The Motivational Blues: Pt. 1

We have such great ideas and ambitions to learn and do new things, but it’s hard going at times. Sometimes it’s just painful. As an autodidact, you have taken responsibility for learning something, reading a great book, honing a skill, or improving yourself in some way, by your own disciplined efforts. The first two days, it’s usually fantastic. Full of exuberance and excitement, you commit to learning German, or how to write a novel, for example, and put in the time eagerly. And then reality hits. After a short time, you meet a wall. You put off, postpone, and putter around with stupid things you don’t even like to do, in order to avoid your project. Motivation is gone.

Oh, I know well how that feels! Lately I have been trying to learn Latin, read Macbeth, continue studying the American Revolution, and write a book. Any of these wonderful projects on a given day can seem like absolute torture. Thankfully, these aren’t my first efforts as an autodidact. Learning is a way of life and a hobby for me.  And so consequently I have had years to observe, read, think, and strategize about motivation, and what to do when it takes off and leaves me.

Today’s post (and there will be more in Part 2 later!) examines some common causes of feeling unmotivated to work on your projects. Even better, it also suggests some solutions for you. Maybe you will say, “I have that same problem!” and get some ideas that will help you get back to your project, encouraged. So without further ado–

Do you have the motivational blues because:

• You think you’ll never be able to do it.

You’re just not organized enough, smart enough, talented enough, etc…for this learning project. So you may think. But…I read a wonderful book years ago by a psychologist and educational researcher that demolishes those myths. If you think you can’t do it, I want you to know that Dr. Carol Dweck’s research says you can! Get into the right mindset, what she calls a “growth mindset.” Her book Mindset describes people across all walks of life–athletes, students, CEOs–and what made them succeed or fail.

What makes people successful? The growth mindset, which is basically persistence and patience in learning, one step at a time, while being confident that your efforts will pay off. The brain is able to change and grow, and so you will be able to grow your own as you practice and learn. Of course, I highly recommend her wonderful book if you are interested in this topic. But for now, know that it’s true that “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Know that if you persist, continuously tweaking your methods/style/materials, you will surprise yourself with your success. You CAN do this.

• There’s just too much tedious work to do.

You might be unmotivated because you see a mountain of work to slog through. Ah yes, learning does require hard work, if you want mastery! However, this obstacle is surmountable with the handy tool that is on every cell phone: a timer. (I like the old-fashioned kitchen kind, too, that gives that triumphant trill when it rings!) When you are tempted to skip your study session for the day, try this trick. Tell yourself, “I will just do a short 10 minutes of studying today.” Set that timer and get to work. When it rings, you are free!

Perhaps you think you can’t do much in just 10 minutes. Give it a try and see. Even if you only have time to review what you have already done lately, it will pay off big time. And of course it is much better than skipping the work altogether. Bit by bit you really can get a big, tedious project done!

• You feel isolated and alone.

Some of you dear readers might be in school, studying the same topic together with dozens of other students, under the watchful eye of a teacher or professor. Most of you, however, I would guess are not. It is easy, as an autodidact, to feel isolated as we undertake, on our own, giant learning projects.  Doing the work on your own, day by day, while having to defend your project to family and friends who can’t understand why you want to put in all this time and energy, presents a series of uphill battles on the road to accomplishing your goals. It’s really, really hard sometimes!

So I would suggest joining a group in your local area that is somehow related to what you are studying. The benefits of being with other people who have a common interest and meeting  face to face are manifold. Failing that, if you are learning extremely obscure subject matter, my advice is to join a group online. Find a good fit with an e-mail group, forum, or other type of website with kindred spirits studying what you study. You will then be surrounded by fellow thinkers, and see that what you are doing is valuable to many people besides yourself.

• Your life is just too busy.

This one has a simple, but perhaps not an easy solution. You think your project can’t fit into your maxed out schedule? Well, for anything you already regularly do, you have carved out the time for it and made a routine. Now you will have to do that again for your study project. As hard as it may seem, if you really want to pursue your goals you will have to either  1) substitute study time for a half hour of TV or other entertainment or 2) “create” new time in your day, for example by getting up earlier in the morning or staying up a little later. Yes, this is difficult. But is your project worth it? Happily, once you have spent several days with your new routine, you will become used to it, and it will not be so difficult anymore after a short while. “Too busy” is a state of mind that can be changed.

• You are bored with this topic.

