Thanks,
Joris

Some solutions proposed by Brian Tracy and Collin Rose:

*Try to stimulate yourself by creating clear pictures of your past
success (preferably re the material at hand)
* Ask yourself "What's in it for me?" Can you calculate any ROI? Find a
way to motivate yourself. Financially, emotionally, sexually, etc!
* Break up the learning task into small chunks. Reward yourself for
accomplishing each chunk.
* Write down clear goals (as DA says: Wild Success!) for yourself and
review them.
* Relax (deep breath, classical music)
* Affirmations (personal & in present tense)

Hope this helps.

I wonder if it's ok to mention their product: Accellerated Learning
Techniques

Then I tell myself that I only have to do ten minutes. After the ten
minutes, I usually keep going. If not, I get a cup of tea or something
and then do ten minutes more. Repeat until it sticks.

Also, I ask myself what part of the assignment is easiest. I know that
I can definitely do that little part of it, and that's usually enough
to get me warmed up to do the harder parts.

And sometimes, all of this fails and I can't get anything done until I
have all of that last-minute pressure hanging over me. :) But usually
it helps.

Be sure to reward yourself when you're done!

Also, when I was doing my PhD thesis, I found that lethargy came in
part from a feeling that every day was the same and no real progress
was being made.  Then I started keeping a diary, just a paragraph or so
at the end of each day recording what I had done - read that article by
Smith, wrote a good paragraph on X, met with advisor and discussed the
way forward on Y, had a good idea about Z.   This helped me realise
that I was actually making some progress and reminded me of how
interesting many of these small tasks were.

Tim van Gelder
Austhink
http://rtnl.wordpress.com

Ocean schrieb:

<http://www.gradschoolstory.com/archives/95/how-to-get-started-on-anyt...>
This person drinks a bit of coffee at the start of a project.

For either exercise or caffeine, the thought is that you're forcing a
physiological response to coincide with your work.

--Rick

The Australian

Willpower is best used with care
Cordelia Fine
14jun06

A DECADE ago when I was an undergraduate psychologist, a departmental
librarian called Anne was doing something any psychologist would say
was impossible. Every year, with near-perfect accuracy, she would
predict which third-year undergraduates would be awarded first-class
degrees.

