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Motivation Versus Discipline

2020.02.11
  • Andrew Dowden
  • DIY|LearningTechniques
  • 2020
During my teaching career, I have had multiple students ask me questions along the lines of ‘What are good ways to learn English?’ and I often used to answer that having some form of motivation, be it intrinsic or extrinsic, may help. Yet over the years, I have come to believe that discipline is a much more important and beneficial quality for learning, not only English but many things in life. So let’s look at why this is so.

Motivation is a wonderful concept to take advantage of when it occurs. It gives us unusual powers of focus and productivity. So we should definitely use that when it’s around but motivation is finite, so when you’re looking to change something in your life: Let motivation inspire you, but don’t expect it to stick around. Focus on building disciplined actions around those things you want to learn. Get specific in what “discipline” will look like for your specific targets or aims.

Humans are generally creatures of habits and we often create routines and rhythms in our daily lives. By understanding how we establish and practice habits each day, we can figure out how to implement beneficial ones (and lessen burdening ones). By this I mean when we begin something new, we must focus a lot of our brainpower on it because it’s out of the ordinary and we are learning how to do that thing. But as we repeatedly do it, we need to devote less and less conscious brain activity to it until it eventually becomes second nature. An example of this is walking. As infants when we learn to walk, our brains focus on trying to put one foot forward then the other and it takes effort, but gradually, because we do it repeatedly and from small steps first, we no longer have to think about those actions. It becomes second nature and frees up our brains to focus on new activities.

So when studying the same principles can be applied: creating discipline and routines can be very important. Even, at first, if it is just a simple activity for two weeks of sitting yourself down at a desk and just opening a book and reading for 5 minutes, then we gradually increase the intensity of time and effort, and these actions will become routine. Then you will find yourself automatically doing these tasks as time goes by. The key is the discipline though, we have to make the time to do these activities regularly and consistently, then eventually improvements will be made.

Motivation is good at inspiring us to start something, but discipline will be the quality that keeps us pushing towards our goals.


Photo Credit: Plush Design@pexels.com

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