Staying Motivated: Tricking Your Brain

by 17 Comments

In previous motivation-related posts we talked about setting stakes to help with success as well as how to form good habits. This week we’re going to learn some tricks – and they really are tricks – to help push you just enough to study your Japanese even when you’re feeling particularly unmotivated.

Keep in mind, though… these aren’t really good “long term” techniques, but if they get you going in the right direction them I’m all for it. Go ahead and try these on other things besides Japanese study too. You’ll find they work just about anywhere where motivation is a concern. Let’s do this thing.

Imagine the Finished Product

clouds

Photo by Mattias

One particularly neat (and easy) brain trick is to simply just imagine the finished product before you start. Say you’re learning a set of kanji. As you sit down to get started, imagine yourself being able to read all of the kanji and associated vocab words. Imagine how you’ll feel when you get done. Feels good, doesn’t it? Ahhh, those feel-good brain chemicals are being released now. Ooh, that’s encouraging me to want to study so I can reach this end goal and be happy, finally!

This won’t work if you do it all the time, but it’s nice in a pinch. Creating those good feelings that we get from finishing something we don’t necessarily want to do can create a nice association with the actions. If you don’t normally like studying kanji, doing this will slowly but surely turn you into someone who kind of enjoys studying kanji. Them chemicals are teaching you to like it, whether you like it or not.

Try it out the next time you have to study something you don’t want to. Imagine a nice outcome, and enjoy the feeling of having learned something new. You can read all these kanji that you couldn’t read before! How amazing is that? Oh, wait, now it’s actually time to study them. Strangely, I feel good about it now. Hmmm.

Don’t Tell Anyone What You’re Doing

You should give this one a try. Might be hard with past goals that you already have, but with future goals it might be worth a shot. You can even come up with some small goals to try this out on. Maybe your goal is to learn these next 100 kanji? Cool, don’t let anyone know you’re doing it. It’s our little secretsesessss, precious.

I don’t think this works for everyone, but it’s not going to hurt if you do it a few times to see if it’s effective with you. If you’re the type of person who doesn’t follow through with your goals (aren’t we all?) then this might be for you. On the other hand, maybe you should be setting higher stakes, instead. Mix and match and see how it goes.

Take Studying Away When You Want It Most

stop

Photo by thecrazyfilmgirl

I’ve written about this before, but I thought it was worth mentioning again. When you’re at the point in your study session where you want to continue… stop. Take the candy away from the baby while the baby still wants the candy (not when she’s asleep). This idea actually came from a Haruki Murakami Book (What I Talk About When I Talk About Running). He said that he would stop writing when he wanted to continue, so that way when he woke up in the morning he’d want to keep writing, and then motivation wasn’t an issue.

You can use this idea on just about anything else, too, including learning Japanese. Essentially, you’re using reverse psychology on yourself even though you know you’re using reverse psychology on yourself (does that make it double reverse psychology?). If you do this you’ll put down your Japanese studies, then be able to jump right back into it next time, motivation already ready to go. So give it a try sometime. It might be a little painful but it’s worth it if it works, I think. Let me know how it goes for you!

Other Ways To Trick Your Brain

brain

Photo by Hey Paul Studios

There are plenty of other ways to trick your brain into wanting to study. Some are:

  • Try changing your environment. If you find that your computer area makes you prone to distractions, go someplace completely different where that trigger does not exist. Move away from bad triggers and you’re left with more motivation to do the thing you want to do.
  • Try changing the temperature to 77°F (25° C). This is supposedly the ideal temperature for being able to focus.
  • Natural light and sun supposedly make you more productive as well. Try to get some sun to get those motivational juices flowing. Don’t get too much, though, that would make you sleepy.
  • Take a nap. Sure, you spend 20 minutes taking a nap (don’t take a longer one, you’ll be groggy), but it’s amazing how much this helps with willpower and therefore motivation. I sometimes find myself staring at my computer screen, hardly doing anything. Then, I take a nap and magically I’m a magic productivity guru once again.

There are many more brain tricks you can do to help your motivation, I’m sure, so if you know any of them be sure to share them in the comments! We can all use a little more help when it comes to motivation at times (unless you’re a robot. Are you a robot?), so I’m looking forward to reading what you come up with! :)

  • ：）

    すごいすごい

  • Stella

    Ooh, ooh, question: Does listening to music help at all? I like to think that having music on while I work helps me relax and focus, but I’m not so sure…
    I do, however, find that having my iPod on in the car (I’m not the one driving, of course; I’m 15) is a good little practice exercise of sorts. I tend to zone out and listen intently to the music, and then I’ll start to really listen and understand bits of the lyrics. It’s a pretty cool feeling.

  • HatsuHazama

    I approve of the don’t tell anyone method. Gets you hyper pumped. Super super. Though I found that I often got so pumped… I wouldn’t study : (

    But the whole not telling anyone thing is masses of fun. And imagine the surprise people will have finding out. XD

  • MisterM2402

    Do you not always feel quite different when you wake up than before you went to bed? If you’re into to studying then you stop and go to sleep, who says you’ll still feel the same way when you wake up again?

