How To Find Motivation To Study – The Only Advice You Need

How To Find Motivation To Study

How to find motivation to study might be the single most important question you can ask yourself when you have mountains of things to study and no will to do any of it.

There are plenty of other things that can cause you to avoid studying at all costs, such as:

1. Not having enough energy
2. Disturbances around you
3. The lack of focus
4. The difficulty of the material
5. And especially, your mobile phone

However, one reason that often gets left out is not having enough motivation.

Does a student need motivation to study, it’s their job to study, right?

Many people think that a student’s job is to study. That they should just accept that and get to studying. Motivation isn’t necessary.

If you agree with this, sorry to tell you, but you are wrong.

First of all, people who do their job get paid. So it’s normal to be more motivated to do something when you are getting paid. But that’s just the beginning. If managers want to motivate their employees, they offer them extra benefits or rewards.

So, since an employee who gets paid to work needs extra motivation to do his work, doesn’t it make sense that a student needs extra motivation to do better?

While this sounds good in theory, in practice there will most likely be no one who can give you the motivation you need (if you have someone like that, make sure to treasure them). That is why you should learn about how motivation works and how to find motivation to study.

Intrinsic And Extrinsic Motivation

Most people have already heard about these two types of motivation. There is intrinsic motivation which is the ideal scenario for a student. Simply put, intrinsic motivation is where we study because we find studying interesting or enjoyable.

On the other hand, when we are extrinsically motivated we do something because we expect to be rewarded for that. Something like praise from our partners is considered an extrinsic reward. The best extrinsic reward is, obviously, money (as always, you are free to disagree, but just know that if you do, you are wrong😀).

While extrinsic rewards might seem nice (after all, who doesn’t like money), there is only so much they can do. Consider the next question:

What happens when the extrinsic rewards stop?

If you guessed that a person stops feeling motivated, congratulations you are right. If your parents stop praising you, if you don’t get the same recognition as before, or if you stop getting your rewards, well, your motivation will stop.

The problem with extrinsic motivation

Relying on extrinsic motivation can be really dangerous. If you have an important exam and you suddenly don’t feel motivated to study, you will have to:

• a) study despite not wanting to, and every time you take a break start to question why you are even studying in the first place
• b) give up on what you are studying and go do something else, you will be motivated next time
• c) find a different method to get yourself motivated to study

While option b) seems the most appealing, sadly it won’t help you too much (unless you need an excuse not to study then I’d say it’s perfect)

The most likely outcome is a), which can get really bad. The more you study the more you question why you are studying. Repeat that same process every time you study and slowly but surely you will lose all will to study (just imagine going to college for 4 years and doing this every time you have to study).

The only solution to this problem is to find a different way to motivate yourself.

As I said before, the ideal way to motivate yourself would be with intrinsic motivation. But let’s be honest, how many people would be happy to study something just because it’s interesting or brings them joy?

Even if you are excited to learn something new, there is a high chance that your motivation will start to slip when you get to the harder parts. You could start learning something out of your passion and then lose all of that passion and start to hate what you once loved.

But, if extrinsic motivation doesn’t work without extrinsic rewards and it is hard to always achieve intrinsic motivation, what do I have left?

It’s a common misconception that there are only 2 types of motivation, but there are other types of motivation we can rely on.

Introjected Motivation and Identified Motivation

In between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, there are two more types of motivations

• Introjected motivation
• Identified motivation

And it is exactly the second one (a.k.a Identified Motivation), that is the best way to motivate ourselves. But, before that let’s go over why it’s better than introjected motivation.

Introjected Motivation

You could say that introjected motivation is similar to intrinsic motivation in that we don’t rely on extrinsic rewards. But it also doesn’t mean we study out of interest or joy.

Introjected motivation refers to doing a task that either boosts or protects your feeling of self-worth.

Let’s say that you are studying a new material that you haven’t studied before. As you can imagine it’s quite hard at the start. But the more you study the better you get. Since you are studying something you consider quite hard, your self-worth is increasing, therefore you have introjected motivation.

This doesn’t sound bad, why are we relying on identified motivation, when there is introjected motivation?

When you look at it this way, it doesn’t sound that bad. But think about the other part of the introjected motivation – protecting your self-worth.

