To develop your skills and to do your best work, it is vital to learn how to motivate yourself. Founder of the Clueless Career Instagram page Fran McKay broke motivation down into a three tiered pyramid. In order to be motivated you need to persevere, put effort into what you do and have a direction.
The first element of motivation is direction. This is where you establish what your goals are and why. Once you establish your direction it will be easier for you to motivate yourself towards things that align with that direction. For example if your motivation is to be able to find a job within a certain sector, actions that align with that would be, getting the best possible degree, getting experience for your CV and developing certain key skills. Each of these actions can be further broken down to make the task more achievable.
The second element of motivation is effort. In order to then act towards your actions, you will need to put in the effort to do the things that will help you achieve your direction. This really is the key step as putting in the effort towards tasks that align with your goals will open you up to opportunities and will help you realise those goals. However whilst it may be easier to put effort in over the short term, putting it in over the long term and through difficulties requires the third element, perseverance.
Perseverance is where you continue to do something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success. There are many difficulties that could come up during your time at university, these could be due to your own personal circumstances, the actions that you are using not working yet, or a general drop in motivation. Learning to continue through (or after) periods of difficulty is a crucial skill and can be helped by having a growth mindset, a positive relationship with failure and an understanding of how to reflect. Something that can help you with motivation is building up a momentum. Once you get into a positive flow or a routine it is easier to continue over time. Successful students have identified that having a friend (study buddy, partner, classmate) who has an aligned direction with you can help with perseverance and keeping momentum as they can help encourage you when you are struggling.
In the podcast located in the resources section, Fran McKay and I also discuss, long term motivation, day to day perseverance, the importance of value and persevering after just one bad day.
