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It’s a boring afternoon. 

You’re tired after a plethora of lectures, and all you want to do is watch YouTube while having a great ice cream. But your brain keeps loading up you with the things you have to do. That half-completed project, the test in the next week. Or even just the fact that you have to study a bit daily. But still, you can’t get your mind to it, even though you know you’ll be cursing yourself for not doing it at this moment.

We’ll have been there. After all, it’s not that easy to find motivation for something boring as studying, isn’t it?

Rather than studying itself, finding the motivation to study is a real challenge for most of us. Our minds like instant rewards. That is why we are always inclined towards watching that new YouTube video or Netflix series or even just going up and down in the Facebook feed. That will give us a false sense of instant satisfaction that studying rarely able to produce.

So how can we get out of this deep dark hole? After all, motivation is something really important for our success in education.

Luckily for us, there are several techniques that can help you with that. You may have read or heard about most of them from various places. But have you ever consistently applied them to your study sessions?

Pomodoro technique

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You definitely have heard about this several times. The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks.

First, you decide on the task you want to do and set a timer for 25 minutes. After the end of 25 minutes of work, you earn yourself a 5-minute break. After about 3–4 sessions you can have a longer break of about 30 minutes.

I find this method great to get your engine running as we know only we have to work 25 minutes continuously. It’s not that long, right?. No matter how lazy you were before, after starting work some of that resistance will definitely go away and you will end up in doing more than few sessions. After I get in the zone I usually do not turn on the timer again since by then you can keep your concentration more than 25 minutes. But don’t go overboard where you could end up being fed up.

Giving well-deserved breaks

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There is a neurotransmitter in our brain called “Dopamine”. It was previously known as the pleasure chemical. Dopamine works in two systems. Simply put they are called the “wanting” and the “liking” systems and these two systems are complementary.

Dopamine is part of the wanting system. It propels you to take action. The liking system makes you feel satisfied and therefore pause your seeking. But the dopamine wanting system is stronger than the liking system. You tend to seek more than you are satisfied with. You can get into a dopamine loop. If your seeking isn’t turned off at least for a little while, then you start to run in an endless loop.

Just think that we watch a YouTube video just before a study session. Since it is a very pleasurable activity large amounts of dopamine are released and then when we sit to study our brain has no joy whatsoever to engage in that boring activity. So that’s why I usually never start my day by watching YouTube or going through Facebook feed which will kill the day even though we don’t feel like that when doing it.

Instead of that I usually give myself the chance to do those pleasurable things in the intervals I take during Pomodoro sessions. It gives me extra motivation to do my work as there is a gift for me at the end of the line. If I did that before studying or anything I have to get done, I definitely would not get that kind of motivation.

Another benefit of this is that you can enjoy your breaks as you earned those by studying for some time. If I were doing having breaks before doing my tasks, I feel pressured and guilty as there is so much work left to do and subconsciously I know that I am doing this just to delay starting my work. So why don’t you just finish that task and have a big fat break, which is well deserved.

Exercise and drink more water

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This is really motivating and you would know it if you have ever tried it. Exercising pump more blood to your brain and also increase the release of feel-good hormones. That really can amp up your productivity by several folds. You do not have to exercise for hours. Even just 10–15 minutes are well enough if you do it consistently. I also like to do a few push-ups and squats during the intervals as well to chase out lingering laziness.

Drinking more water keeps you well hydrated and refreshed. It has many benefits for your health as well. Keep a little water bottle on your side and have a sip whenever you feel thirsty. It helps to concentrate more.

Keep away distractions

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Nothing kills your motivation more than your phone and its’ frequent notifications. It is very hard to resist the urge to look at the phone when it beeps, even for the best of us. So the best way to keep that distraction away is to mute your phone and flip it over so you can’t see your screen. But the phone is not your only enemy. You have to identify what are the distractions you have because they are different from one to another.

And one more important point. If you love listening to music while studying, listen to instrumental music rather than music with lyrics on it. So listening to the latest pop hits while studying will actually harm your study session than helping you out.

Don’t study a subject for too long

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Have you ever tried to study the same subject for a whole day? Well, I have done it repeatedly and it’s a real motivation killer. By the end of many days, I just read through the notes for the sake of studying. So please divide all the subjects into small chunks and study them alternatively. But don’t confuse this with multitasking, which will actually reduce your productivity. This method will help you to keep the fire going inside you, in the long run.

And most importantly don’t overdo anything..even studying

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There are 24 hours in the day. I usually sleep 8 hours (please don’t sleep more than that. What is the point of sleeping more than 1/3 of this short life given to us.).That leaves us with 16 hours to do anything we want. I will never try to study more than 8–9 hours in the most productive days. That’s because doing more than that could exhaust me which will lead to very poor following day where I could not be able to find my motivation again.

We have to do everything in moderation. Even in studying there are no exceptions. What is important is that we devote that 8 hours only to studying but nothing else. If we could pull that off, we would have done more than enough work for the day, and believe me when I say it. So with that, I have about 6–7 hours to do whatever I want other than studying which is the reward I earned by my work time. So I can have peaceful meals, baths and have time to read a book, gardening, going for a walk or anything else I like.

Your mileage may vary and you might able to get more hours of work from a day. If you could and if you need that, by all means, keep your routine the way feel most comfortable.

Relax

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Learn how to relax. It is a very important thing to master no matter who you are. It doesn’t matter which way you do it as long as you are successful in achieving a peaceful mind. You can try meditation or any hobby you like. We love engaging in our hobbies and they are remarkable mind chargers that will increase the energy levels within ourselves.

So these are few methods I use to boost up my motivation and maintaining it for a longer time during studying. You may have really good methods of your own so adding some of these methods will level up your game. Starting over is always the most difficult thing to do. So if you can master these techniques, then you can jump over the toughest hurdle. But don’t try to accommodate everything on this list at once. Take baby steps to make consistent changes over a few weeks. The results will definitely surprise you!