How to stay motivated to study?

Staying motivated

At the start of the term, your motivation was probably at 100%. You had all your revisions planned, you were attentive in class and you were on top of all your assignments. However, this motivation started to fade and it became more and more challenging to have the motivation to work on your essays or to revise your lessons.

It is also possible that it is now the time when assignments start piling up and the amount of work you have to get done seems unbearable.

Motivation is a key predictor of learning, academic accomplishment, and well-being while studying (Scherrer & Preckel, 2019). This post is intended to give you personal and practical methods supported by research to keep your motivation throughout the year.

You are in charge

A person's sense of control over events in their life is referred to as their locus of control. Some people think their own actions directly cause the things that happen to them. These individuals are known as internals (Drago et al., 2018). Others believe that forces outside of their control dictate their outcomes in life (e.g., fate, luck). These individuals are classified as external (Drago et al., 2018).

Sometimes the reason why we are not keeping our motivation in the long term is because we do not think that what we are doing will actually influence the outcome and we adopt a fatalist perspective to our study. For example, you might have difficulties with statistics and think to yourself that you will not understand it or have a good grade regardless of the effort you put into it. This stance can affect your motivation and cognition without you realising it.

Indeed, Bar-Tal and Bar-Zohar (1977) demonstrated in their review how locus of control can influence motivation and cognition. Their findings suggest that children's drive to perform in a particular environment is influenced by how much control they perceive they have over it. Assuming that the children's ultimate goal is academic success, internal children who think that their actions determine whether they succeed or fail in school and who think they can manipulate and control their own reinforcements (such as the teacher's approval) will actively direct their efforts in that direction. In other words, these kids are more likely to take a proactive approach to their academic performance, demonstrate continual improvement while trying their best, and maintain their motivation even when they temporarily fail. External children, on the other hand, have little motivation to put forth task-oriented effort in an attempt to improve their academic achievement because they believe that they cannot control events in school, that successes and failures are dependent on the whim or desire of other people or circumstances, and that they cannot control their own reinforcement.

Even though most people are typically somewhere between external and internal, it can be tempting to believe that no matter how much effort we put into anything, we will not receive the result we want. However, changing this perspective will help you to be more productive and not give up so quickly as you will be convinced that the amount of work you do will actually impact your success.

Good planning

It is extremely frustrating to not know where to start when you have so much to do. In order to prevent this frustration, planning effectively your week can help you save some time. Nevertheless, there is a downside to this method when it is not used effectively. It happens that you don't achieve to finish everything you planned on doing because of unforeseen reasons. Not finishing your schedule can make you less motivated and cause you to speak negatively about yourself. My strategy to avoid this is to prioritise setting realistic goals over meticulously scheduling every minute of my day. I also recommend to put an order of priority to each day or week that you decide to plan ahead. It will take less time to prepare and less stress if you focus on fulfilling goals rather than scheduling every minute of your day.

Believe in yourself

This might sound cliché but research emphasises the importance of self-esteem and perceived self-efficacy in academic performance (Mohsen, 2017). The belief people have in their skills to do a certain activity is known as perceived self-efficacy (Bandura, 1986) while the favourable or unfavourable attitude toward the self is referred to as self-esteem (Rosenberg, 1965). Bandura (1997) argues that people's cognitions, motives, affective processes, and consequently behaviour are influenced by their self-efficacy beliefs. People with high levels of self-efficacy are more likely to persevere in the face of challenges, more likely to exhibit intrinsic motivation when engaged and executing a task, and less likely to experience disappointment in the event of a failure than those with low levels of self-efficacy. Finally, they are less likely to feel anxious. Altogether, these studies demonstrate that to stay motivated you have to believe in your ability to do the work and to understand and avoid talking negatively to yourself. Having a more positive approach towards your abilities will help you enhance your motivation to study and consequently your grades.

Perfectionism can be your enemy

It is very uncommon to get everything perfect on the first try. Sometimes wanting to write perfectly or finding the exact words to describe what you want to say can prevent you from making progress. It is way easier to start by writing everything that comes to your mind first and then correcting it later than trying to make a masterpiece from scratch. Perfectionism can engender not moving forward in your work and therefore reduces your motivation as you do not see progress.

Have an adequate working environment

Having a place associated with studying can help you to stay motivated. In most universities, you will have access to the library or study spaces. Some people achieve to learn and write better with noise whereas others prefer a quiet place. It is essential to identify which group you belong to and set the perfect mood for you to be productive. The location where you are confident that you will study will have a direct impact on your motivation.

I must take into account individuals who do not have access to study rooms or other resources that would enable them to do that. Alternatively, working from home can be your only option. If you fall into this category, make sure to remove any distractions that can interfere with your ability to focus. This can be done by using app blockers such as "Forest" to avoid receiving notifications. It is also good to tidy your study place so that you enter into a more productive mood. Avoid studying in your bed as it will impact your ability to fall asleep later on and increase fatigue (Pandey, 2021).

The importance of Purpose

My final personal tip is to know why you are working. Look deeply into what you have to do and think about the benefits that will come from it in the short, mid and long term. It might be revising, this can help you understand the lesson in the short term which will make you succeed in your assignment or exam in the midterm which will end up contributing to the completion of your degree in the long term. This can go on and on. Realising that your current effort will activate a chain of fortunate events for you is essential when studying as it is sometimes blurry to understand why we are doing certain things in education.

To conclude, we saw that realising that you are in charge of your success, planning effectively and realistically your days, believing in yourself, setting an adequate working environment, avoiding perfectionism and looking at the purpose of what you are doing will drastically increase your motivation.

References

Bandura, A. (1986). Fearful expectations and avoidant actions as coeffects of perceived self-inefficacy.

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman.

Bar-Tal, D., & Bar-Zohar, Y. (1977). The relationship between perception of locus of control and academic achievement: Review and some educational implications. Contemporary educational psychology, 2(2), 181-199.

Drago, A., Rheinheimer, D. C., & Detweiler, T. N. (2018). Effects of locus of control, academic self-efficacy, and tutoring on academic performance. Journal of college student retention: Research, theory & practice, 19(4), 433-451

Mohsen, A. S. (2017). The impact of self-esteem, academic self-efficacy and perceived stress on academic performance: A cross-sectional study of Saudi psychology students. European Journal of Educational Sciences, 4(3), 51-63.

Pandey,A. (2021). Exam preparation tips for students

Scherrer, V., & Preckel, F. (2019). Development of motivational variables and self-esteem during the school career: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Review of Educational Research, 89(2), 211-258.

Trautner, M., & Schwinger, M. (2022). How are incremental theories about studying motivation related to effective motivation regulation?. Learning and Individual Differences, 100, 102232.

Valenzuela-Pascual, F., Pàmies-Fabra, J., García-Martínez, E., Martínez-Navarro, O., Climent-Sanz, C., Gea-Sánchez, M., ... & Blanco-Blanco, J. (2022).