5 Useful Tips to Help You Get Motivated to Study
Not being motivated to study can make your time at college quite a challenge. Losing motivation for something is quite common, and instead of criticizing yourself for it, you should find ways to develop or restore your motivation. Here is a list of useful tips that will help you eliminate your problems and find a way to feel more motivated about your studying.
Find the Reason for Your Procrastination and Manage It
The very first step when deciding how to get motivated to study is about analyzing the reasons that stop you from it, the things that make you procrastinate. There can be lots of things causing your procrastination and here are some of the most common ones among students:
- You think that you are not skilled enough to complete your studies;
- You are unconsciously trying to rebel against your parents and teachers by refusing to do your assignments;
- The subject appears to be boring to you, and you have no interest in studying it;
- You are waiting for some “sign” that will help you find the perfect time to start studying;
- Your homework looks so overwhelming that you just don’t know how to approach it and where to start.
Take some time to analyze your situation and find the things that make you procrastinate. Based on your findings, develop something of a strategy on how to battle your procrastination.
Do One Task at a Time
Your lack of studying motivation can be explained by the fact that you might have too many tasks on the table and you just don’t know how to start and how to finish all of them on time. If this situation sounds familiar to you, it is best if you take some time to work out a plan of action, a step-by-step strategy that points at the things you need to do first. If you have too many papers due at the same time, you can also consider outsourcing some of them; you can visit here to learn more about it.
Unless you focus on a single task, you will get distracted. If you have a to-do list, you will just jump from one task to another as soon as you get bored with your current assignment, it’s quite a natural human reaction. To avoid it, make sure not to start a new task unless you complete your current one.
It is also good to write down all of your tasks and make them into something of little goals. Studies suggest that the people who write their goals down have a 42% higher chance to actually achieve them. Commit to your tasks, and do not stop half-way. Learn how do discipline yourself.
Make Mind Maps
Feeling not motivated to study is also common in the students who are overwhelmed with all the information they need to process. It is quite understandable considering the amounts of information students are expected to work with these days. To help yourself structure all the information you work with and restore your motivation to study, consider making mindmaps. Mindmaps stand for visual correlations between the pieces of information you need to learn.
When reading a book with a twisted plot, you can make a mindmap of the plot, the characters of the book, the main learnings, etc. Such an approach will make it much easier for you to memorize any piece of literature and to analyze it when you need to do a related assignment. Quite similarly, a mindmap can help you arrange your studying if you have a history exam to get ready to or even some math formulas to memorize. All you need to do is to create meaningful connections between all of your learnings and arrange them in a way that is most convenient for you to comprehend.
“Make Lemonade”
Do you know the saying, “When life gives you lemons make lemonade?” It presupposes that it is best to learn how to properly work with the situation at hand, and you will come to enjoy it eventually. The same goes for studying. You might feel that you lack motivation not with studies in general, but with some specific subjects, particularly with the ones that you do not really understand and try to memorize instead. This is what you do wrong. Rote learning is never effective if you do not understand the subject itself. You need to try and get to the very core of the subject, understand its essence instead of just learning facts.
Understanding all of your subjects will also help you make correlations between related things and concepts. When you find a way to understand what you need to learn, you will not only be more effective but also more motivated to study. You will discover a new thirst for knowledge.
Take Breaks and Exercise
The way you treat yourself also matters and can impact your motivation to study. It is important to remember that no one can be motivated and study day and night; everyone needs a break from time to time. You need to give yourself those well-deserved moments of rest and relaxation as they will help your system reboot and get new energy to study. Stop expecting yourself to be motivated all day every day and don’t even think about criticizing yourself for not being productive enough. Think about it, maybe you have been through a lot lately and studied too much, which exhausted your system, and now you just need a break.
You should also consider getting physically active, taking a stroll, or going to the gym. Changing your scenery will not only help you make a break but will also energize you to achieve more in your studies. Doing exercises clears one’s brain; it is like meditating because your mind doesn’t really have to work much when you lift weights so it can finally “recharge.” By giving yourself such little breaks, you will also get more motivation to study and succeed in it.
