Getting Yourself to Do Hard Things

Motivation From Within

Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project
 

Intrinsic motivation is the driving force of success. Intrinsic motivation helps us engage in a behavior because of the inherent satisfaction of the activity rather than the desire for a reward or specific outcome. It is the difference between working diligently to achieve a goal rather than working to achieve a paycheck, treat, bonus, or reward. Those last things are defined as extrinsic motivations.

Everything we do (or choose not to do) has effects on our life. Work earns money. Certain behaviors or beliefs might make our parents proud. Taking up weightlifting might make our appearances and abilities more to our liking. Finishing a long boring task will allow us to move on to the more interesting project.
Dr. Kou Murayama assigned a problem-solving task to two groups of participants. One group was told to master the material. The other group was tasked to outperform or “win higher scores” compared to their peers. Those told to win higher scores indeed did better on a pop quiz that day.  The group told to master the material performed better a week later. This second group’s goals were intrinsic, namely to fully “own” a body of knowledge for themselves. 

How do we convince ourselves to master a body of knowledge? How do we spark our own intrinsic motivation? 

Believe in your own ability to become intrinsically motivated.

This form of motivation is the strongest and most surefire way to keep going even when the going gets rough! Even on a neurological level, humans will stay on task longer if they believe they can complete the task for their own benefit. Intrinsic motivation works way better than treats, rewards, and paychecks.  It all starts with your personal belief that you can do a thing. This fact explains why small business owners are willing to work much harder (and longer) than employees. Intrinsic motivation pushes a person to dig deep.

Desire to be effective at what you plan to do.

It is so easy for some people to talk themselves out of everything good. Sometimes this behavior is modeled for us by others. Sometimes we’ve been through some life event that leads us to believe that it is better to hope for less and be surprised when there’s more. This can be a toxic habit, so it is worth trying to reprogram how you tackle life. Psychologist Tory Higgins, director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia Business school explains, “The essence of human motivation is that we want to be effective. It’s what makes us feel alive.”

Setting goals and feeling effective for accomplishing them is a huge win in life. Start by believing you can do a thing and then do it. The nice side effect is that we will quickly understand how we can influence our own life positively. We don’t need to wait until somebody else “gives us a chance,” assigns us a job, or pays us to do something. Visualize and desire successfully doing/learning/mastering then set the goal, form a plan, then do it. This is what gives us a charge and makes us know we are going places in life.  

Be around other motivated people, avoid unmotivated people.

It is impossible to stay motivated to learn a thing or do a thing if everyone around you is telling you it is “dumb” or unimportant or (worse) unattainable. If you can’t avoid unmotivated or unmotivating people, associate with those who have their own vision to achieve great things. Sometimes this means you should look for friendships or get involved in organizations or clubs with similar views. If that isn’t possible, encourage yourself by finding motivational success stories and seeking good advice for ways to stay on the path to success.  

Share your progress with somebody.

Persevering to accomplish a goal is something to be celebrated! Having an optimistic accountability partner can help you arrive at your goal and celebrate once you are there. This same accountability partner can help you in the bad weeks when you’ve had setbacks. This person will be there to remind you that setbacks are temporary, and that victory is close at hand. If you are in a class to learn a body of material, sometimes that accountability partner is your educator or your class peers. In many of our classes, we educators will celebrate wins, namely people who set lofty goals get a nice shout out when they arrive!

Set specific and challenging goals.

Accomplishing goals is motivating. When you set a lofty goal that will take time and effort, don’t just look at the finish line. Set specific measurable milestones to push you along on your journey. Each will be its own motivation. Each contributes towards your momentum. As a student mastering a subject, your milestones might be individual scores on assignments or maybe keeping grades within a high range for all exams, for example. Each task is a manageable step up the staircase. You won’t be ready for your final exam until the end. This week, excellence task-by-task is just the right size for success.

Train your brain by being your own accountability partner.

Our internal dialog is often a big detriment to success at what we want to accomplish. We might say things like, “I’m not good at this.” Maybe we’ll think, “None of this really matters.” Sometimes we look at a far-off goal and start to imagine all the things that might-possibly-could-potentially stop us from success. Every time you have these inward discussions with yourself, retrain your brain. Become your own encourager, or at least avoid being your own nay-sayer. You put nothing at risk by framing ideas of great success for yourself, especially if you have set goals.  There is nothing to be gained by being negative toward future you.

