and on what she told herself at that moment.
This example describes one possible course of work. It predicts nobody's. The pace and the results vary from one person to another, and no support can guarantee an outcome.
How a session on this subject unfolds
The conversation starts with the sorting described above: since when, does it stop outside work, and what exactly is missing. If your situation calls for a doctor first, we'll say so.
A concrete objective. Not "get my motivation back", which can't be measured. Rather: start the report before Thursday, hold two deep-work slots a week, decide by June whether I stay.
The induction, then the work itself: anchoring, the moment of starting, inner phrases, clarifying what is missing.
The follow-through. A short exercise. On this subject, short is a condition: handing a twenty-minute protocol to someone who can't start a report is adding one more task to the list.
How many sessions? That's discussed at the first meeting. Nobody can know in advance.
Book an appointment
Tell us about your situation. If it calls first for a doctor, an occupational physician or career support, we'll say so — and it is never a refusal. Ask us a question or book an appointment. If your difficulty is mainly about concentration rather than getting started, see our page on focus and concentration. And if you're still hesitating, just tell us how long this has been going on: it's the first question we'd ask anyway.
Our practitioners see people in Montreal, Sherbrooke, Gatineau, Paris and Lille, and by video wherever you are in the world.
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Annie Mayrand
Gatineau - Cumberland (ON)
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Christian Rocher
Beloeil
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David Veilleux
Montréal - Anjou
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Florence Aton
Sutton
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Jessica Reid
Sherbrooke
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Julie Rocque
Montréal - Jean-Talon
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Nuria Pérez de León
Montréal - Rosemont - Saint-Lambert
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Réjeanne LeBlanc
La Prairie
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Frequently asked questions about Hypnosis and Motivation at Work
Rarely. Procrastination is most often the avoidance of discomfort: fear of doing it badly, a task that's too big, boredom. Those are three different problems with three different answers.
Not on demand. It works mainly on the moment of starting, and the desire comes more often after beginning than before.
One marker: work demotivation stops at the office door. If the emptiness follows you everywhere and affects your sleep, your appetite and your relationships, talk to a doctor. Only a health professional can tell them apart.
That isn't ours to say, and people decide badly when they're drained. The reasonable sequence is to recover, clarify, then decide.
That's the most common situation and the least talked about. Holding a position you can't leave for the moment is a legitimate goal and a reason to consult in its own right.
No. Our consultations are private and confidential. In France, a visit to the occupational physician is confidential too: your employer has no access to what is said.
That's discussed at the first meeting. Nobody can know in advance.
Sources and references
On organisational factors
- Risques psychosociaux : ce qu'il faut retenir — INRS, France (in French): "Ce sont des risques qui peuvent être induits par l'activité elle-même ou générés par l'organisation et les relations de travail."
- Risques psychosociaux : prévention — INRS (in French): "Bien que nécessaires dans certains cas, ces actions ne sont pas suffisantes. La prévention vise à adapter le travail à l'homme et non l'inverse."
- Facteurs de risques psychosociaux liés au travail — CNESST, Quebec (in French): the five factors, which "doivent être considérés de façon globale, comme agissant les uns avec les autres".
On the avenues open to you
- Article R4624-34 of the Labour Code — France (in French): "le travailleur bénéficie, à sa demande […], d'un examen par le médecin du travail […]. La demande du travailleur ne peut motiver aucune sanction."
- Le médecin du travail — INRS (in French): the occupational physician is "soumis au secret médical".
- Employee assistance programmes — Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety: "a confidential, short-term counselling service for employees with personal difficulties that affect their work performance".
On motivation and on hypnosis
- Hagger, M. S., & McAnally Star, K. (2026). *Self-Determination Theory and Workplace Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis*. Stress and Health, 42(1), e70151. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12887546 — 192 studies, 93,552 participants; autonomy, competence and relatedness, not meaning.
- Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). *Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes*. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69-119. doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1 — 94 studies, over 8,000 participants, a moderate to large effect on initiating action.
- Valentine, K. E., Milling, L. S., Clark, L. J., & Moriarty, C. L. (2019). *The Efficacy of Hypnosis as a Treatment for Anxiety: A Meta-Analysis*. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 67(3), 336-363. doi.org/10.1080/00207144.2019.1613863 — "Hypnosis was more effective in reducing anxiety when combined with other psychological interventions than when used as a stand-alone treatment."
- Meganingtyas, Y. et al. (2026). *Feasibility and Preliminary Outcomes of Hypnosis to Enhance Meaningful Work Among Employees with Low Work Engagement: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial*. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42406981 — the 31-participant pilot cited above.
Need help? Quebec: Info-Social 811 option 2 · 1 866 APPELLE (277-3553). Elsewhere in Canada: 988, call or text. France: 3114, free and around the clock.
Hypnosis as practised by the members of Solutions Hypnose is a complementary support approach. It is neither a medical act, nor a diagnosis, nor psychotherapy in the regulatory sense, and it in no way replaces a consultation, follow-up or treatment prescribed by a health professional.
Our practitioners do not assess and do not treat mental disorders or illnesses. They never ask for an ongoing treatment to be stopped or changed: that decision rests exclusively with your doctor.
No result can be guaranteed. The testimonials and examples presented on this page describe individual experiences and do not predict what you will experience.
In case of significant distress, unexplained physical symptoms or suicidal thoughts, contact a doctor, emergency services or a helpline without delay.
Page written by Patricia Jouannet
hypnotherapist and NLP coach
partner at Solutions Hypnose.
English version reviewed by David Veilleux