How to Stay Motivated in College

Staying motivated is a difficult thing to do, but staying motivated in college is a whole other game. There are a lot of distractions that can make it difficult to stay motivated and when you’re young it can seem like a daunting task, but luckily there are a few things you can do.

Tips on Staying Motivated

Below are the top 3 ways on how to stay motivated in college.

The list isn’t exhaustive, but if you take the actionable parts of each item and really focus on them, you can maintain your motivation throughout your college experience.

Choose a Major You Love

This is both an easy and difficult one. It’s easy because it makes sense. Choosing a major you love will keep you interested in learning more about it and enjoying your classes. If you enjoy something, it’s easy to keep doing it and avoid getting burnt out.

On the other hand, this can be difficult because if you’re 2 years into your major and discover you don’t actually enjoy it, switching can be a very difficult decision. You might think that you’ve wasted 2 years of your life and don’t want to extend your college career by another year or two.

That can be true, but you should think about it in another way. Would you rather spend another year or two in college to do something that you truly enjoy or would you rather spend the next 40 years of your life doing something that you don’t enjoy?

When phrased like that, it is a pretty easy choice. Choose a major you love and you will find it easy to stay motivated.

And if you really do enjoy your major, but have a hard time focusing on class, there are a lot of useful tips on how to stay focused in class in a previous article.

Maintain Discipline to Make the Right Decisions

This is a difficult one because college is probably the time of your life that is most filled with distractions. You’re out on your own for the first time, have free reign over your life, and full control of your decisions.

That’s a blessing and a curse because if you don’t make the right decisions, you can end up in a very difficult spot.

No one is making you wake up and go to class. If you don’t go to class, that is no one’s fault, but your own. And there’s not a lot of forgiveness if you’re constantly skipping and trust me, your professors know.

The best thing to avoid distractions in college is to maintain a certain level of discipline when it comes to making the right decisions. You will constantly be tempted to go to a party instead of studying, sleep in instead of going to class, and scroll through your phone or surf the web in class instead of focusing on what you’re being taught.

To maintain your discipline, you need to know what is the right decision and choose it. Don’t let yourself see an 8am class as optional, don’t let staying out late partying be an option if you know you won’t wake up on time for your class, and don’t go out day drinking if you have homework to do.

Avoiding distractions by maintaining a certain level of discipline will be your strongest ally in staying motivated in college. If you don’t keep your discipline in making the right choices, you will certainly have a difficult time.

If you want to learn how to maintain discipline in other aspects of your life, there are a number of self improvement activities that can help you do just that.

Enjoy Yourself

The last and arguably most important step is to enjoy yourself. If you spend 12 hours a day studying and avoiding the fun aspects of college, you’re going to get burnt out and shut down, both educationally and personally.

It’s a delicate balancing act of staying disciplined, while also maintaining a certain level of fun and enjoyment to keep you motivated, active, and enjoying your college experience.

This point is directly related to maintaining a certain level of discipline with your newfound freedom. You want to make the right decisions and sometimes that means having fun. In fact, it should mean having fun a lot of the time.

If you don’t have fun and aren’t enjoying yourself, then you’re more than likely to burn the fuse at both ends and get burnt out. And when you get burnt out, you are likely to shut down completely. You wills stop studying, stop going to class, and just lay in bed all day. It happens quite often if you aren’t careful.

So make sure to make it to your classes and study, but also make sure to go to that party, hit up the bars, and enjoy yourself. Because if you don’t, you will end up burnt out sooner than later.

Conclusion

Staying motivated in college is difficult, but not impossible. If you follow the 3 tips outlined above, you’ll do a great job in college and in your professional life afterwards.

These are tips for life, not just college, but they are certainly valuable when you find yourself out on your own for the first time.

So remember: