The most important thing for you to stay motivated is a sense of progress, of “getting there`” where ever “there” may be for you. If you rely only on your perception, you will go through several patches that are quite demotivating when progress seems to be slowing drastically or to have come to a stop. The keys to staying motivated are:
- Use external tests to measure your progress accurately
- Accept there will be fluctuations in your score.
- Track your results and graph them so you can see your trends
- Granularity is your friend because while you hit a plateau of one dimension of your performance you may be leaping forwards in another
- Celebrate progress, ignore defeat
- Invest the time to find some fun way of noticing your improvement
- Track how much you know and how much you remember of what you know – so you can see at least your net knowledge expanding consistently.
Remember, that for most people, assuming you have a reasonably effective method, your greatest challenge will be sustaining your motivation because the sheer number of hours of concentrated effort exceeds what most people are used to.
My final tip for the day is MAKE THE TIME. Do not put yourself in a situation where you feel rushed. Set the time aside. Block it out. Allow yourself enough time to feel relaxed and so you have the time to think. Efficiency in learning does not come from rushing it comes from not losing time to activities that offer little to no benefit – and feeling rushed will reduce the value of every activity in which you engage.