Before you dispiritedly throw your efforts completely out the window, see if you are like me. Constantly, I start projects going and have topics I work on with intense activity. But always after a few weeks or months, the initial energy I started with fades away, and I move on to something else. So people think I have no stick-to-itiveness. However, this is not true!  I simply live and work by cycles. Eventually I will come back to topic #1, after I have cycled through work on project #2 and spent time studying areas #3 and #4. Progress is always made–it’s just gradual and more spread out for me than for some other people. When it’s time to pack my Shakespeare back up, because I am studying Latin again, I know the time will come for me to get those plays back out again someday. And that’s okay! I am what author Barabara Sher calls a “Scanner.” (And a “Cyclical Scanner” at that.) There are many different kinds of us, and we need to know that our minds work this way. We are not broken, we are just different. Check out her book if you think you may be a Scanner, too. Boredom is not forever!

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                Which of these resonates with you most right now? Have you found something in this list that is a recurring issue in your own life? Leave a comment below and we can compare notes.

Next week we will look at several more reasons we lose motivation at times, even on our favorite projects and with very interesting topics. We can indeed do these great things we plan, if only we plan ahead for the hard times, and build in solutions and strategies for managing our motivation.

To be continued…

Starting with Shakespeare

Do you have a confident and cultivated appreciation for the works of William Shakespeare? Or, do you envy those who do? (Or, have you often wished that you really even gave a darn about any of it in the first place?)

I’m lucky enough to be a Shakespeare fan, although I certainly don’t consider myself “cultivated” yet by any means. Being introduced to the Bard’s works in childhood, I was led to love of them by an easy, natural, happy route. Dear husband, unfortunately, was first presented with Romeo and Juliet in adolescence, in a classroom where students were dropped into the text, told to memorize parts, and take turns reading them aloud to the class.  I have had to work hard to help him overcome his “Shakespeare PTSD,” but with the steps below, we have succeeded. If you would like to come to understand and appreciate the plays of the greatest writer of the English language, try the below recommendations that have worked for me and many family members and friends:

• The first thing you do is start with Twelfth Night. Twelfth Night is a delightful comedy which has: hilarious mix-ups, pranks, and all kinds of assorted jokes. Next step: pretend you’re a kid. Resist every impulse to start by reading the play out of a book. No, no, no, don’t do it! That’s the worst way to get yourself to love and understand Shakespeare’s words. He wrote these words for us to hear spoken aloud as we watch someone’s face. They’re mostly dialogues!
• That’s why the best way to begin with Shakespeare is to watch rather than read. Makes sense, right? As I said, pretend you’re a kid. Get a copy of Twelfth Night from the series: Shakespeare: The Animated Tales. Watch this fantastic version of the play that was adapted for children by the BBC into a 30-minute presentation. The animation for Twelfth Night is superb stop motion puppet animation. Some of the actors doing the voices were in the Royal Shakespeare company in the 1980s and ‘90s. This series is how I came to love Shakespeare’s great works—or at least, is how I began to love them. (When using them with children, however, parents should definitely pre-screen them!)
• Once you have enjoyed the children’s animated Twelfth Night, you can graduate to find a good audio recording of the play. (This is an excellent way to absorb and internalize the beautiful language.) If you can, get the old and extremely excellent full-cast audio recording voiced by actors Paul Scofield, Siobhan McKenna and John Neville . I first heard it on a record, literally a vinyl record, that my grandmother had bought for us at a thrift store. Back in the 90s my parents still had a turntable, so my sister and I  were able to listen to it and enjoy (and memorize chunks of dialogue to annoy each other with). Now available digitally, you might see if your library’s-books/audiobooks site has a copy.
• Ultimately, you will want to see Twelfth Night in person, on stage. Perhaps your state or region has a Shakespeare festival that will do that comedy this year–hopefully! Check to see if a nearby theater or college is offering a performance soon. At my alma mater a few years ago, a cast of six travelling British actors did the entire play with just themselves and a half-dozen small props. It was incredible! You will be well-prepared to enjoy such a performance after becoming familiar with it in the ways mentioned above.
• And then, after completing this list with Twelfth Night, repeat with Macbeth, or Hamlet, or The Taming of the Shrew…

I’ll wager you will become a Shakespeare fan for life if you get started listening to the words and learning the stories of these plays. And the more you see them, hear them, and someday read them, the more you will love them. Think of the Shakespearean allusions and references in books and the culture that you will be able to pick up on! It’s like finding buried treasure.

Don’t ever be intimidated by these great works: they are for all of us. It takes a little bit of work in the beginning, but soon it will feel like falling in love. Remember that, as Shakespeare himself wrote in Measure for Measure, “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” Start with a small dose of Shakespeare today!