These steps work even when your teachers are not helping!
As a student, if you’ve been able to identify that you’re generally unmotivated, that’s a decisive first step. You’ll need these two steps that I’m about to share with you, so let’s begin.
What It Looks Like When You’re Unmotivated
Self-motivation is probably the most challenging personal skill to build, and it is not limited to students your age. Younger and older people than you struggle to move when they need to, and the struggle is more significant when we feel like we don’t want to move at all.
When you’re unmotivated, you likely experience some or all of the following;
- No work or tasks are meaningful to you anymore.
- You’re slower than usual at everything; even the simple act of brushing your teeth or getting out of the bed seems too much.
- You don’t want to meet appointments or hang out with anyone
- You don’t want to pursue any goals you’ve set for yourself
- You often catch yourself staring blankly into space without knowing what you’re really thinking about
- Sometimes, thoughts grow darkly in your mind, and your mental health starts spiraling
Yes, being unmotivated is not the best idea, and staying that way isn’t the best either. Before we explore what you’re going to do about it, there’s something more you should know.
Why Do I Get Unmotivated?
There are issues beneath the feelings and moods you can see and identify from the list I shared in the previous section. Those issues are the why you find yourself unmotivated.
When your goals are unrealistic, you might get scared of how large it is and decide not to start them because you believe that you will eventually fail. In addition to unrealistic goals, you can grow unmotivated when you don’t have a solid connection to achieving the things you want.
When you doubt yourself and your abilities, you will end up unmotivated. The same thing happens when your environment is not so helpful, and the people around you are not motivated people as well.
You get unmotivated when there’s a gap between your willingness to work and finish a task and the actions that get the task done. A lack of purpose, not understanding your why, your environment, your lack of belief in yourself, and unrealistic goals influence your motivation levels. Some people can work around these obstacles. However, not everyone is that strong, which can quickly become a bad motivation problem.
Two Steps to Take When You Have A Bad Motivation Problem
There are two kinds of motivation that you can start using today.
They’re called extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. How effective each one will be depends on the difficulty you’re facing.
Extrinsic motivation: This kind of motivation requires you to involve other people, for example, family or close friends. You practice extrinsic motivation when you are motivated by your family or friends with a reward for accomplishing something. The rewards in extrinsic motivation are usually tangible, like money, a trophy or prize, discount cards, or coupons. Sometimes, extrinsic motivation rewards are intangible, for example, when your parents praise you for doing well at school or cleaning up your room.
Step 1: Get a parent or friend to line up a reward for you when you finish a task.
Intrinsic motivation: As you might’ve already guessed, this kind of motivation comes from the inside. It is more challenging to increase your intrinsic motivation levels than extrinsic motivation. Have you ever done a task just for the pleasure or joy of doing it? What’s driving you at that moment is intrinsic motivation. People interested in boosting their intrinsic motivation usually work with high-performance coaches or therapists to achieve it.
Step 2: Work with a coach or therapist to identify inner motivators that you can always trigger when you need to get things done.
The Over-Justification Effect
The rule in solving motivation problems is finding the right balance between the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation you’ve learned in this article today. Sometimes, an external reward reduces your motivation levels instead of increasing them, leading to the overjustification effect.
When you can complete a task just fine with inner motivation, do just that, and only introduce external rewards when you’re sure you can use the boost. Overall, inner motivators last longer than external ones. The sooner you build them, the easier it becomes to overcome low motivation days.
If you think your inner motivation could really use a boost, reach out here and schedule a free 30-minute session with me.
I hope this helps!
Desmond utilizes his knowledge of education policy from his undergrad, his Masters of Education from Johns Hopkins, and a variety of advanced certifications such as CHPC and LWT to construct prime academic intervention programs and homework/executive functioning support for all his students.
