Do you find it difficult to focus, as you keep thinking about your summer break? In this article we share our secrets to stay motivated during research!
I trust you had a wonderful summer break and managed to spend quality time with your friends and family. It’s been a challenging academic year for all of us, full of online learning, online classes, exploring new ways to keep colleagues, researchers and students motivated. But despite our move to remote learning, I trust we’ve all learnt something – as motivated academics we’re keen to explore new academic resources that will help us stay motivated and enjoy our work. After all, we need to be able to find some joy in our work to keep on going, am I right?
I know that coming back from summer break can be challenging. Our minds are still with the beautiful seasides and picturesque mountains we visited. But it’s a new academic year and it’s time to focus on making significant academic progress.
I want you to promise me one thing this academic year – promise me that this year you will identify one thing that will help you progress your career. Regardless of whether this is writing your thesis, publishing more papers, or finding an academic position, decide on what you want to achieve over the next academic year and prioritise any activities related to this goal.
For accountability, share your one thing in the comments below!
I know I am supposed to write about secrets to staying motivated in this article. But I thought I’d rather start by asking you to do and commit to doing something for one reason: my ONE THING for the next academic year is to inspire you to take action, focus on academic achievement and progress your academic career.
To be honest, it will be a difficult thing to do. It’s easy to get discouraged when you experience challenges. And that’s normal – all of us feel this way at some point. So here are the secrets I use to stay motivated and keep on pushing, regardless of the challenges.
Table of Contents
Determine and focus on your why to stay motivated
Staying motivated is virtually impossible if you don’t know why you’re doing things. If you want to build strong intrinsic motivation, which means that the source of your motivation comes from the activity itself, rather than the reward you may receive as a result of it, you need to have a clear rationale for your activities.
Therefore, before you commit to working on any paper, project or other activity, ask yourself why do you want to do it and whether it aligns with what you want to achieve in your academic career. Knowing your why will make staying motivated much easier!
Set SMART goals
We’ve already discussed SMART goals at length on our blog, so I won’t define them in this article. Instead, have a look at our other resources here for more information.
What I wanted to emphasise here is the importance that goals have on your academic progress. If you develop a set of goals you want to achieve in the new academic year and keep them in the visible location in your work area, you’d be more likely to achieve these goals.
This is mostly because you’ll be continuously reminded about these goals and you will be able to prioritise your work better. Your brain will also subconsciously work on finding ways for you to achieve your goals.
Remember, you’re also more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down by hand!
Try a new study method
If you’re still doing your coursework part of the PhD degree, you may find that part daunting and, similarly to your fellow students, may find it difficult to stay motivated. After all, coursework is something that keeps you away from doing exciting research that can change the world, right?
So why won’t you make it more exciting