Online Learning: 3 Easy Tips to Tackle Lack of Motivation

Without denying the usefulness of To-Do lists, there is a basic misunderstanding about them and it’s based on the idea of obligation and uninterrupted work. Only the boring, hard, tedious tasks are included, but the breaks, the ice-cream time, the Netflix hours are often forgotten. The fun is the reward for all of your hard work, and it needs to be done too.

Not scheduling it will leave an open door to distraction that can (and will) come. Without breaks you’ll be exhausted in a matter of hours, and as soon as you get a second of distraction, it will be downhill from there. So take the gentle road and give yourself some nice scheduled breaks and fun every once in a while. It will keep your motivation and energy almost intact.

2. Location, location, location

Yes, as in the pitches for real estate agents: it doesn’t matter how good a house is, if it’s located in the ugliest neighborhood in town, no one will buy it. In the same sense, it doesn’t matter how good the student is, if there’s not a suitable space for studying. The best learning environment can be different for everyone, your job is to find yours, preferably with good enough light, fresh air, away from distractions, with a decent internet connection. It can be the basement, the living room, or the cafe in the corner.

What’s important is that whichever place you find suitable, it needs to cover your learning needs, it must be organized, tidy, and clean, and it needs to carry the environment of learning, so it’s important not to use it for binging Netflix or playing videogames, which are some of the main study-vibe killers.

3. Facing the hardship

At the end of the day, there is an undeniable fact: however tedious or tiring some subjects or tasks might be, it’s crucial to keep in mind that they need to be done. This is not a happy or encouraging thought, but a simple fact that can help you defeat the ever tempting “I’ll do it later” mindset.

It won’t always be a fun endeavor, it won’t necessarily be the life changing experience of knowledge-gathering and cool learning that you and many students expect when enrolling in classes, but it just needs to be finished. So, whenever the temptation to give up or have an extra undeserved break kicks in, just focus on future you, and how grateful they’ll be for you to have completed this task now instead of later.

Overall, everyone’s process is different. The best way to find out what works better for you is actually trying. There are useful tools that you can use to increase your motivation, apps or browser extensions to block notifications, music for studying, or even the always useful support of study groups. You won’t get it right at first, but here’s an extra tip: just start, and you’ll already be halfway.