Sometimes you feel like doing anything but learning. And yet,the homework must get done! In conclusion, we offer you a few tips how you can improve your motivation again. Good luck!
- Look again at your work plan for today (see steps 6 and 8 above). Did you craft this work plan carefully? Does it begin with something that you do well and like to do? Did you divide larger tasks into partial goals that you can manage more easily?
- Think about the reason for your reluctance. Are you sad,do you have a problem? Are you afraid of something related to school? Do you feel like you won’t be able to succeed? Maybe you should speak about your feelings with someone who understands you. Or, you should encourage yourself by formulating positive thoughts, like «I can do this!», «I am going to make a new attempt and I will succeed!». However, if you don’t feel at all like working at this moment, then either give yourself a push, or consider, by way of an exception, to postpone your homework hour for later!
- However, if you regularly feel tired and listless during your work hour, then consider scheduling it during another time. Every person has more active or passive times in their daily routine (most people are active between 4–6pm or 7pm). Consider if this would not be a better timeslot for you.
- You can also motivate yourself in seeking out a role model. This can be a famous personality (Albert Einstein, mother Teresa, …) or it can be someone from your class or an acquaintance who impresses you. To emulate this role model would be great! However, it won’t happen entirely without work – so let’s get going!
- It is a good idea to keep a diary or a daily journal for learning. In this booklet you record at the end of every homework hour how you fared with learning and how you feel now. Review this diary every two to three weeks and consider if you can learn something about your own life and maybe improve some things.
- A learning poster is a very useful tool, and will help you keeping oversight, particularly with larger topics. Join together four A4-sheets and write in the center the name of your theme (e. g. «the Romans»). Around them, draw circles or squares as sub-areas about which you need to learn something (clothing, history, usw.). Circle in yellow the areas with which you have already dealt with. You will see your progress as more and more circles turn yellow. See also the learning technique T4 «creating a learning poster».
Example:
Congratulations! Your training program is now (almost) finished.
If you have not (yet) thoroughly worked through everything, then simply do it now. You will see: it is worth the effort!
At the very end, here is one more exercise. It will help you to think through everything and consider what you still could improve upon.
Exercise 10: the final exercise!
Following your proud conclusion of the training program, we want to look back one more time. With many steps (1, 2, 4, 5 and 8) you have taken notes. Read through them one more time. Think of all the days of this training program and leaf through the pertinent pages one more time.
Consider the following and make a few notes about it:
- What have you learned in this training program, what can you do better now than before?
- What did not go so well, what do you still have to improve?
- How could you improve the things that did not go so well? Make a proposal!