6 Ways to Improve Executive Function

Plan, Monitor, and Execute Goals

By Amy Barr at The Lukeion Project

Not that long ago it became pedagogically fashionable to reject the old-timey learning methods that worked well for the last several thousand years. Big tech solutions, apps, and shiny expensive learning systems have replaced reading, writing, and formal reasoning. Now few conventionally schooled students ever read a whole book (excerpts only), are seldom expected to memorize much (apps are always available), and are trained for highly uninspiring multi-choice standardized exams like life depends on them. Likewise, educators are expected to provide an extensive infrastructure of detailed and colorfully prepped study aids to help serve up pre-digested information for easy student consumption.

Pedagogy was once an art. Learning was once a joy! Executive function, the cognitive processes and mental skills that help an individual plan, monitor, and successfully execute their goals, was both the method and result of a decent education. Plan, monitor, and execute goals? Educators are now being replaced by apps and students are being equipped for nothing much beyond a lifetime of playing with those apps.   

How can a student gain control of her own education and build his executive function? How can a student learn to plan, monitor, and successfully execute the goals of any academic mission now or in the future?

1.       Determine the exact parameters of assignments.

This is a fancy way of saying, “READ ALL THE DIRECTIONS.” Simply following the directions for an assignment will take most students most of the way to a terrific score. Roughly a third of students will not read the directions the instructor gave for an assignment. Another third will only read part of the instructions. The remaining third (academic superstars) took the time to carefully and conscientiously read ALL the instructions and do what was asked as asked.

2.       Start at the start not at the end.

Most of us claim we do our best work under the stress of a deadline because that’s the way we’ve always done things! If you are given a week to write an essay, develop a translation, complete a short speech, or read a book, when you start that task says a lot about your executive function. A lot of students who claim to struggle academically are just struggling with time management. Those who wait until 45 minutes before the deadline to get started will never perform as well as a person who put in more time, effort, and planning. Your potential is damaged by procrastination not by a lack of academic wits. The superstars are simply those who carefully and conscientiously plan their time and use it as planned.

3.       Set up boundaries and margins in your schedule.

Some students will set themselves apart academically by taking on every honors course and every AP class, plus every chance for extracurricular sports, dramas, dance, music, debate, and every competition their community opens. Woohoo! These students are living their best life right now! Except now these students have no margin for error and no down time. One bad week might mean things derail quickly. Some of these students are burned out before they start college. Adult life is a lot less stressful than being in school…said no one ever. Trying to do it all in high school and college is likely to leave you bitter, exhausted, and usually both. Instead of doing it all, try just doing most of what you want to do. Build in down time and margin for when your family needs you to help or when you need rest, recover, recuperation. Some of us are wired to GO-GO-GO! If this describes you, knock it down to just go-go while you also occasionally stop to smell the roses. Take it from a typical type-A personality: “I wish I had stayed much busier” is not something you’ll wistfully repeat about your youth.

4.       Do some every day.

The best way to memorize something, master a new topic, or finish a huge project is in small chunks scattered through your schedule. One of the big benefits of a homeschool education is that your life isn’t restricted to 60-minute class sessions and a 10 minute passing period. If you find you get easily distracted or bored, change out your task every 15-20 minutes. Use a timer and give yourself a small reward for staying on task that whole time. 20 well-spent minutes will allow you to get more done than 60 distracted minutes.

5.       Get some support.

If you have time management issues (procrastination or over-scheduling), if you get easily overwhelmed by the details of a project (oh no! research project!), or if you get easily intimidated by the material (you are a creative who has been tasked with a chemistry class), get support. Find somebody who will help you with accountability for getting things done on time or not signing up for too much. Clarify instructions if you aren’t sure what steps to follow next. Set up a friendly competition with a sibling or peer to prompt you to do a little better each time. Find different ways to understand new material through videos, songs, charts, tutorials. In other words, don’t just abandon hope and give up. Support, help, advice, accountability are all great coping mechanisms for whatever challenge comes your way.

6.       Offer yourself some grace.

Most of us want to be good at the tasks we are assigned. We want to feel competent, and we want to manage ourselves well. As much as we want all these things to happen for us daily, we are going to encounter challenges and failures. Traffic demolished the time we reserved for homework. A sibling got sick so the afternoon was spent at the doctor’s office instead of the library. You thought you understood the assignment, but you blew right past important details at the end. These things are all part of life. They are normal issues. When disaster strikes (and it will regularly) you have to offer grace to yourself. Grace may not improve this week’s poor scores but it will help you climb back on your feet for next week’s new set of tasks. Stand up, dust off, keep going.