How to make your at-home study more effective
According to the survey conducted in late April, 2020, majority of the NU
students seem to be struggling with the at-home study environment due tothe counteractions to COVID-19. Here I would like to place some general
information about motivation and ways to make your at-home study effective.
I will start with one important aspect about motivation.

Motivation comes AFTER action, NOT BEFORE
Many have a common misconception about motivation. Many think that
motivation is an inspiration or a gift which would come upon you when thetime is met and would trigger the flow of your activity, such as studying.
However, the order of motivation and action is actually the opposite.
Motivation comes after action and motivation not before. Motivation is nota cause of a certain behavior but a result of it.
This is why waiting to get motivated is often a waste of time. It would
simply lead to procrastination and would result in doing your task at the lastminute. To avoid this, though it may seem paradoxical, it is best to start
before getting motivated and to put effort on the ways to make the start easier.

Schedule yourself, create a study-friendly habit
Now that you have understood how motivation works, it is time you simply
get yourself started. Still, there may be obstacles to make yourself started
in the first place. The key to make yourself started is to schedule yourself
and to create a study-friendly habit. I will a study cite a study which bringsout evidence how important scheduling is.
A set of participants were randomly divided into 3 groups.

The mainoutput of this study was to build better exercise habits than before. Group I
was the control group and they were only asked to track how often theyexercised. Group II was the “Motivation” group which received explanatory
material about how exercise can contribute to better health such as reducing
rates of cardiovascular events. Group III was the “Motivation and Schedule”

group which received the same material as Group II and was asked toschedule themselves the date, time and place to take exercise. After 2 weeks
the researcher collected data whether they took exercise at least once a week.
Among group I and II, 38% and 35% took exercise, respectively. In group III,91% took exercise.

This result shows that only knowing the efficacy andimportance of exercise does not lead to behavioral change but to have aconcrete schedule of when and where to take action is the key.
Before the COVID-19 counteractions, the class timetable set by theuniversity had been acting as a forced schedule to keep you studying.
However, now that the classes are held online and most of them arePowerPoint resources which you can access anytime you prefer, it is essential
to create a schedule of your own to keep you studying. Some may claim thatthey have already tried to schedule themselves but it was just difficult tofollow it. This difficulty may be due to the fact that the schedule was too
demanding. Creating a study habit is difficult especially when the schedule
is too hard of a work. Start by creating a schedule that is easy and simple
enough to be sustainable. Once you have established a sustainable study
habit of your own, it would not be difficult to put some additional tasks onto
your habit. Another tip to create a better habit is to have some daily ritualto get started.

Beethoven, for instance, counted 60 coffee beans in themorning to start his day with a cup of coffee. Anything easy and simple toget you started could be the daily ritual for you.

Zone your room and create a study-friendly environment
In the field of infectious disease medicine, zoning is one of the mostimportant infection preventive measures. At a hospital setting, they would
distinguish the area into clean area and unclean area, and when a health careprovider is inside the unclean area, they would have to wear personal
preventive equipment (PPE) to avoid infection. On the other hand, when
they re-enter the clean area from the unclean area, they have to take off all
the PPE to avoid bringing viruses into the clean area.
To create a study-friendly environment, the concept of zoning is useful as
well.

I do understand that most Japanese housings are as small as a

mustard seed, but still there are some measures we could undertake.
Referring to the zoning concept, it would be effective to zone your room into
“study area” and “relaxing/entertainment area”. Devices that are used forrelaxing or entertainment such as smartphones should not be brought into
the study area. If smartphones are too tempting to avoid, place it in thekitchen or in the restroom during your scheduled study time. Things only
related to your study should be within your reach in the study area. You
may claim that you have to use your laptop for your study but the laptop itself
is full of attractive entertainment which you cannot displace. Even though,you could try hiding the attractive applications from the desktop, such as theyoutube app or the web browsers. By zoning your laptop, you would have toclick several times more to reach and this small step could be an obstacle todistraction.
The spread of COVID-19 has changed many aspects of our daily lives. We
still do not know how long these changes would last and some changes may
even be permanent not temporal.

In this difficult situation, graduallyadapting yourself to the changes is required. I hope we could all conquer
this situation and make the best of it.
May 29, 2020
Takashi Sakai (Psychiatrist)
Advising & Counseling Services
International Education & Exchange Center, Nagoya University
References
1. James Clear: Atomic Habits, An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits &Break Bad Ones, 2018, Avery
2.

Sarah Milne, Sheina Orbell, and Paschal Sheeran: “Combining

Motivational and Volitional Interventions to Promote Exercise
Participation: Protection Motivation Theory and Implementation
Intentions,” British Journal of Health Psychology 7 (2002): 163–184.