20yo college student here;Need help to focus on my studies and lessons without getting distracted so much. Am I not motivated enough?

abdada · 2016-05-21T12:06:33+00:00

I just wrote about this in a post on another sub: motivation is not a personality, it's a behavior.

Motivation is like hunger, it's about the right now, now about who you are. "He's a motivated guy" is the wrong way to look at it. "He's motivated right now" is the right way.

If you're turning to dopaminergic highs (Netflix, YouTube, porn, Spotify, etc) whenever you're bored, you will never get motivated. Your brain is trained to seek out instant thrills instead of long term earned rewards.

Every time you "cheat" and go for an instant dopamine reward, your brain learns that it can trick you into always going that route instead of the patient slow route to earning something.

[deleted] · 2016-05-21T09:32:31+00:00

Based on personal experience, anytime I played video games, my parents made me get off the games and go study as a "punishment". So ever since I was younger I associated studying with being a punishment. I had to rewire my mind to think of studying the something fun. So know what I do is I have one of my favorite tv shows playing in the background, so it doesn't feel like I'm getting punished.

Not sure what you went through as a child, but I recommend you find a way to make studying seem like something "fun". Or heck, just look in to the future and have goals of where you want to be in however many years and just work towards that day by day.

Reading motivational quotes me helps to

[deleted] · 2016-05-21T14:27:07+00:00

Discipline > Motivation. Set aside a few hours per day to work, stick to that religiously, and you won't need to be motivated because it'll just turn into a habit.

I used to have the problem you do with games and reddit (still do, to an extent), and I found the best thing for me was going cold turkey and replacing those habits with interesting, productive habits. I read nonfiction, I practice my guitar, I cook, I learn new skills (programming and a couple of languages at the moment), I exercise, I see friends, etc etc. The important thing for me was making sure I spent as little time on my computer as possible.

Title	20yo college student here;Need help to focus on my studies and lessons without getting distracted so much. Am I not motivated enough?
Author	Nikelu
Upvotes	2
Comments	5
Date	May 21, 2016 9:16 AM UTC (7 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/askTRP
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/asktrp/comments/4kcv21/20yo_college_student_hereneed_help_to_focus_on_my/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/askTRP/20yo-college-student-hereneed-help-to-focus-on-my.105753 https://theredarchive.com/post/105753