Let’s say that you are studying something that your parents consider to be easy and that you should have no problem getting an excellent grade. Now you are not studying to boost your self-worth, but to protect it.

Now, stop reading and imagine for a moment how that would feel. You have to study to make sure you don’t disappoint your parents (or in some cases yourself). Added to that, imagine how your parents would feel if you failed to learn something “so easy”.

Hopefully, you can start to see how having introjected motivation can get just as bad as extrinsic motivation. There is no reason you should have to use your own self-worth to feel motivated. There is a better way.

Identified Motivation

Identified motivation occurs when we have an understanding of what and why we are trying to accomplish something.

Here is an example:

You are about to start learning a new material that, from what others told you, is really hard to understand. The first thought you have is that you don’t want to learn all of this and that it’s going to take a lot of time. You just don’t have the motivation for that.

After some time, you decide to understand what is bothering you. Even though the material is hard, you want to learn and understand what it’s all about. The important thing to remember is that you are studying because you truly value the goal you are aiming for, and studying this material helps you take one step closer to your goal.

You should build your understanding of what you are ultimately trying to achieve. Your goal could be as simple as finishing college or as complex as finishing first in the whole year.

You need to understand what you are aiming for and how everything you do helps you to get there.

This is not a one-time process. Remind yourself every single day if you have to. You don’t shower once and think you will be clean your whole life. Similarly, you have to remind yourself why you are studying and what is your final goal.

Motivation to study

Now that we know how all 4 types of motivation look, let’s compare them side by side to see what that looks like. The final result would be something like this:

• Extrinsic Motivation – “I am studying because my parents want me to do well and I want to make them happy. It doesn’t matter that I have to force myself to study as long as I get the praise and recognition I deserve”.
• Introjected Motivation – “I am studying because I am overwhelmed with feelings of guilt when I don’t study. My self-worth depends on the results I get and I have to do well, so I will continue to study”.
• Identified Motivation – “I am studying because it helps me achieve my goal. I understand that what I am currently studying seems hard, but it helps me get one step closer to my final goal, so I will continue to study”.
• Intrinsic Motivation – “I am studying because I enjoy it and I find the material very interesting. I understand that studying this will bring me closer to my goal, but besides that, I also find joy in the whole process”.

After comparing these statements side by side, you can begin to imagine how much better identified and intrinsic motivation are for you. Therefore you should always strive to be motivated in one of those two ways.

As I said before (feels like the 10th time now) the ideal situation is that you are intrinsically motivated. Enjoying the process while studying for your final goal is the ideal case for a student. However, there will be days, where that is just not enough (that is the case for everyone, including me, so don’t beat yourself up).

That is when you should turn to identified motivation.

How to find motivation to study using the identified motivation – step-by-step

Rather than explain every detail, I will show you what I do when I have to rely on the identified motivation and how to find the motivation to study.

1. Find a piece of paper and write down what your goal is, or rather why are you studying
2. Place that piece of paper somewhere where you can easily access it
3. When you find that you don’t have much motivation to study some material, take out that piece of paper
4. Now look at what you have written there and try to understand how these things are connected. Answer these questions for more clarity:
   • How does studying this material help me to get to my goal?
   • What impact does this material have on my goal?
   • What would happen if I chose to ignore the material?
5. Do this every single day if you have to. The more you do it, the more motivated you will feel, knowing that it brings you one step towards your goal.

Your goal doesn’t have to be something grand like eliminating world poverty or solving the problems with climate change (although if you want to try, no one is stopping you, in fact, I hope you do try and succeed).

Your goal could be something as simple as finishing college. You could look a bit into the future and say something like “My goal is to find a job where I have a stable income, which allows me to pursue my passions in my free time” (I don’t know if such a job exists these days, but it never hurts to try).

* * * * *

One last piece of advice

Hopefully, you understand how important it is to learn how to find the motivation to study, and most importantly, how to implement what you just read.

Make sure to take action.

If after reading this, you still haven’t done anything, then you might as well not have read this article. Follow the steps I previously mentioned, not tomorrow, or in a few hours, but right now.

Write down your goal and the reason you study and remind yourself of it every single day.

If you want to learn how to study better and remember what you learn for a long period of time, read this.