Motivating yourselves

It is right smack in the middle of the school holidays, and though school holidays are meant for relaxing and recharging, we at Raffles Institution know that school holidays? They’re for catching up on work, revising, blah blah blah, studying. Well, but who wants to study during the school holidays, after promos, after a year of school? No one! For me, I have lots of work to do. Chemistry tutorials, studying for SATs, catching up on math because I treated math lectures as sleeping or chatting sessions. The list is endless. But, whenever I look at the extremely thick and daunting SATs book, I think, let’s do something else. Which is when I end up eating, watching youtube, or reading a storybook. I’m sure most of you face the same problem as I do. Studying can be one of life’s most boring and mundane activities. In fact, the very nature of studying goes against the basic human desire to maximize pleasure; studying barely registers on any human pleasure scale. But, we can’t spend the rest of our holidays being couch potatoes! We have to study!

Unfortunately, there are no quick and easy solutions to have you feeling totally inspired and energized about studying a subject or completing a project that may not be all that inspiring or interesting at times. And so, ladies and gentlemen, today, I will share with you some things you can do to motivate yourself to get off that couch and start studying.

The first way is to get some comrades and spend some time with them. There’s something really comforting and energising about spending time with others who are going through the same painful experience as you are. I found this extremely useful during the promotional examinations period, where, gathering a group of fellow classmates to study together, we managed to push each other to study, as well as consult each other, ask each other questions, figure out problems together, as well as have fun while taking breaks. Studying by yourself, especially for long periods of time, can become a monotonous activity. However, getting together with others can turn boring, stressful tasks into a fun, playful ones. Because of the social aspect of a study group, you will always have someone to discuss the topic with when you start struggling or find the topic tedious. Furthermore, setting a specific time and place to meet up with friends, study groups helped as a solution to procrastination. When we are alone, we keep on thinking, “I’ll start studying tomorrow”, but with a study group, we have to turn up and study at that specific time.

You would also want to make every thought serve you and move you forward. Everytime I start studying, I spend a lot of time in my head thinking, but that time is not well spent. I would worry constantly about whether I would retain the information after a few days, what challenging questions the exams would throw to me and whether I could actually solve them, how I should start studying, etc. etc. This was a complete waste of time. Dr Sharon Melnick stated that we have 60,000 conscious thoughts a day. Now for those of you who just thought ‘What’s a conscious thought?’ that’s exactly what a conscious thought is, you just had one! Well, Dr Sharon Melnick states that each of these thoughts are going to either be bringing you closer towards achieving your goals or further away from your goals. And taking this into consideration, we should carefully watch what we are telling ourselves. Negative thoughts like ‘I can’t do this’ or ‘My writing sucks’ take you further away from your goal, and should thus be replaced with ‘I’m making progress’ and ‘I’m doing the best I can and my writing will evolve and get better.’ These thoughts are positive thoughts that would motivate you to continue on or start your work, and would allow you to progress.

If all else fails, the last resort, is to let others punish you if you do not study. In ancient China, when Chinese scholars had to study for the Imperial examinations, they used a string to tie up a strand of their hair, and if they nod off, that hair is pulled and delivers such a sharp pain that they wake up to study, and this continues on. The same idea can be used in a more modern context. Get your sister to smack you if you wander off to youtube, get your little brother to steal your dessert if you end up reading instead of studying, get your mother to kidnap your phone if you don’t complete your work. Giving the power of punishment to others ensures that they show you no leniency nor hear your excuses when you fervently try to explain why you couldn’t complete your chemistry tutorial. You can give yourself mercy and end up not being punished for not doing your tasks, but just try protecting your dessert from your hungry brother. If you cannot discipline yourself to study, it is best to pass on the discipline to your fellow housemates.

With the above few methods I have shared, I hope that you all would be able to motivate yourselves to tackle the ever large mountain of work and commitments we have to complete. Remember, you can drag along some of your friends to suffer together with you, replace your negative thoughts with positive ones, or hand the whip over to your family members to spur you on to do your work. Also remember, that this will not have to go on forever. Once you have finished your work, you will be free to do anything you want to, go on overseas holidays, sit on the couch and eat all day, or go out with your family and friends. So, take the first step today. Motivate yourselves to start studying.