  • Rochelle

    Thanks. I really needed this today. I write fiction as a hobby and have used that Murakami trick with great success. I’ll try applying it to my language-learning endeavors, too.

    Otherwise, I’m a get-the-list-done kind of person, so my personal trick is to write out a list of the things I’m going to work on for the day, keeping it manageable. Today, it’s 1) kyouiku kanji flashcards and 2) N2 vocab flashcards followed by 3) listening to NHK News and 4) dictation sets using Tofugu’s “Studying with Japanese Drama” Guide. Thanks again, Tofugu.

  • lychalis

    I’ll have to try that Murakami trick, with writing too – think is, I’ve not been able to get ‘into it’ enough that stopping is difficult. Bit frustrating really. Although it’s been working on a roleplaying site :D

  • フィル
  • ヘレン ちゃん

    I’ve heard that listening to music while working can help you focus, but for people who are really into music, I think it just makes them focus on the music and not on the task at hand. That’s what happens to me anyway. :) Now, if you discover some Japanese bands you like, that could motivate you outside of study time to want to study more language maybe (I guess this is what you’re talking about when you said “understand bits of the lyrics”?).

    For me, Japanese music is what got me interested in learning the language in the first place, so first, I loved the melodies of the music I was listening to, so much that I’d listen even though i couldn’t understand the lyrics. Then I’d look up the English translation, so that I’d at least understand what the song was about. Then, just by listening to the songs all the time, or by reading along with the the romaji translation online (since i couldn’t read any Japanese yet), I’d memorize some of the lyrics, but without knowing what i was singing word for word. THEN, after starting to learn some Japanese, i’d be singing along to a song, and suddenly realize, I understood some of the words I just sang! :o (so cool~!)
    I’ve also been studying Textfugu vocab words, and while studying them, realized I recognized some words from the lyrics I’d already memorized! So now, I knew their meaning, & their kanji! :D (exciting~!)

    The other cool thing, is that now that I can read the kana, I can read along with the actual Japanese lyrics (sometimes songs/music videos of bands on YouTube will have the actual Japanese subtitled on them (search “[whatever band]” “Japanese subs”), and then I can see how the kanji is pronounced because it falls within the kana on the subtitles. (yeah~!)

    So, in this way, i’d say that music can definitely be a motivation to study! :D

  • ヘレン ちゃん

    I was thinking “This looks laaaame.” and then… it wasn’t lame~! :o
    He’s right, I have read about this in various books, etc. before, but it hasn’t worked all that well for me in actuality, and he just explained pretty well, why that is. Thanks for this! :D

  • ヘレン ちゃん

    Great tips! Thanks Kochi! *^__^/*

  • Mai Katayama

    I don’t know…I can be pretty unmotivated. My brain knows what I’m doing, can’t trick it!

  • Mescale

    Getting up early and exercise.

    Getting up early is great because no-one in the world (except me) is able to do it, you get extra time to do stuff, you get a nice quiet time when no one else is around to do stuff. Now I want you all to not follow this advice because it would ruin that special magical power I have of being the only person able to get up early.

    Also exercise, believe it or not the human body was not designed for thinking, and sitting and studying, it was designed for running around smashing things. From our evolutionary point of view, this whole thinking thing is pretty new.

    Your body has all manner of chemicals for making it do stuff like think, it also has stuff for making you run and jump and smash things. However there is a finite amount of chemicals your body has in it, and it has a finite capacity to create these chemicals. If you use up all your thinking chemicals your thinking ability will be limited to your bodies think chemical creation rate.

    Now your bodies ability to do stuff is related to its metabolism. The faster the metabolism, the faster it can do stuff like, break down food into useful chemicals, repair the body, make more thinking chemicals.

    So if you run out of thinking chemicals, you could drop your thinking rate to the bodies rate of think chemical production, thats not going to be good.

    Or you could go for a run and do some exercise, use up all those running, jumping, smashing chemicals that been stinking up yo body chemical store grounds, increase your metabolism to replenish your think chemicals faster, increase the blood flow to your brain, generally ensure your body is working well. After all the mind cannot exist without the body, and a lousy body isn’t conducive to a excellent mind.

  • stevenjhorton

    I feel like I’ve read almost this exact article written by Koichi once before…

  • Jackdaw

    Keep metrics of how much you study/work/exercise and so forth. Since spring now, I’ve been dilligently keeping a document where I type when I start and stop studying and it’s always up. Then it’s easier for me to look at it and think “oh, I only studied for 15 minutes today” and push myself to do a little more. This tactic has helped me to stay working on some personal goal everyday without failure, even if just for a few minutes.

  • seinna

    The link for the “how to form good habits” is dead
    I think the date changed : 09/10 rather than 09/11

  • amelietour

    Though too that it looked lame at first but quite interesting in fact, thanks!

  • http://www.biogs.com/ Danny Rosenbaum

    thanks for the advice! I changed 10 to 11 in the address bar and got it to work.