There are days when studying feels relatively easy to do. You know what you need to do, you sit down, and you do it.

Then there are the other days. You have finished a longs days’ work. You are tired. You know you should study but you really do not want to. You tell yourself you will start studying at 7 o’ clock. But first, you make tea, check your phone, tidy your desk, you might even tidy your bedroom.

Suddenly, it is 8 o’ clock and you have not opened a book. You have spent almost as much energy avoiding study as you might have spent actually doing it.

This is low motivation. Motivation is like energy. It fluctuates. If you are waiting for motivation to start studying, it might never come.  

Relying on Motivation is not a useful study strategy

A common trap students fall into is believing they need to be motivated before they start studying.

You tell yourself:

• I will start when I feel more focused.
• I will do it properly tomorrow.
• I am not in the right frame of mind tonight.

The problem is that motivation fluctuates from day to day. It is affected by tiredness, confidence, how well your last study session went, how difficult the topic feels and what else you have going on in your life.

Often, motivation comes after you start. In other words, motivation follows action. You answer one exam style question. Read two pages of your lecture notes. Do a brain dump on a topic you covered at the weekend. Ten minutes later, your resistance to study has eased. The hardest part was not the studying. It was starting to study.

Discipline matters more than motivation

Productive study is not built on feeling motivated all the time. It is built on discipline or being able to do something useful even when your enthusiasm is low.

That does not mean ignoring genuine exhaustion or forcing yourself through hours of poor-quality work. Rest also fuels your productivity. When you find yourself putting study off, ask yourself this question:

Do I genuinely need a break, or am I waiting to feel motivated?

And if it is low motivation, ask yourself:

What is the smallest piece of study I can complete right now to help me progress one step forward?

Sometimes that is all you need to get moving again.

Set Yourself learning goals

Sometimes what feels like a motivation problem is a planning problem. When we sit down to study, often we set ourselves vague outcome goals. For example, “I am going to study tax tonight”. We can set ourselves outcome goals, achieve the goal of studying tax and learn nothing.

We need to change our strategy and set ourselves learning goals.  For example, “tonight I am going to learn how to calculate capital allowances on motor vehicles”. When we set learning goals, in turn we can hold ourselves to account. After your study session, ask yourself whether you “understand how to calculate capital allowances on motor vehicles”. If the answer is “yes”, well done. If the answer “no” that’s ok. Make a note of what else you need to do to aid your understanding of this topic. This will inform your next study session and help with planning.

Conclusion

You do not need to feel motivated every time you sit down to study. What matters is having a clear learning goal, starting small and taking action even when you do not feel like it. Motivation may fluctuate, but discipline is what will keep moving you towards exam success.