{"id":19924,"date":"2020-09-25T09:00:03","date_gmt":"2020-09-25T16:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=19924"},"modified":"2020-09-22T09:31:39","modified_gmt":"2020-09-22T16:31:39","slug":"the-examined-life-taking-control-of-motivation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2020\/09\/25\/the-examined-life-taking-control-of-motivation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Examined Life<\/em>: Taking control of motivation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, I guess we\u2019re attending college from home now.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know about you, but I\u2019ve been struggling to keep my productivity up. None of my classes have scheduled meeting times, which sounds great, except that it puts a lot more responsibility on me to not fall behind. Of course, grades and deadlines help keep students on track, but being at home with so many distractions makes it easy to procrastinate. I think this has to do with willpower: you need less willpower if things are structured and more if they aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve made myself a schedule, but it\u2019s not always easy to stick to it. The structure is there, but motivation is missing. So I\u2019ve decided to see this semester as an opportunity to internalize my motivation. Or, in other words, I want to stop relying on external factors for motivation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Examined Life<\/em> is a column appearing in every issue of Nexus<\/em> (photo by Ethan Badr\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It might help to think about it like a business. If a business controls the means of production, they can sell their product at a cheaper price and boost their sales. In the same way, if motivation comes from within, productivity will be boosted. Just as the business no longer has to rely on a supplier, neither would I have to rely on outside factors for motivation. Having this kind of readily available motivation is what I would call willpower. It\u2019s something I don\u2019t have a lot of, and something I really want to cultivate.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my approach; I think it really boils down to goals, action, and accountability.<\/p>\n

I will be setting myself a goal each day. The goal should be productive enough that I don\u2019t feel like I\u2019m slacking, but not so difficult that I miss it. I\u2019m not sure I can hold myself accountable for achieving my goal every day, so I will be looping in friends who I know won\u2019t let me slack off.<\/p>\n

Ever heard the expression \u201cfake it \u2019till you make it\u201d? I\u2019m sure it will seem almost impossible at first, but hopefully if I keep \u201cfaking it,\u201d it will become gradually easier and easier each time I achieve my daily goal. Eventually, it should become so easy that I won\u2019t need a friend to push me. At least that\u2019s the plan; it\u2019s sure going to take a lot of dedication and practice. Hopefully, I will look back at this as at least one good result of taking classes from home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, I guess we\u2019re attending college from home now. I don\u2019t know about you, but I\u2019ve been struggling to keep my productivity up. None of my classes have scheduled meeting times, which sounds great, except that it puts a lot more responsibility on me to not fall behind. Of course, grades and deadlines help keep […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19925,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19924\/revisions\/19925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}