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66 Power Up Your Mind

Looking at the connection between challenge and competence can
also be helpful:

Low skills High skills

High Feel Feel
challenge anxious stimulated

Low Feel safe and Feel
challenge unstimulated bored

These two diagrams will help you to work out the probability of
being successfully motivated in your learning.

10 ways to boost your motivation

However good you are at motivating yourself, there will always be
times when your motivation flags. Here are some other ways in
which you can revive it and the reasons these are likely to work:

1 Give yourself a reward. This will make you feel good, confirming your
achievements so far and making you want to continue.
2 Stop what you are doing and take some physical exercise. Your brain needs
lots of oxygenated blood to work well. Just standing up releases an
extra 20 percent. Taking some exercise will help you to stop fretting
about things and relax. You may even find that you solve your prob-
lem while you are exercising.
3 Take a break. Unless you are completely “in the flow,” most people
find that a few minutes’ break every 20 or 30 minutes refreshes the
mind without losing your engagement in the activity. A change of
environment often helps you to see things differently.
4 Check that you have got the big picture. Your brain is continually trying
to make connections, so giving the big picture in advance gives it time
to make sense of things and “gather” all it knows about the subject.