It all came into focus one sunny morning as I caught the ferry on Sydney Harbour to my city office. The closer I got there, the tighter a knot in my stomach became, until I was almost violently sick walking into work.

I didn’t fully understand, but this was my body’s way of telling me that the disengagement I felt had gotten too much. I walked straight into my boss’s office and quit on the spot.

The next time you feel that familiar dread starting to creep in, put some of this advice into practice.

Now, obviously, this is not the right solution for everyone, but for me, it was a wake-up call to acknowledge the gaping disconnect between what I wanted from my job and how I was actually feeling about it.

The second way of escaping a funk is to identify which parts of your job you most enjoy and which you dislike, then try to lean in or out of those areas respectively. This is called “job crafting”, and it is now a very well-researched area of science that can help you find more meaning at work.

Just by sharing your preferences with a colleague, mentor, manager or friend, you can help workshop some possible solutions together.

The third thing you can do is clarify your goals so you know exactly what you are working for. Sometimes a funk can be caused by a lack of understanding of what you’re meant to doing, so by defining your aims with yourself or the people around you, you can know if you’re heading in the right direction or not.

The final way to spin yourself out of a rut is to do something – anything – to break the cycle of repetitiveness. By injecting fresh energy into new projects at work or even outside of it, you can find small pieces of new motivation that can help you see things in a fresh light.

No one enjoys waking up on Monday morning and praying the week is already over. So the next time you feel that familiar dread starting to creep in put some of this advice into practice and tell those negative thoughts exactly how to funk off.

Tim Duggan is the author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com