Viola’s Motivation Strategies

Today’s blog is about strategies of motivation.

Motivation is about incentives and rewards. It is a force that moves you from thinking to doing something.

I am the kind of person who can become pessimistic easily. This especially happens when a bad thing occurs. I will think about it over and over and become overly worried about the consequences. I will get more and more depressed and even see no hope there. So I try the Academic Fears strategy.

   Here are the steps. First, I list three academic fears and rank them in order. Second, I choose my worst fear and describe the worst thing that can happen in that situation in the second column. Then I describe the best thing that can happen. Finally, I list the actions that I can take to make the best thing happen.

Academic Fears	Worst Outcome	Best Outcome	Action Needed
3 Don’t fully understand the material. 2  Don’t get an A on an exam.  1 Don’t get high grades on labs.	I can not have a high enough GPA to transfer.	Understand the material better and get high grades on the exams.	1 preview the labs before hand 2 start reviewing earlier 3 read more carefully and takes notes before lecture

The Academic Fears strategy is helpful as it shows that there is hope to get things better if I really do something to improve the current the situation. This releases some of the pressure and give me the direction what to do next. I am motivated as I know that the best scenario can happen.

This strategy can be used in one specific class. It can also be used in a larger scale, which can include all the fears in the past academic life. For me, I use it to improve my overall academic performance.

  I use the Exploring Rewards strategy as a complement of the strategy above. Rewards are stimuli to make progress. The key of this strategy is to find the rewards that are powerful enough to improve one’s motivation.

  Here is my chart. I indentify the rewards that I think might motivate me. Then I sue one category of rewards for a week.

No-cost rewards	Watch a movie online.
Low-cost rewards	Having a set of make-ups.
High-cost rewards	Having an IPAD.

This week I just use the no-cost rewards category. I find I am motivated even though it is just a movie. Having some fun is always good. I will try the next two categories of rewards to see if they work for me.

I love this strategy. I give a sense that I can get rewarded if I succeed in doing something. It really gets me motivated. Anyway, I do want an IPAD 2.

 The two strategies can be applied to anyone. This has nothing to do with your learning preference. Whether you are a visual learner or a kinesthetic learner, they work as everybody needs motivation and everybody has a desire to be rewarded. I did not find any limitations of these two strateigies. They are all about hoping for the best, taking actions and being rewarded.