4 Ways To Motivate Yourself To Study

With passion, we can do wonders. But there are times when we just feel down, feel upset or feel disappointed. This may be due to some setbacks in work or life, or we just simply wake up in the morning feeling lousy. Thus, being able to motivate ourselves is very important.

There are many ways to motivate ourselves and here are some ways I use to motivate myself.

Dream of your future
Since primary 4 (the year when we were exposed to the topic electricity), I have been dreaming to have a job which allows me to play with wires, light bulbs and electricity. I did not know what that job was called but I remember spending my pocket money to buy the components (wires, batteries etc) as my toys, even if it means skipping meals. Since then, I love anything to do with Mathematics and Physics. Whenever I faced problems with these subjects, I will remind myself of this little dream of mine, so as to push myself on. This gives me extra horsepower to push forward!

Treat yourself

Celebrate little achievement. Ask my family, I am a thrifty person. Yet when I buy things to treat myself, I buy big items. I bought an iPod after getting my A Levels results. I bought a CD player after getting my NUS 2nd semester results. These are treats for myself, to recognise myself for my hard work. After every common test or smaller scale examination, I will withdraw $10 and spend it all, on anything I want to eat or just little toys to play with. Remember, you work hard, you deserve the treats!

Scare yourself, set higher target
Boo! It's all about the normal distribution, or more commonly known, the bell curve. No need to study too hard. Just score one points more than your friends and you will pass or even score A! Nothing wrong with these statements. But how would you know your friend's score? And most importantly, how would you know which topic is going to appear in the questions so that you can focus on that topic?
Just study hard and understand the topics. I always make sure I understand at least 85% of the whole course (I never seem to understand the last one or two chapters as they are usually taught late and I am in no mood to absorb new stuff). Why 85%? Because I am giving myself some leeway to make careless mistakes! Let's just assume that at least 75% is needed to score a reasonable grade.

Stay confident
When you are confident (not arrogant), you are motivated to push yourself further.
One way to be confident is to talk to yourself. I will tell myself that I cannot waste time. I must be the best. I am not the best yet but I am near. Just work a little more. This will push me further.
Just be careful here. Everyone is unique and is best at his own way. Do not be arrogant and put down others just to feel confident yourself. Such people are disgusting and do not fall into this category. To each his own, focus on yourself, not others.

My Way of Learning: Understand And Master The Basics

How many of us forget how to do integration the moment we step out of the exam hall? How many of us give back at least 50% of what we have learned to the teacher the moment the chief invigilator announces "Pen Down!"? I realise that this is the case with many of my friends, myself included. Why does this happen to us, including those who can score well in the paper?

Understand The Theory

From what I observe, this problem arises from the way we learn, from the way we go about picking up a new knowledge. I understand from my tutees that in school, they are being taught a new topic via examples. For example, instead of learning what is integration, or just a simple explanation of it, they are just told to memorise the basic formulae of integration and apply them accordingly. This greatly restricts a person's ability to apply the knowledge on the same question phrased differently.
My take is to learn the basics, learn why it happens this way. If the theory behind a particular knowledge is too high level for students of, say, 15 years old, talk simple. You may want to refer to my post on Effective Teaching. For learners, please do not get too involved in solving one question and feel lousy if you can't solve it. Go back, read the theory and understand why things happen this way, then come back to tackle the problem again.

Practise Practise And Practise

Practice Makes Perfect

Yes we know this. We have been following this ritual. This is very important. Lectures teach you, tutorials test you. It is only through practising that we are able to gauge how much do we understand. I remember my cousin Sis HC forced me (she needed to force because I was plain lazy) to finish up all the calculus questions in my secondary school Additional Mathematics textbook. I grumbled but listened. She wanted me to put into use what I have learned. From there, she was able to gauge my weaknesses and went through with me again on the areas I was not sure.

So, do more practices and test yourself before the real test from your school!

1 Tip on Practising

Ask any of my tutees and you will know that I always tell them to do multiple-choice questions (MCQs). My instruction is "finish all MCQs you can find!". My reason is very simple. MCQs, in my opinion, test at least 90%, if not 100%, of the theories. If you are able to score full marks for MCQs, without guessing of course, I dare to say that you have a good grasp of what you need to know.

Finally, I got a phrase from this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uQjGz6jp2E

If I was doing what everyone else was doing, I was probably doing it wrong

So, do something different now! Try this method if you find that yours doesn't work well. No harm giving it a try. You never know if you never try!

