I've been there, I've looked at my steam account and noticed how many thousands of hours I've slinked into gaming throughout my time. For me, I cant study well if gaming is too easy to access, if I want to improve my studying or just learn better over all, I need to temporarily remove the ease of gaming for a period of time. If you need motivation to study but you continue to slip into your gaming world of choice, here are some methods on how resolve low motivation and commitment when it comes to your academic career, it's all about patterns.
Do you struggle to study sometimes? of course you do, everyone does. The difference between those who continue studying and those who stop studying comes down to a melting pot of discipline, commitment, circumstance and preparation measures.
What I mean by this is that there are certain study-friendly mindsets you should adopt, but there are also studying tips and techniques that can to be used to prepare you for those moments where study motivation isn't at it's best.
If you are not studying enough, but spending more than enough time gaming, we need to work hard to re-address the balance of work and play.
Doing better in your studies means you have to put in more time and more effort, gaming can be an effective sink of both of those. Although it may make you feel better, you burn the time away that you could spend on your academics.
I personally love gaming, there's certainly a place for it, but we all know where our priorities should be. Here we talk about how up the motivation to study and reduce the ease to slip into gaming.
This is going to take some serious discipline, but, with a few techniques, we can drastically improve your chances to keep that mind of yours poised toward the study material and revision notes.
How to Stop Gaming When you Need to Study
Easier said that done right? On how many occasions have you slipped into the gaming world and ended up staying there for 300 minutes instead of 30.
Gaming can distract you from studying for an awfully long time, the motivation to 'slip' into a game is far easier found than the motivation to study.
The trick to get around this is to turn that 'slip' into a 'struggle'. You want it to be hard to start gaming.
Right now, you could probably open up a game in 3 clicks or less - this is a 'slippy' situation. But imagine if you uninstalled that game and if you wanted to play it again, you would have to install it and then play.
Maybe it has a huge file size and takes hours to install/download - GOOD! This is now a 'struggle' situation, in which it takes effort to do. On top of that, the reward isn't instant, you have to install, wait and then play!
Actions like this give your mind time to reconfigure it's priorities in the weak moments of temptation. Whether it means unplugging your console and hiding it away, lending your headset to a sibling, storing your games in your car...always intentionally make it harder for you to log on and pwn.
Creating your Study Setup
It's pretty likely that the desk you use to study is the same, if not close to, the area in which you game, for me, it's exactly the same...and there's a danger in that.
We often turn to gaming when our levels of stress are high, indulging in a virtual world with very little consequence but maximal immersion feels pretty darn great. It does a fantastic job of blowing off steam (reducing stress)
So we need to look at the areas that cause us stress and reduce those, so they don't act as the antagonists that leads us into a virtual realm.
Look at your desk, ensure it's clean and only has the things that you need for studying. If you have the means, I would recommend spending time and money in your desk setup. Designing your desk setup is a fantastic way to encourage the thirst for productivity.
I've recently purchased a wooden standing desk from the folks over at Fully.com, I managed to get a brand new desk shipped to the UK in under 2 weeks, all holes were drilled, instructions included, I just put everything together and that was it!
And wow did it make a difference to how much I appreciated my work space, I keep it clean constantly and thanks to that...I reduce any little stress inducers. Take a look at this picture below (it's not mine) but doesn't it make you appreciate the setup and WANT to be productive?
Use Music as a Middle Ground
Okay, so I've taken gaming away from you, tut-tut. But I will invite you to think about using music if you want. I personally use it ALL the time, even when trying to learn something.
Even though music can be immersive, it isn't so immersive that it distracts you from studying. It's possible to listen to music and read/think/write or watch study material.
Furthermore, music has an incredible ability to transform you out of or in to different moods. if I want to feel good, I listen to positive and energetic music, works every time!
Temporarily Disable Gaming Accounts
This is a scary thought, but I assure you it's pretty harmless. We are using a technique that describes the idea that if it's not accessible, your body will resist the idea to chase it.
People do this with their diet, if they don't want to eat bad foods they either put them in difficult places or don't put them in the house in the first place.
Obviously access to gaming is far simpler than that, infact you can do it all from the comfort of your seat.
Before uninstalling your game or steam, be sure to save backup files for the game you need. Search on YouTube for tutorials on this, they take you through the process.
After doing that, you've successfully made it harder for you to chill out (that's a good thing, for now)
But I'm Finished with Studying for the Day?
Okay, so let's say you completed your study session and it was a roaring success, how do you take some time to yourself and relax.
Well you could absolutely game if you wanted to, but only if you trusted yourself to game ONLY when you finish your studies.
However, they may be an invitation here for you to experience other ways of relaxing, maybe you can socialise with other people, go to the gym, go out and eat, go into the city and do something....watch a Netflix series or whatever!
Gaming doesn't have to be the only thing you default to, though granted very appealing. Experiment with other things, less time staring at a computer is likely good anyhow. Especially if you finish studying near the end of the day and need to reduce the amount of light exposure, I talk a lot about that in this post and how to get better sleep!
