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there's value in knowing different ways
to combat a lack of motivation but they
might not be as effective if they're not
tailored to your specific situation
after all how can you effectively deal
with the disu if you don't really
understand it or why it's there in the
first place in this video i want to
cover seven common reasons why students
aren't motivated to study or generally
why people aren't as motivated to get
their work done see if any of these
apply to you and have a think about how
you can change them moving forward
oftentimes when students are lacking
motivation they can be quite harsh on
themselves and immediately jump to the
idea that they're just being lazy or
they're not trying hard enough or
something like that but sometimes your
lack of motivation is just a sign that
you're tired and you need to rest it's
better for you to understand this as
it's happening take the time that you
need to rest and then come back to your
work instead of just forcing yourself to
push through you'll end up working with
a better attitude and most likely get
more work done and to a higher quality
if you give yourself the rest that you
need sometimes it can be hard to
differentiate between being physically
tired and mentally tired and of just
having a lack of motivation due to a
bunch of other things so try to think
about you know how often you've been
working other factors in your life that
might be causing you to be tired have
you been physically pushing yourself
more than usual maybe at the gym or in
sports think about your life as we like
saying medicine holistically and you
know consider whether you just need some
time to rest and recover you might also
be feeling low motivation because of
stress having a lot of stress can become
really overwhelming which can just lead
to you sometimes shutting down you know
when it comes to being productive or
getting things done in your life it can
become really hard to compartmentalize
all the different stressors in your life
and focus on your priorities in these
times try and reach out to the people
around you for additional support and
when it comes to studying and things
like that use all the tools that you
have and you know about like scheduling
or prioritizing making to-do lists etc
to try and sort of lighten the load that
you have now in our life distractions
are plenty and they can easily keep you
from getting stuff done going out with
your friends compared to sitting at your
desk and working is a tough comparison
the temporary discomfort of studying for
future success is something that's
really hard for us to work on in the
present moment it's much easier to pick
the option that's going to offer
immediate pleasure if you find that
you're constantly blowing off your work
for other things in your life then you
might want to start thinking about
making a list of priorities and being
honest about how much time you can give
to other parts of your life that are not
your immediate priorities for example if
you've got exams in a couple of weeks
like i do right now then you might want
to limit yourself to a couple of days
off a week which you can give to
everything else in your life that you
want but it's important to create those
boundaries and stick to them if you want
to reach your chosen goals worrying
about failure can easily backfire on you
you can feel so flustered that you spend
all your time fixating on the fact that
you might fail so you avoid work in the
first place you convince yourself that
you're going to fail and the panic of it
all means that getting your mind to
focus on work seems impossible the key
here i think is to almost counsel
yourself talk to yourself or like be
your own hype man or hype woman you know
and see if you can change your thinking
and your mindset into believing that if
you put in the work now then this
actually gives you a better chance of
success in the future not trying in the
first place or not trying at all is
pretty much the only way that you're
guaranteed failure doing even a small
amount of work or a small amount of
effort towards the goal or towards the
exam or stunning or whatever is going to
result in some sort of improvement no
matter how small or how big and spending
all your time worrying about failure
sabotages your own success if you can
relate to some of these feelings or
thought patterns then remember that
you've gotten this far in your journey
for a reason and that reason is unlikely
to be that you are a failure it's much
more likely because you deserve to be
here you're capable of being here and
you can do this and you can get through
this if you can overcome the negative
thoughts and feelings around i'm going
to fail no matter how much work i do
it's not going to be worth it or enough
etc and see the time that you have to
work as an opportunity to succeed
instead of a certain path to failure and
you're going to do much better than you
would have otherwise trust me i've been
using these jedi mind tricks on myself
talking to myself convincing myself
telling myself all these things just so
i can keep a good mental state and you
know tell myself that the work that i'm
putting in now is going to be worth it
and any amount of work that i do is
going to be an improvement no matter
from where i am at the moment you know
all these ways of tricking myself and
convincing myself to start studying to
keep studying and to keep myself in a
good mental space so we've all been in a
place where we're sitting in front of
our computer or workbook and we don't
know what to do next coming up with any
sort of game plan seems impossible
because you just don't know if anything
you come up with is actually going to
work this is one of those situations
where just starting is all you need to
do it doesn't matter what you start by
doing just start with something after
that your resources will become your
best friends you can also speak to your
tutors or students in the years above
you you can look online to try and get
some advice or strategies on how to get
going and how to get started but if you
already know what the plan or strategy
is and it's just that initial starting
of the work that's the problem then that
can be tough and often what i really
like to do in those situations is just
to start with the easiest little piece
of work that i have in front of me for
example if you're watching a lecture
that is like an hour long with 50 60
powerpoint lines and you just can't
bring yourself to get through them and
watch them i feel you don't worry i've
been there many times try and find
creative ways to get around this sort of
block so for example instead of just
starting on lecture side number one and
watching grinding through to get through
to the end you might want to pick out
certain topics or titles that you think
are high yield or the most important and
then you can go on youtube or other
resources and search up videos or other
maybe more interesting ways of learning
that same information resources like
sketchy medical the cartoon drawings
that help you memorize things or random
youtube videos or things like osmosis
