What Influences Motivation?

Is it hard for you to be motivated? Learn what influences motivation and find reasons as to why you aren’t motivated.

1. The amount of choice you have about what you are learning. Sometimes your professors will offer you several projects to choose from, or sometimes they will even ask you to choose what topics will be Cortes. Choices like these will help to increase your motivation. However, even if you are not given choices about the class content, college offers you many choices about what you will learn. You choose your major, and to a certain extent you choose the courses you will take, and your course schedule.

2. Your desire to learn. It’s likely that because you are currently enrolled in college you do want to learn, but sometimes you might be required to take courses that you are not particularly interested in.

3. How much you value the subject to be learned. The more you believe the subject to be worthwhile, the easier it will be to become motivated. For example, many colleges require students to take at least one foreign language course. If you believe that it is valuable to learn another language you will feel motivated-perhaps even enough to take a second course. However, if you do not, you may have a harder time motivating yourself to learn in your language course.

Excerpt from College Success Strategies by Sherrie L. Nist and Jodi Patrick Holschuh.