How to Get Motivated to Study (Even When You're Tired)

If you're searching for how to get motivated to study, you have probably already tried waiting for the urge to arrive. It rarely does. The students who get through a semester of readings and a stack of past papers mostly work from a routine that starts the session for them, so the feeling of wanting to study shows up after they sit down, around minute ten, once the first page is behind them.

Start with five minutes

Tell yourself you will study for five minutes and then you are allowed to stop. Most people keep going, and there is an old finding that explains why. In 1927 the Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik published a study showing that people remember interrupted, unfinished tasks better than finished ones. The idea came from her professor watching a waiter who could recall every unpaid order in detail and forgot them the moment the bill was settled. A started task keeps a hook in your attention. A task you haven't opened has no hook at all, which is why the hardest part of a study session is the first 60 seconds.

Make the first action tiny and specific

"Study biology" is a goal you can't start. "Open chapter 7, read the summary box on page 212, write three questions about it" is something you can do with a tired brain at 9:40 at night. Before you close the books each session, write the next first action on a sticky note and leave it on top of the pile. Tomorrow you won't have to decide anything. You read the note and do it.

Put the phone in another room

This one has numbers behind it. Adrian Ward and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin ran experiments with nearly 800 smartphone users, published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research in 2017. People who left their phone in another room scored significantly higher on tests of working memory and attention than people whose phone sat face down on the desk, even with every phone on silent. Phones in a pocket or bag landed in between. Ward's explanation was that the effort of not checking the phone uses up attention on its own.

Set the desk up before you start, then. Phone in the kitchen, one tab open, the book and a pen within reach, water bottle filled.

Work in 25 minute blocks

Francesco Cirillo came up with the Pomodoro Technique in the late 1980s, as a university student, using a tomato-shaped kitchen timer (pomodoro is Italian for tomato). The method is 25 minutes of work, a 5 minute break, and after four rounds a longer break of 20 to 30 minutes. A fixed end point makes the start easier, because you are only committing to 25 minutes.

How to get motivated to study when tired

If you are tired, a short nap often beats forcing it. In a 1995 NASA study of long-haul pilots, a nap of about 26 minutes was linked to up to 54% higher alertness and up to 34% better job performance compared with pilots who didn't nap. Set an alarm for 25 to 30 minutes so you don't wake up groggy. Then stand up, splash cold water on your face and start the five minute rule straight away.

The other move that works when you're flat is changing the moment you sit down, so your body gets a clear signal that the session has started. That is the job of a start cue.

Give every session the same starting cue

Habits form around cues. In a 2010 study at University College London, Phillippa Lally and colleagues followed 82 people building a new daily habit and found it took an average of 66 days for the behaviour to become automatic, with individuals ranging from 18 days to a predicted 254. Doing the habit in the same context, after the same trigger, is how it sticks. For studying, the trigger can be anything you do every time right before you open the books, like the same playlist or the same seat in the library.

The cue that works best is one you can feel, that takes a second, and that you can carry everywhere. Ours is one spray of Dragon Breath.

Dragon Breath is a 50 ml mouth spray made from chilcuague, a wild-harvested root from Central Mexico also called golden root. You spray it once into your mouth before you open the books. For a second it tastes earthy and a little peppery. Within about 10 seconds a bright electric buzz spreads across your tongue and mouth, your mouth floods, and a clean fresh feeling lingers after. You come out of it switched on, and that is when you sit down and work. One customer, filmed in a reaction video moments after a single spray, said it in two words.

"Definitely energized."

Because it fits in a pocket, the cue travels with you. A spray at the desk at home, at a carrel in the library, in the corridor before an exam. Each time it marks the same thing, study mode starts now, and after enough sessions the spray and the sitting down become one motion. Start with one spray and go up to five once you know the feeling. A bottle holds 250+ sprays, and the Miron violet glass keeps light off the extract.

Dragon Breath – Chilcuague Extract

50 ml mouth spray. Wild-harvested chilcuague root, dual-extracted. 250+ sprays.

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How to get motivated to study for exams

Exam stress makes vague plans fall apart, so write plans in if-then form. Psychologists Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran pooled 94 tests of these "implementation intentions" in a 2006 meta-analysis and found an average effect size of d = 0.65 on reaching goals. The format is "If situation X happens, then I will do Y." For example: if it is 4 pm on a weekday, then I sit at the library desk, spray once and do one past paper question. If I finish a question, then I mark it before I look at my phone.

Count backwards from the exam date and give each day one topic and one past paper section. For the morning itself, we wrote a separate guide on what to do before an exam.

After weeks off, start smaller than you think

If you are trying to work out how to get motivated to study again after a week or a month off, the Lally study has good news. Missing a single day had little effect on how automatic the habit became. What hurt was missing many days. So skip the 8 hour catch-up session. Do one 25 minute block today, with the same cue, the same seat and the same first tiny action, and another tomorrow.

Questions people ask

Why can't I get motivated to study?

Usually because the task is too big to start and something easier is within reach. Shrink the first step to five minutes, move your phone to another room and use the same cue every time you sit down.

How long should a study session be?

The Pomodoro Technique uses 25 minutes of work and a 5 minute break, with a longer break after four rounds. Many students do two to four rounds in one sitting.

What can I do before studying to feel switched on?

Fill a water bottle, clear the desk and give yourself a start cue. With Dragon Breath you spray once before opening the books, feel the buzz across the tongue and mouth, and sit straight down to work.

How long does it take for studying to become a habit?

In Lally's 2010 study the average was 66 days for a daily habit to feel automatic, with a wide range between people. Missing the odd day made little difference.