Anne didn't know how their essays were rated, what A-level grades they
had under their belts, or how they scored on IQ tests. (All information
many would say was essential to forecasting final results.)
All she knew was how often she had seen students in the department
library: reading course notes, photocopying journals, borrowing books.
And the handful of students who Anne saw a lot - conspicuously more
often than the other students in the same year - were going to get a
first.
Anne was working on the principle that in academic achievement it is
self-discipline, not talent, that counts. Ten years on, a study
published recently in Psychological Science has come to exactly the
same conclusion.
Psychologists Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman descended on the
eighth grade of a large public school in the northeast of the US. As
the autumn leaves fell, each of the 160-odd children took an IQ test,
then they (and their parents and teachers) answered questionnaires that
probed self-control. Are you good at resisting temptation, they were
asked. Can you work effectively towards long-term goals? Or do pleasure
and fun sometimes keep you from getting work done?
The children were also given a real-life test of their ability to delay
gratification. Each was handed a dollar bill in an envelope. They could
choose either to keep it or hand it back and get $2 a week later. Their
decision was carefully recorded.
The researchers returned in spring. They took note of each child's
grades and then looked back to see both how clever, and how
self-controlled, that student had been in autumn. What, they wanted to
know, was the most important factor in school grades?
The psychologists discovered it was self-control, by a long shot. A
child's capacity for self-discipline was about twice as important as
his or her IQ when it came to predicting academic success.
At first glance, research of this sort is a comfort to those of us not
exploding with raw talent. The science seems to back up the writer
Kingsley Amis's well-known advice that "the art of writing is the art
of applying the seat of one's trousers to the seat of one's chair".
Why, in that case anyone can write a book. Yet a small problem remains;
namely, the problem of keeping the seat of one's trousers applied to
the seat of one's chair.
Amis kept to an "unflinching schedule" of 500 words a day, according to
The Guardian. (No doubt the young Amis would have returned the
seductive single dollar bill to the researcher with barely a
hesitation.) But just as we all have different levels of physical
endurance so, too, do we differ in the strength of our will.
Some people are simply more susceptible to temptations and
distractions, and we all sometimes reach the limits of our willpower
sooner than we would like. "Programs that build self-discipline may be
the royal road to building academic achievement," psychologists
Duckworth and Seligman conclude from their findings.
So what can we do to strengthen self-discipline, to transform ourselves
from impulsive dollar-snatchers to lofty long-term investors in future
success?
Help lies in seeing willpower as a muscle, recent research suggests.
The "moral muscle", as it has been called, powers all of the difficult
and taxing mental tasks that you set yourself. It is the moral muscle
that is flexing and straining as you keep attention focused on a dry
academic article, bite back an angry retort to your boss, or decline a
helping of your favourite dessert. And herein lies the problem: these
acts of restraint all drain the same pool of mental reserves.
Take, for example, a group of hungry volunteers who were left alone in
a room containing both a tempting platter of freshly baked chocolate
chip biscuits and a plate piled high with radishes. Some of the
volunteers were asked to sample only the radishes. These peckish
volunteers manfully resisted the temptation of the biscuits and ate the
prescribed number of radishes. Other, more fortunate, volunteers were
asked to sample the biscuits.
In the next, supposedly unrelated, part of the experiment, the
volunteers were asked to try to solve a difficult puzzle. The
researchers weren't interested in whether the volunteers solved it. (In
fact, it was insoluble.) Rather, they wanted to know how long the
volunteers would persist with it. Their self-control already depleted,
volunteers forced to snack on radishes persisted for less than half as
long as people who had eaten the biscuits or (in case you should think
chocolate biscuits offer inner strength) other volunteers who had
skipped the eating part of the experiment.
As this and many similar studies show, if you draw on your reserves to
achieve one unappealing goal - going for a jog, say - your moral muscle
will be ineffective when you then call on it to help you switch off the
television and start essay-writing.
What, then, can we do about this unfortunate tendency of the moral
muscle to become fatigued with use? One option is to build it up and
make it strong. Evidence is starting to accumulate that the moral
muscle, like its physical counterpart, can become taut and bulging from
regular exercise. People asked by experimenters to be self-disciplined
about their posture for two weeks were afterwards stronger willed when
it came to a test of physical endurance, compared with other people
allowed to slouch about in their usual comfortable way during the
fortnight.
By regularly exercising self-restraint and virtue in all areas of life
(moral muscle cross-training, we may call it), we will come to resist
temptations with the same casual ease with which a world-class athlete
sprints to catch a train. That, at least, is the idea.
Unfortunately, like any sensible, long-term strategy for
self-improvement, this approach has limited appeal. For just as we want
to fit into those trousers next Monday - not after eight tedious weeks
of healthy eating and regular exercise - it is often the same for our
more cerebral ambitions. Exam dates are set in stone, deadlines loom on
the horizon, or may even mock us from the past. In other words, there
simply may not be enough time to become a master of temperance and
virtue before tackling our goal.
Fortunately, there is also an attractive quick-fix approach to the
problem of limited willpower. This is to use your moral muscle only
very sparingly. My father, a professional philosopher, has a job that
involves thinking very hard about very difficult things. This, of
course, is an activity that consumes mental resources at a terrific
rate.
The secret of his success as an academic, I am now convinced, is to
ensure that none of his precious brainpower is wasted on other, less
important matters. He feels the urge to sample a delicious luxury
chocolate? He pops one in his mouth. Pulling on yesterday's shirt less
trouble than finding a clean one? Over his head the stale garment goes.
Rather fancies sitting in a comfy armchair instead of taking a brisk
jog around the park? Comfy armchair it is. Thanks to its five-star
treatment, my father's willpower - rested and restored whenever
possible - can take on the search for wisdom with the strength of 10
men.
Although we may not all be able to live the charmed life of the
well-paid scholar, the general principle - not to spread our inner
resolve too thin - is an important one. If you are about to embark on a
big project you court disaster if at the same time your life is
cluttered and demanding, or you also commit to draining attempts at
self-enhancement. The would-be novelist whose taxing day job exhausts
her moral muscle will find it harder to apply the seat of her trousers
to the seat of her chair. The dieting philosopher will struggle to keep
his attention on a tricky passage of Friedrich Nietzsche.
Where are the students whose self-discipline is constantly worn away by
other concerns? Not in the library reading course-notes, photocopying
articles or borrowing books. And if they are relying on their smarts to
get them to the top of the class then there will be disappointment
ahead.
But don't just take my word for it. Ask a librarian.
Cordelia Fine is a research fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy
and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne.

I've written recently about this and several other productivity tips on
my blog:

http://jimgibbon.com/2006/12/22/top-5-productivity-tips-of-2006/

Basically, it said "turn HAVE TOs and SHOULDs into WANTS" by asking the
right questions about the task. Why? What purpose will this serve? Any
long term goals become that one step closer?

I liken it to the natural planning model - 1. Purpose (why?) 2. Success
(wild success) 3. Brainstorm (how) 4. order and planning. After the
right purpose and success are visioned - motivation should be easier.
If not, there's always some form of other reward system. "It's
annoying, but if I do this one step I'll have a break/coffee/whatever".

Sometimes I find that recording time spent (in 15 minute chunks) on the
task/s helps to provide achievement for the day, and therefore
motivation to continue.

 - B

On Dec 19, 5:44 pm, "Ocean" <beh...@gmail.com> wrote: