I actually made a schedule, in haiku form, that I'm currently adhering to, are schedules a good thing? Or do they restrict you? I'll have a problem going in between of sticking by it minute by minute and not following it, because if I start to bend the rules I always find a way to break what I'm trying to do.
Ah, I can help you with this. I've had a lot of good and bad experiences with schedules (similar issues based on strictness vs. freedom), but nowadays I mostly make myself a loose framework of roundabout when things should be done, and alter it based on my energy level and so on. The general idea is that there's some things that must be done at a certain time every day, and there's other things that can be moved around.
Usually, I make a schedule for the entire week on Sunday evening or something, which tells me about the things that have specific times at which they must be done every day. Then I make two more lists: one which has the things that have to be done at some point in the week (usually homework, chores/tasks, taking walks, socializing), and the other that has things I'd like to get done but aren't critical (reading or writing, exploring a certain non-required textbook, playing games). As I go through the week, I fill in more data on what goes where.
I think the main trouble is one of maturity and interest. If there isn't some reason why you're really dying to study your subject, then you're not going to study and try as hard as you need to to become skilled. You'll worm out of it. So maybe you should really look for something you like, and do that. There are phases of your life where you really do need to just sit around doing nothing--I know I've spent weeks doing nothing but playing a particular game, or reading manga, while there have been other instances when I've done nothing but work for extremely long periods of time.
I think one learns how to stop procrastinating once one has met a situation which makes it impossible to really procrastinate. Once your procrastination has given you real negative consequences once or twice, it gets much easier to stop.
Now, as far as getting motivation goes, I'm not entirely sure. I just reread the OP and rethought the question, and... well, if you were a math student, then I'd tell you to get a "well-motivated textbook," i.e. one that starts with many little steps that are easy to grasp and turns them into large, fascinating, and unusual things. In this case, I'd suggest that you try to find a teacher of some skill and "the right quality," which is a little bit hard to define. What you want is someone who is a complete master of the given subject and absolutely unforgiving of imperfection, but understands her students. When you're in college, this will often be the professor that everyone hates and thinks has unrealistic expectations (there's only usually about one or two per department)--but if you're interested in becoming great, they're the ones you need to seek out. They will give you more motivation than you could possibly ever want.
Author
Topic: Motivation and Procrastination (Read 21534 times)