Are you having trouble hitting the books? Do you have an exam a few weeks away and you haven’t yet cracked a single text for the course? Check out these tips to help you get some work done.
Ban Distractions
You won’t accomplish much with the dog and your little brother begging you for attention and your mother nagging you about chores. If you live in a dorm, your roommate might not respect your need for quiet time, or people you know might be dropping by frequently to chat. Lock yourself into the quiet basement, or escape to a park or library so it’s just you and the books. If you choose the basement, leave your phone upstairs and only take what you need to study with you. The same goes for the library – leaving your cell at home for 2-3 hours won’t kill you, I promise.

Focus on Short-Term Goals
Long-term goals have a way of feeling, well, far away. It’s hard to stay on track when your goal is to get into graduate school – and graduate school is 3 years away. For many people, even getting an “A” in the course is too long-term, and even a goal of an “A” just on this one test can seem too far away to be urgent (until the night before the test that is, and we’ve all been there.) Set yourself an even more short-term goal, such as studying 20 minutes today. Assuming you start studying a few weeks before the test, you can start at 20 minutes a day (come on, that’s nothing, right?) and do 40 minutes a day all of next week. The key is to focus on only one day at a time, rather than thinking about all these hours of studying that lie ahead of you .

Reward Yourself
Long term goals and long term rewards (like being able to afford that luxury car once you’re a doctor) have one thing in common – they’re too far away to get you working now. You might just need a visual reminder, like a picture of your dream car on the wall above your desk or a chart with steps you need to achieve to be checked off as you reach them, but you might need to bribe yourself a little for the various steps along the way. Team up with a buddy who doesn’t have a test until next week – this week, he buys you a beer for every hour you study, and when his test comes along you do the same for him. Of course, you might need to study in the same room to keep each other honest! Or, put a dollar in a jar for every hour you study and splurge on whatever you want – guilt-free – after exams are over. It doesn’t have to be elaborate; you just need to find out what works for you.

The real key to motivation is to experiment – you need to figure out what is important to you, and then relate that to your studying. Once you set up your system, you’ll find studying becomes a lot easier.