[Indie'sOK]

Hi,
I have been trying, and failing, to figure out why I'm so unmotivated to do my homework and succeed at school. In middle school, I was an A/B student, and the thought of getting even one C scared the crap out of me for fear of what my parents would think. Then 8th grade came, my morale decreased, high school came, and I started to get Cs. 10th grade (this year) came, and I'm getting mostly Ds. I can't figure it out. My parents are disappointed, but they don't get angry about this because they figure I am upset enough for all of us. I want to be one of the kids that makes good grades, I just can't make myself do the work! I'm lazy and absentminded and unmotivated about homework...constantly getting missing assignments. I figure "I'll do it later" when faced with a tough assignment, and then I never end up doing it. It's been like this for awhile now. But...I'm applying to a high school for gifted and talented studies because I am a decent writer and artist and I tend to score well on standardized tests. Luckily, my transcript hasn't been ruined by these grades because my semester exams are configured into the overall score and it evens out my dipping marking period grades. So this is how I will get into the school, if I do. But I can't have my head up my *** at this school...they'll kick me out for repeatedly having anything below a C. I know this post sounds pathetic and a bad excuse for laziness, but isn't there some unknown reason for my motivation to be so low? There MUST be, if I do want to get good grades. If I didn't care, I'd be a "loser". But I do care, so what does that make me?

Thanks for any help or advice you guys can offer. I guess I can talk about how much I want to succeed, but the work that needs completing in order to do so is what holds me back...I just wish I knew the reason why it does.

[Indie'sOK]

anyone?

[Fresia]

Hi Indie,
There are a lot of reasons people struggle with motivation: procrastination, lack of interest, schedules, illness, etc. It's finding what works for you that counts no matter the reason. It's good you are trying to figure out now what will work for you to help get the work done.
A lot of my lack of motivation results in being a terrible procrastinator for most things, if I let myself get away with it. I had to learn to break things down in to smaller tasks that would not seem not so overwhelming or could hold my attention for 5-15 minute increments, and then take breaks to do something interesting in between as a reward for getting through it; then go back, and have a another reward. It then became a goal, if I could just do this part of whatever assignment, then I could go do whatever else that was of interest for 5-10 minutes. Go back to work on something different each time, if it helps. It gave me some traction and it made a big difference in how the little chunks added up, and then the next thing I knew, it would be done.
I don't know if something like this might help but it is what I still have to use to this day for the things I dread doing for whatever the reason.
It's frustrating to feel like you're not able to accomplish something that you know is within your reach, this IS within yours! It's just finding the right tools whatever they may be to get you there. I really wish I had more for suggestions for you but being one who struggles with this too at times even now, I do understand your frustration more than I can say and perhaps this might work for you too. Hang in there, you CAN do it!!!!

[Perna]

Indie, what else are you doing besides studying? Are you sitting and daydreaming, reading, hanging out at the Mall? Look at your daydreams and what they say about you, what is "important" to you and see if you can get them to happen through your school work. You have to connect to the work, the time of just caring about making your parents happy or doing what you have been taught is "right" is over, you're not a little kid anymore that can be made safe/happy that way?

I really liked the book: Daydreaming: Unlock the Creative Power of Your Mind, by psychoanalyst F. Diane Barth

[Indie'sOK]

Originally Posted by Perna

Indie, what else are you doing besides studying? Are you sitting and daydreaming, reading, hanging out at the Mall? Look at your daydreams and what they say about you, what is "important" to you and see if you can get them to happen through your school work. You have to connect to the work, the time of just caring about making your parents happy or doing what you have been taught is "right" is over, you're not a little kid anymore that can be made safe/happy that way?

I really liked the book: Daydreaming: Unlock the Creative Power of Your Mind, by psychoanalyst F. Diane Barth

Thanks Perna,
Usually when I'm daydreaming (or just plain thinking), it's about my writing or my art. I know what you mean about it needing to connect to the subject matter. Math and Chemistry are my worst subjects because I find them so dreadfully boring, but I love English, and I adore Psychology. Yet my grades in any of these classes are all the same. To answer Fresia's post, I am a HUGE procrastinator, and I feel it's best for me to work on as much as I can of something or else I'll find my attention pulled elsewhere. I've tried doing homework for half an hour, and then taking a break, but I'll almost always never end up going back to it. I like to get it all done at once, and finish larger projects working on some each day.

Thank you for your replies and advice!

[dinosaurs]

hi

i found it helpful to try different study techniques (eg at home, at the library, outside on the verandah, in silence, with music, writing notes, saying things out loud). this helped me see what did and didn't work for me - i definately find some techniques more motivating than others. i also break my work up in to tiny little chunks and put it all on a study planner - so as i do a little chunk (eg revise one lecture or read one article or read pages x to y) i can cross it off the list. that helps me feel like i am getting through things. when my procrastination is really bad, i keep a running list where i write down 7.00-8.10 studied, 8.10-8.15 munchie break, 8.15-8.35 studied, etc. then at the end of the day i can add up how many hours i actually spent studying. it was really heartbreaking to see how few hours at first, but having the list kept me accountable to myself (without the list its pretty easy to say yeah i studied today) and it was like an internal policeman that helped keep me on track. i found the book "the study skills handbook" by stella cottrell really helpful. especially the way she stresses you need to find active, not passive, ways to study. it is absolutely true.

