How to fight motivationitis when you’re in a study rut
How can you help your teen find their study mojo?
Hi there,
So, study ruts. Motivationitis. We’ve all been there. The question is how do you find your study mojo?!
I actually think there are TWO types of study ruts, and today I want to give your teen some tips to get out of them.
It’s common to find yourself in a study rut just before you embark on exam study — when all of your exam study is ahead of you and it’s all very overwhelming.
It’s also common to experience a study rut, or an episode of motivationitis, part way through the semester or part way through your exam preparation — when you’re feeling a bit worn out and over it.
So how does one pull themselves out of a study rut? Let’s look at both types and how you can help your teen find their study mojo.
Rut 1: If you’re in a study rut because you’re about to embark on exam study and that’s not a fun thought
Your teen might be feeling this way because they have a lot of topics to cover before their exams and they don’t know which needle in the haystack to start with.
I have three pieces of advice for them in this instance —
1. Make an Exam Study Timetable before they start exam study
I can’t express adequately how much I love Exam Study Timetables. Once your teen makes one, never again will they find themselves stuck because they don’t know what to study next. IT’S ALL THERE IN THEIR TIMETABLE!!!
An Exam Study Timetable is a detailed timetable you follow during your exam study. It sets out what specific topic for what subject you’re going to study for when.
This means your teen should never have to scramble through the busy and stressed confines of their brain to decide what’s next on the study agenda, and it should also provide them with relief — seeing that there is in fact time to get through everything; as long as they stick to the timetable they will make it through.
2. Start with a topic you enjoy
If your teen is really dreading starting the exam study process I sugges they pick that they actually like (or at least don’t hate) to revise first.
Because it’s hard yakka, you need to do yourself little favours throughout exam study, and starting with a topic that your teen is not going to find too tedious to revise is a gooday to start their exam preparation and get some momentum going.
By the time they have gone over that topic they should be more motivated to start the next one.
3. Just do it
It is entirely possible to overthink exam study and get caught up in the preparation of it all, but at the end of the day your teen just needs to start.
They need to pick a topic, read, and start writing study notes.
Starting is often the hardest part of studying, and I think acknowledging this is actually helpful. If you know that it’s hard to start you can also tell yourself that it will get easier once you get over that initial obstabcle of inertia.
Rut 2: If you’re in a study rut because you’ve run out of motivation and you’re over it
Preparing for exams is a marathon not a sprint, and so it’s only 100% natural that there will be times when your teen might feel exhausted, brain-fried, knackered, bored, over it, and maybe sometimes like they just want to give up altogether.
Knowing this, you can help your teen to arm themselves with a few simple tips to help them get their study groove back.
Here are two of my favourite re-motivators (yes I just made that term up):
1. Having a break
Sometimes you just need a break, and to reset and come back to your study when you’re actually going to be productive.
This doesn’t mean your teen shoujld stop studying every time they feel like it. But if half an hour has passed and they have achieved nothing, it’s probably best if they go and do something fun for half an hour, clear their head, and come back to their desk when they are ready to focus.
2. Changing topics
Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how hard we try, some topics just take a lot more effort to study than others.
Perhaps the subject is one of your teen’s weaker areas, maybe the content of the subject is particularly hard, or maybe your teen is feeling stuck on a topic for no obvious reason!
If they find themself staring at the screen or the page in front of them and the words just aren’t going in — even when they really try — it is probably best to give up on that topic for now and study something easier in the meantime.
Your teen will hopefully find that after a break from the challenging topic they can come back to it later that day or another day soon, and that it doesn’t seem quite so hard.
Don’t let your study ruts defeat you
Study ruts are much easier to overcome when you accept that they’re going to happen at some point during exam study, and when you have a few tricks up your sleeve for dealing with them.
I hope these techniques will help your teen to pull themselves out of their study ruts. If your teen is finding any other techniques helpful in combating motivationitis, please let us know in the comments below! So many parents are struggling to help their teens find their motivation, and we can all learn from one another.
Thanks so much for reading.
Clare