5 tips to stay motivated as a student

A plan is like a reminder of things that you have not done for the day. But plans can fail. So know your weekly goals first, then break them down into daily goals. This prevents the problem of setting overly ambitious goals for every day, only to realise that you cannot finish them, which causes you to be less motivated. Planning on a weekly basis gives you a long-term perspective and also allows you to take it easy for your everyday tasks.

You may not have realised how much your friends' attitude can influence your attitude. Stay with people who complain about study all the day, you are not likely to have a positive attitude towards study. Stay with people who are genuinely interested in the subject of their study, so they can spread their positive energy and love to you even without you noticing it.

You need to have one more positive friend - yourself. We talk to ourselves every day no less than we talk to our friends. How we think about study has a lot of impact on our motivation.

Psychologists have proven that self-talk has a profound impact on our attitude on a daily basis. And it is something that can be faked in the short run.

A reason for lack of motivation is that you don’t understand the modules well. You always can’t figure out the right answer, or you don’t know what the lecturer is doing and you lose interest. You should tackle the root problem.

This is likely because you didn’t pay attention to the first few lectures that served as foundation for subsequent content. So start learning the module from scratch again - this may seem slow, but it truly helps you.

Don’t panic. Sometimes when students are anxious, they want to study even less. Instead, take time to create a plan for your exam revision. Again, don’t be overly ambitious. Your sense of achievement from (almost) finishing a day’s plan is an important reason to keep you motivated for the next day.

It is never a good strategy to study all day. Do light exercise routine every 3 hours to refresh your mind. Switch between subjects to study.