[FooZe]

Originally Posted by Indie'sOK

I have been trying, and failing, to figure out why I'm so unmotivated to do my homework and succeed at school.

Hi Indie, I was wondering first of all -- if you didn't have to do schoolwork, do you already have an idea of what you'd be choosing to do instead? If not... what do you suppose it might be?

Second, by any chance do you have anything going on about school possibly not being good for you in some way? I mention this because (Warning -- digression coming up! ) in high school I was always getting good grades just naturally, without having to go out of my way or "work" at it. They'd give me homework, I'd find at least part of it interesting, and I'd do it partly because I was interested, partly to see if I could. Sure, I enjoyed finding (and of course demonstrating) that I could get more answers right than most of the other kids. I also had a bit of a reputation to maintain; the teachers seemed to think I was smart and I didn't want to disappoint them by, say, screwing up a homework assignment or something. It felt to me like an uneasy truce. I didn't particularly trust "the system". I figured the teachers always could trip me up by assigning more homework than I could finish or asking me questions that I couldn't answer. They didn't usually do that to me, though, so I tried to hold up my end as well as I could. If there was a certain amount of stuff I was expected to learn and I seemed to be learning it more or less on schedule, I figured I had to either be lucky or be doing something right.

When I got to college, everything changed drastically. I discovered that in some classes where I would've expected to do well, the grading was "on the curve". The way to get an A was no longer to learn a certain amount of material in a certain amount of time, but to dig into an overwhelming mass of subject matter and somehow be able to answer questions on it better than most of my classmates. This seemed completely perverse to me and I resented the heck out of it. I felt I was no longer just being taught interesting information that would be useful to me in what I was planning to do; I was being taught (first and foremost, as I saw it) to compete. I found myself ruminating about what they were trying to do to me -- to turn me, apparently, into a kind of person that I didn't much like and that I didn't think anyone else would like either. I may very well have been mistaken about a lot of this but there didn't seem to be anyone available to point out to me that I was.

OK, digression over. Not that you and I are that much alike but still, I was wondering if you might possibly have anything at all like that going on about school or studying or whatever.

I want to be one of the kids that makes good grades, I just can't make myself do the work! I'm lazy and absentminded and unmotivated about homework...constantly getting missing assignments. I figure "I'll do it later" when faced with a tough assignment, and then I never end up doing it. It's been like this for awhile now.

I've never had much luck with "making" myself do anything. What it always seems to come down to is, if I have to make myself do something, then it's something that I've chosen not to do and I'm just going through the motions of doing it to keep someone else from giving me a hard time about it.

What I find really interesting (though I wasn't aware of this till long after I was done with school) is that "just going through the motions" can work both ways. Once upon a time I'd volunteered for a very arduous weekend with a team that was helping to put on a workshop. We'd all been up ridiculously late the night before, setting up the room, and now it was 6 AM, time to wake up and head back to the site to greet and support the participants. I sat up in bed. "**** them all," I said. "I'm not going!" I said that the whole time I was getting dressed. It took me a while to figure out that I really did want to be there and that I was just going through the motions of protesting that I didn't.

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Is there any chance that some of your previous motivation came from feeling that you had no choice but to work hard in school? I was thinking that as you got older and started to notice that you did have some choices, that might also have been when you started discovering that doing homework wasn't really your first choice.

I posted something about procrastination when I was still quite new here. I'm wondering if there's anything there of interest to you: http://forums.psychcentral.com/showt...90#post1034590

I know this post sounds pathetic and a bad excuse for laziness, but isn't there some unknown reason for my motivation to be so low? There MUST be, if I do want to get good grades. If I didn't care, I'd be a "loser". But I do care, so what does that make me?

My parents were always very big on teaching me to avoid "laziness" but I never really got the point of it. Nowadays I even wonder if there's any such thing. Lazy, it seems to me, is what someone else might call me for doing what I want to do instead of what they want me to do. At 16 (hey, that's right, you're 16!) I was the kind of kid who (a.) would rather work 24 hours to fabricate a part for my bike than wait 24 hours for the store to open so I could buy it, and (b.) who at the same time was too lazy to pick up after myself or to start my homework when I was supposed to.

I guess I can talk about how much I want to succeed, but the work that needs completing in order to do so is what holds me back...I just wish I knew the reason why it does.

Something that used to bother me most of the way through school was that there were a number of things I hated doing, such as writing papers against a deadline. Meanwhile, if I should succeed in school, I was preparing myself for a career of... writing papers against a deadline.