How to study when you have no motivation (step by step)

Any student can lose motivation and become too lazy to do any work. There have also been times when I was bored and couldn't focus on the learning sessions. But in that kind of situation, I've figured out what works for me to get back into the study process, and that's what I'm going to talk about throughout this article. This is a 4 step process; you don't need to have any tools for this, but it's so much better if you have a best friend who loves to study just like you. So let's see how this works.

A 4-step plan for studying when you have no motivation

1. Challenge with a friend

Now you’re very bored and don’t have any motivation to study because that’s why you’re reading this article. So the first thing you need to do is motivate yourself. The most effective way to motivate yourself is by challenging your friends to study with you. It works better than watching motivational videos and reading motivational stories and books.

On such occasions, I message or call my best friend, and we start discussing something related to our subjects. Then by asking her what she was doing, I asked her about my idea if it didn’t bother her. Finally, we discuss and make a study challenge that can be done in a short period. It’s important to limit the challenge we choose to about 30 minutes or less than that. Because we have to keep in mind that we use this activity only as a motivational booster to get started studying.

Since my best friend and I do this all the time, we don't consider it a distraction to our studies. The reason is that I help her motivate her by using my time won’t become a waste because I know that one day she will help me back to cheer me up to study.

To make chatting with your friends a motivational booster, your friends should also be studious. Otherwise, if you try to come up with this idea with a friend who is not interested in studying, it might lead you to lose your least motivation and focus your mind on something else that is wasting time.

Also, don’t try to do this with a group of friends, as each friend has different ideas and thoughts from one another, and it may be difficult to come up with one idea to study together. If you want to study with good motivation without wasting your time, you have to associate with a good friend with the same knowledge and attitude as you. So you can also discuss the study facts whenever you both are free. 

2. Study your favorite subject

Since you have done a challenge with your friend, now you are in a good mood to study. But if you lose it by doing unnecessary things, all the effort and time of you and your friend will go to waste. And you will end up procrastinating again. Therefore, we must keep our motivation even more and plan our schedule properly to increase our desire to learn.

The next best thing we can do to improve our motivation is to start our schedule with our favorite subjects. You can simply go through your favorite lesson on your favorite subject. My favorite subject is pure mathematics, and my favorite lesson is trigonometry. 

When I was in college, I would even use my spare time to try out trigonometry questions because I loved that lesson so much. But as I increased my interest in other lessons with time, I became more interested in lessons like differentiation and integration than trigonometry.

I talked more about the way of converting a boring subject into a favorite one in my article on how to make any boring subject interesting. If you have any boring topics, you can follow my guide to make your study process enjoyable.

If you and your friend study the same way or use the exact study timetable, you can both get together and follow these steps. So when you can study together, there’s less chance of losing your motivation after working sometime. As I mentioned in the article on pros and cons of studying with friends, when we see somebody studying, we automatically motivate ourselves and are willing to work with them. 

If you have a friend like the one I have, who always helps me and motivates me, you both can study effectively by managing your time productively. If you’re such a good friend, share this article with your friends and help them to study effectively.

3. Study complex and boring subjects

As you’ve done a few of your favorite and easiest tasks, now you’ve come to the flow state. Plus, now you have the ability to focus on any subject as your motivation and concentration level has come to a constant level. 

From now on, we should use this time to engage in complicated and tedious tasks. Studying a dull subject at the beginning of your study schedule can lower your motivation and lead to procrastination. As mentioned in the article How to stop procrastinating and start studying, we should organize our studying schedule the way most difficult and boring subjects come to the middle of our timetable. 

If you are afraid of losing motivation by doing more difficult subjects, you can break those tasks into small parts and simplify them. Also, be sure to take frequent breaks at the end of each task, such as taking a short walk or rewarding yourself. Because it can make it more interesting to keep working continuously without getting bored.

11 Beneficial Ways to Reward Yourself During Study Sessions

4. Do easy tasks

After working for 4 to 5 hours, your motivation can be reduced, which is normal for every student. That's why I always schedule easy tasks at the end of the study session rather than doing them at the beginning. We should use the end of our study session to engage in simple tasks that don't require much energy and concentration. 

When we study for a long time, our motivation decreases along with time; That's why I told you to engage in difficult tasks in the middle of your schedule. Otherwise, you will not be able to do those tasks at the end of the learning session. But when we finish those tasks when we have maximum energy, we have no doubt about it.

If you are still motivated to continue your study plan, continue without thinking twice with the eagerness you have for learning. But if you've done most of your study plan, you can stop what you're doing and take a long break. Because if you follow the steps I mentioned above, you have already finished a lot of work by now.

Conclusion

Tryout this process because I'm sure this process will help you to work more efficiently. Also, if you have any suggestions to add this technique, don't forget to comment below.