If you do resort to gaming, that's totally fine. But remember to uninstall the game afterward if you feel the need to, be honest with yourself and if you know you will game again in the morning, uninstall it, make it a struggle!
Always have that in your mind, make the temptations a struggle to indulge in and the commitments as appealing as possible, if you could gamify studying that would be a dream but...that's unlikely in most cases.
How to Generate Study Motivation?
I talk about motivation a lot on this blog, it's such a fascinating idea to me. But with regard to generating it, there's a lot of misinformation out there.
Motivation to do anything isn't conjured on the spot, motivation is a product (meaning result) of something else that happens.
For motivation to exist, there must be a precursor scenario, event, knowledge, comparison or equivalent to draw from.
How do we encourage these events? Well we can actively search for them, or they randomly come to us. If I asked you to go on YouTube and search for gym motivation, you could find a video, listen to it, and maybe feel motivated - this is an easy example!
But having the motivation to study is far harder. The trick to becoming motivated to study is to do the thing you need to do regardless of how you feel about it, there's a word for this and we like to call it commitment.
Commitments leads to actions, regardless of feelings. When it comes to motivation, we get it by becoming familiar, good, experienced or resourceful at something.
Get Motivated to Study
There are a bundle of study tips to support this. I'm going to talk about one called the Two Minute Rule - I've got a whole post on this if you would like to check it out.
The two minute a rule describes a situation in which you force yourself to do something (regardless of whether you want to or not) but only for 2 minutes.
Hopefully, after the 2 minutes have passed, you will notice that you weirdly want to continue doing that thing.
The reason for this, is because you have forced yourself to become familiar with the work, maybe even good at it. You've overcome any fear or false interpretation of the activity by doing the activity itself.
The trick to this is to start with the 'easy' part of the thing you need to do, for studying, make sure you start with easy questions, the introductory reading sections or just an overview plan of what you need to study.
The 2 minute study tip allows you to break through the mental inertia and get into the study mode. When you are in the study mode, you don't want to get out of it!
Plan your Studies
Another study tip, would be to plan ahead before jumping into the books and 'studying hard'. By planning ahead, you are able to maintain the momentum of studying when you finish a section.
There's a danger that when you finish a section, you arrive at the conclusion that you don't know what to do next and therefore it's a good place to stop - and start gaming!
You want to avoid this by performing an overview of the content you need to study and planning the successive activities for your whole study session, bridge these danger points with a link to the next study activity you need to do.
Be Prepared for your Studies
To keep the study momentum going, you need to be prepared. Be sure to have everything you need for your entire revision slot, you don't want to have an excuse to leave your seat and distract yourself.
Understand which resources you need to have access to (websites, books etc) and which tools you want to have around you (calculator, geometry kit etc)
How to Think about the Work Ahead
This is similar to the two minute rule mention above, in the sense that you are taking the full amount of work and declaring that you will only do a small introductory portion of it (with the secret intention to continue afterward)
it's very common for students to use phrases like:
"I have to read these 12 chapters!"
"I have to practise both of these past papers!"
"I have go through half of the modules content in a week!"
Notice how these statements include an intimidating amount of work or time needed to complete the work - this mindset alone can deter the mind from engaging in studying, because it's stressful!
So what you need to do is commit to a smaller, more consumable amount of work. The mind will be far more yielding to the idea of doing that, rather than the fear of doing it all.
Assuming you make that introductory work easy and achievable, once achieved you will be encouraged to continue and motivation will grow.
Avoid troubling yourself by thinking about the work as " a lot to do ", even if it is. Break it up into smaller bits and start with the easy parts.
The prevailing reason for procrastination is due to our false and inaccurate interpretation of the workload and how difficult it's going to be (often due to the false expectation of how much we need to do and how we will feel about it)
Breaking the problem up into sections/sub-sections drastically increases your chances of starting the work and continuing it. Furthermore if you plan how those sections are linked to one another, you again increase the chances that you will continue studying!
Choose When and Where to Study
There are two more obvious ways to avoid gaming when you need to study. Consider the time at which you study and where you go to study.
Say if you woke up at 5am and studied at home, perhaps the game servers you play are quiet in those times or the people you play with aren't online - and so you are discouraged from playing because of this.
Alternatively, if you go to the library, you are less likely to game there! (Assuming you still have your laptop and phone)
If the library has people there that can distract you, combine the two and go to the library early in the morning when other people aren't. This may be the perfect solution for some people, be sure to try it out!
I've covered the struggles of studying before, it's a burden that will always trouble students indefinitely, everyone will face the same kinds of struggle.
As long as you put in effort to overcome them and try different study tips and tactics to beat the devil that sits on your shoulder, you'll soon adapt a new skillset that allows you to study long, smart and hard.
Remember, you can play what game you want at anytime in the future, you just need to study now for the up coming exams. You only have this time to study, but a forever after to play!
If you have any questions for me or other readers, pop them in the comments below. Hit the <3 icon if you enjoyed the post! (doing this also follows the post, if you have an account, which I invite you to get!)
Thanks for reading
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