flash cards past paper questions you
know there's so many different ways to
study the exact same thing and if you're
finding particular difficulty sitting
through a boring boring lecture which i
have many many times try and get
creative and find other ways to study
the exact same knowledge honestly just
find any way that you can get started
and get into that studying zone and mood
get flexible with your study style and
get creative and just work your way
around that initial block you're going
to feel less motivated the more you
study if you're already studying for
long periods of time just makes sense at
the end of my usmle studying period and
other big exam periods in medical school
and before i was just getting less and
less motivated with each day that i
continued going on say for example that
you've been working for four hours today
but you start to feel unmotivated
instead of realizing that you've
probably hit your limit for the day and
need to rest you decide to push yourself
for another four hours of work you grind
out these four hours of not so great
studying and end your day feeling like
trash when you wake up the next morning
you're so much less likely to do another
full quality day of studying because
you've overworked yourself the night
before working too much or too hard is
really tough to gauge especially when
there's all kinds of peers around you
who are probably working very very long
hours or very very much and all of us i
think deep down are kind of programmed
to feel like we need to work more and
study more and that we're not working
hard enough or as hard as other people
etc this isn't the case for everyone but
particularly amongst people in
competitive environments like medical
school law school engineering whatever
it tends to be present quite a bit if
this is you then try to come up with
boundaries that you can use to work with
so if you know for example that after
six hours of studying in a day you get
completely fried your brain turns to
mush then after those six hours just
plan to give yourself some down time
some other activities that you can enjoy
and use to sort of de-stress relax and
reset before you get working again the
next day the perceived difficulty of the
task can be one of the biggest barriers
to motivation and i've experienced this
so so so many times i have an assignment
to do and it just seems like this
impossibly tall mountain that i need to
climb and i'll never be able to and the
key that has helped me overcome these
feelings is to understand the difference
between perceived difficulty and actual
difficulty it could be that the work is
objectively just really really difficult
and in this case you need to employ you
know all of the techniques you know
about studying and motivation to help
you get through it i'm talking about
things like chopping up the work into
bite-sized manageable pieces reaching
out to more experienced people like
tutors or older years using online
resources and so on if this isn't the
case and it just seems that the task is
really difficult then you need to take a
different approach you need to figure
out why this seems so difficult to you
it might be that you're really
struggling with the topic let's say
algebra or organic chemistry or physics
or whatever it might be because you
haven't done well on previous tests and
so now you're worried that that's going
to happen again it might be that you're
worried about tackling this subject
because of your lack of prerequisite
knowledge or you just find it really
boring or not as engaging or whatever
all these things can build up in your
head and mean that you perceive the task
to be so difficult that you don't end up
doing anything at all or you just feel
terrible about it to begin with if you
can figure out why you think the task is
so difficult then you can come up with a
game plan to tackle it and on top of
that this is another scenario where i
found that just getting started is so so
helpful a hundred percent of the time
when i've had this feeling that there's
this huge mountain for me to climb and
i'm never gonna be able to climb it
whatever as soon as i start and i put in
like five minutes ten minutes of work
maybe the first hour i always realize
this isn't as bad as i had made it out
to be in my head i slowly start to work
on it i just get on with it and before i
know it progress has been made so
genuinely just getting started giving
the thing a go is one of the best things
you can do force yourself to start for
some students having a false sense of
security can prevent you from studying
altogether if you think that you've got
plenty of time to work or that the work
isn't that difficult or that it doesn't
require a lot of time when it actually
does then you're actually
underestimating the amount of work
that's involved and you might not study
at all or get started way too late you
can easily talk yourself into not
studying and you're okay with it because
you've convinced yourself that you don't
need to this can sometimes be a cycle of
being unmotivated and then convincing
yourself that you don't need to work
which confirms your need to not work in
the first place it's difficult to
recognize but often it's worth speaking
to people around you to get some sort of
census or idea of what other people are
doing it acts as a litmus test as to
whether you're doing enough or not if
you're the only one who's starting
studying a week before the exam when
everyone else has given themselves four
weeks then you might want to reconsider
your mindset around how much time you've
given yourself to work literally last
week i messaged kenji and georgina and i
asked them what their game plan was for
our upcoming exam and i did this so that
i could compare my own game plan to
their game plan and see if i'm giving
myself too little time to study or if
others are doing something similar and
it's probably going to be okay it's easy
to fall into this trap and it's also
easy to selectively listen to the few
people that will tell you what you want
to hear you know confirmation bias and
all of that you need to try and take a
step back and think about things a
little bit more critically than just
through the filter of being unmotivated
i hope this video has helped you to
think about some of the reasons why you
might be feeling unmotivated i feel that
it's really important on this channel
that we discuss some of the reasons why
we're not feeling motivated as opposed
to just always talking about solutions
and ways you can do things i think both
are really important in how we think
about our work or studying and so we
should discuss both if you've got any
additional reasons why you think you
might be unmotivated or looking for
advice or help from anyone else in a
studying or university community please
do leave a comment down below and i'm
sure myself or someone else can
hopefully get back to you and we can all
share our ideas around motivation and
studying and that's it for me until next
time i'll catch you in the next one
peace
[Music]
cool that's mountain section number two
let's get off this balcony without
dropping my 5 000 pound camera
easy does it