Students and Motivation: Are We Too Lazy To Explore Why We Are Lazy?

The best part about being a student is that you have all the time in the world to decide what you want to do in the future. You don’t really need to wake up in the morning for that 9am lecture, nor do you really need to study for exams consistently. In fact, I’m sure there are a lot of students out there that believe cramming is the best way to learn. But in the real world - there’s an underlying expectation of consistency being the best delivery. The following article (which is split into two parts) provides some insight on ways I have used to get motivated, by managing time and setting career and life goals.

Part 1: The Relationship Between Goal Setting and Motivation

1. Identify your strengths, or failures you will never come across.

What are you good at? Anything from a sport, driving, cleaning, studying, eating, sleeping, there’s a market out there for you. Alternatively, if you don’t know what you are good at doing, write down a list of things that you feel impossible to fault on. What is the importance of this? Well…

Your strengths help you define what makes you motivated, and what makes you perform. For instance, if you are a soccer fanatic, you will most likely to be a person that likes to work in a team situation. If you like sleeping, perhaps you are suited to a night-time employment role instead of a day-time role. If you love eating and tasting food, this may mean you have a knack for hospitality and quality of service. If you love playing computer games, perhaps you should become a games tester!

The inputs to the activities that you believe to be excelling in, should be able to empower and motivate you to perform. Once these are down on paper…

2. Concentrate on what kind of rewards motivate you - Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic

Research has shown that students are motivated in two main ways - Extrinsic and Intrinsic.

Extrinsic rewards are things of tangible nature that you gain when you meet a certain level of achievement. This stems from childhood rewards such as candy, acting nice so that Santa Claus gives you presents, and the like. Likewise, extrinsic rewards can also come in the form of the fear of losing things, such as rights to the tv, access to the internet, pocket money, etc.

Intrinsic rewards are intangible - the shear feeling of getting something accomplished can drive motivation within students (Which I find, is starting to become less common). Whether it be by pure curiosity, enjoyment or interest, you would do something because it just feels really good after you finish it.

It is important to identify which one provides you more value as a human being. It will empower you to excel in your specialised areas whatever they may be. There isn’t much point being a doctor if you hate helping people. It won’t push you to be the person you could be. Once you think you know which one you prefer:

3. Establish Clear and Specific Goals - and again, write them down!

Write down what you want to achieve, ideally in quantifiable terms, such as “Save $X amount of dollars” as opposed to “get out of debt”. Also, set out your goals with a deadline which allows for slippage. In a perfect world, we’d all achieve our goals in a timely manner (eg: handing an assignment in on time) but in reality, we tend to run out of time at the end. Extending from this, identify what milestones you need to achieve in order to get there, and make sure you meet them. If you don’t meet them, punish yourself. If you do meet them, reward yourself and celebrate! If you think about your long term plan, you can start planning out what you need to do in the short term to get there.

A good way to do this is to use the classic “SMARTER” system: a goal which is: specific, measurable, acceptable, realistic, timely, extending of capabilities, and rewarding to those involved. Also, I find it useful to keep a small book your backpack / bag / pocket or what not. It helped me greatly whenever I had a potential idea to capitalise on when I was working on my thesis, and now it helps me identify a list of things I want to achieve and perform while I’m still alive, and while I can still remember what I wanted to do.

Whilst the things mentioned above all sound well and good, I’m interested to know people - what kind of ways do you motivate yourself? Leave a comment and discuss - no suggestion is a bad suggestion.

(To be continued…)

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