Odds are, a good portion of your team was out of the office this past week. Some may be returning to their desks for the first time in quite some time.

Which is a good thing — a little time away can keep burnout at bay.

But no one can afford a long, slow ramp-up to get productivity levels high again. That’s why now’s the perfect time to focus on momentum and how to keep it going.

Not the time to lose steam

To get – and maintain – momentum, remind your entire team of these three things:

• Keep a rigorous routine. While momentum sounds like something that just keeps going on its own, it really requires a lot of self-discipline. Note: It doesn’t necessarily matter what each staffer’s routine is – it’s that it’s followed consistently to reinforce that discipline.
• Understand you have to keep at it. There may not be immediate results for some of your goals,whether their individual or team ones. That’s when it’s your job as leader to remind team members to keep working. The payoff will come.
• Acknowledge it will be tough at first.Most of the actions needed to reach a goal are difficult at first but will get easier over time. Reinforcing that with the people on your team will help them keep at it until they start to see it for themselves.