You may want to read this to understand why you and I forget: http://bit.ly/14uKJsP

"Growing" Passion In What You Have To Do

Continuing from my last post, I am going to talk about how I "grow" my passion on things that I do not like to do in this post. I must say that after "growing", I love the things that I do. Take for example web development. I used to hate it, instead I like hardware programming and relatively low-level programming such as Assembly and C programming (which I still have interest in today). Now, I must say that I love it! I get a sense of satisfaction whenever I build a web application.

Is it what you are good at?
First of all, we must recognise that we are not always good at what we have interest in. On the other hand, we may not have interest in what we are good at. If this is the case, great! It will be easier to grow passion in it. Since you are good at it, you can easily create something out of it. Instead of complaining I hate this I hate that, do it and feel proud of yourself. You have successfully completed something you hate! Celebrate it. Soon, you will find yourself happily doing and celebrating till you love it!

How it develops myself as a person.

I believe that nothing is a waste of time, including doing nothing. On this note, doing nothing allows me to clear my mind and relax, so it is actually not doing nothing. Anyway, one other way to motivate yourself is to ask yourself how can doing a certain task improve you as a person, develop you as a better person. Most likely, this is intangible, such as improvement of soft skills. It may also be tangible too. For example if you are so lazy to go to the market with your mum because she would ask you to carry stuff, treat it as a way to grow your muscle (of course if you think that spending time with your mum is not important)!

A way to challenge myself.

Take it as a challenge. Not to challenge anyone, but to challenge yourself. If you really hate a certain task but have to do it, set small goals and tackle it slowly. Tell yourself this, why can't you do something which many others can do? Are you in anyway inferior to them? No! Everyone is equal. It all depends on whether you have to do it and whether you have the heart to do it.

How it helps the greater good, which may be something of your interest.

I believe that everyone has a kind heart. Quoting a Chinese phrase, 人之初 性本善. This means that "man at birth is fundamentally good in nature" [1].

So, when all else fail, think of how the task that you do can help the others. It may be just one guy, it may be a few, it may be the public in general. It doesn't matter, just do it to help others. Don't you just feel good that you have made someone else's day? To give one simple example, taking the effort to find out which wire in a breadboard is connected wrongly helps your team to progress, in addition to giving your teammates more rest time. Isn't this great? Won't you feel happy?

As lazy as he is, Nobita likes to help people. And of course my favourite Doraemon too!

There are many ways to "grow" passion and motivate yourself to do things. It's just a matter of whether you want to change your mindset. Two choices:

1) Complete the tasks happily by motivating yourself.

2) Do it just because you have to do it, in the process feel grumpy.

[1] Meaning taken from http://bit.ly/13q9okm

Success Lies In Your Own Hands

I always believe that we control our own fate, although recently I think otherwise, as there are many external factors which will affect us. Nevertheless, we still have the power to dictate our own life. Again, it's all in the mind.

Appreciate What You Have
Many times, I hear people complain how bad a lecturer is. I hear people complain how bad the lecture theatre is. I hear people say they have no mood to study and will definitely do badly because of these factors. I always disagree and say the the lecturer is good. My best friend of many years, WJ, can testify to this. I always tell him I love this lecturer, I love that lecturer. In fact I love all my lecturers.

We should appreciate our lecturers. There is a group of lecturers who can speak well, who can bring across the points well. Everyone loves them. There is another group of lecturers who, due to their nationalities, cannot speak English well. Yes, we need to make some effort to understand them. But why are we complaining because of this? Usually, from my experience, these are the lecturers who are the easiest to approach. Just keep going to them to ask anything you don't know. Many times, their patience level is also the highest. Instead of complaining, do some revision, write a few questions, ask them. I'm sure you will start to love them the moment you are willing to take this first step.

Have Passion In What You Do

Some people look at the modules I took and wonder why the modules I chose are of different fields and I seem to have so much passion in them. Focusing on EE3000 and EE4000 modules, there are 3 main areas, Microelectronics (1 module), Controls and Systems (3 modules), and Power Electronics (2 modules). EE3407 is a general module consisting a bit of many fields. My Final Year Project was in the Microelectronics field. Quite diversified? Yes. I chose them because I have passion in them. I want to know them. Always choose the modules you have passion in, not the modules which your friends are taking. Take charge of your learning.

Change Our Thoughts, Grow The Passion

On the other hand, we might not always have a choice in what we do. For example, I had to take non Electrical Engineering modules which I had no interest in, for example Dynamics of Interpersonal Effectiveness. I found it a waste of time. However, in order to conquer the module, I changed my thoughts. I grew passion for the module. When people ask me what I like to do, my reply will always be I like to do whatever I am doing, I like to do anything as long as it adds value. And I believe doing anything will add value, tangible or intangible or both, so I like to do anything.
Remember this, if we cannot change the circumstances, we can only change our thoughts. So, like what you do!