3 Proven Revision Techniques To Get Motivated & Stop Procrastination
By: Sarah Elizabeth Peters
Tags: Productivity, Study, Education, Revising, Psychology

Have you ever gone to revise, but instead found yourself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram? We’ve all felt demotivated at times — and as a result spent longer, and felt less enjoyment, over the task at hand. Finding the motivation to focus on a task from start to finish can be tricky, so scientific research has proposed numerous revision techniques and theories to explain why motivation can be so elusive, as well as strategies that can be directly implemented to make your time spent working more effective and enjoyable.

Quite simply, motivation can be defined as, “the expenditure of effort to accomplish results”. Across disciplines, researchers have developed theories to explain motivation and productivity, drawing on factors such as rewards, mood and emotion, meaningfulness of the task at hand, healthy habits, and effective revision and work techniques. While no one theory can capture all individual differences, elements of each can be translated into a personalised action plan to optimise motivation.

So, let’s review the research. Studies have sought to understand not only why our motivation can fluctuate, but also to identify tools that improve the way we organise and complete our work to drive engagement and increase productivity.

If you enjoy your work, and make progress, you’ll be more motivated to complete it.

It should come as no surprise that if we find our work interesting, fun, and meaningful, we’ll be more motivated and productive. Teresa Amabile, an influential organisational psychologist, describes this as the progress principle: that is, the single most important factor for student or employee motivation is making progress on meaningful work.

To put this to the test, Amabile and colleagues ran a study investigating whether affect (positive or negative mood) and workday events were associated with changes in productivity and output. They asked participants to record their mood and emotions, motivation, productivity, and which events stood out in their mind each day — yielding nearly 12,000 diary entries! Analysis of these entries revealed that the most common event leading to positive mood and increased motivation was making (even minor) progress in their work — and this effect was strongest when their work was meaningful.

Apply the progress principle to your revision techniques.

There’s a lot we can learn and apply from these findings.

· First, they highlight the importance of creating small goals to visualise progress and increase motivation. Large, long-term tasks which may seem insurmountable (such as revising for an exam) can be broken up into smaller, more manageable tasks (collate and organise notes for a topic within the module, identify the key points, revise notes for one hour), making them seem less daunting and demonstrating steady, short-term progress being made.

· Second, they demonstrate that when work is perceived as enjoyable, we’re more motivated to do it. When it comes to revising a topic you find difficult or boring, this may seem impossible. However, by reframing a task from dull to a necessary stepping stone in the path to university acceptance or a career of choice, the motivation to complete it may come more easily. That is — when less time is spent begrudging a topic you aren’t interested in, overall time can be used more effectively.

Study Rocket, a revision aid that functions like a digital desk, has built exactly these ideas into their product. For example, the platform lets you visualise your progress on a dashboard, so you can see how far away you are from being exam ready.

Equip yourself with effective tools and techniques.

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “study smart, not hard”; it’s become ubiquitous, and there’s scientific evidence to back it up. Despite the common conception that to be successful it’s necessary to work long hours (at the cost of sleep, regular meals, and socialising), evidence suggests that this is not the case. In fact, working long hours can be detrimental to yourproductivity, academic performance, and physical and mental health. Instead, consider utilising the following techniques (backed up by scientific findings) to optimise your focus, retention, and well-being during revision periods:

· Eat breakfast, sleep, and take a break. Research by Wesnes and colleaguesfound that students who skipped breakfast (or replaced it with a sugary drink) showed reduced attention and memory throughout the day, compared with those who ate a breakfast of complex carbohydrates (like a bowl of cereal). Just as important is sleep, which Gillen-O’Neel and colleagues studied alongside the study habits of 535 adolescents over four years (through GCSEs and A-levels). They found that regardless of how much time was spent studying, students who regularly replaced sleep with additional study time were more likely to struggle with taught material and exams the following day. Similarly, when you start to feel your focus drifting, try stepping away from your desk to go outside (it can improve attention and focus) or exercise (it can help manage stress).

· Start early, and structure your revision. Cognitive psychologists have studied the most effective learning strategies for long-term retention. They’ve found that if revision is done in blocks over a longer period (e.g., revising for fourteen hours straight before an exam, versus an hour a day for two weeks) it results in better long-term retention. This is a technique called spacing, and the reason it works is because it allows for time to forget, and relearn, information, leading to more robust knowledge. Spreading your revision time over a longer period will not only allow for a greater depth of understanding, but also for structured, continuous progress to be made, reinforcing your mood and motivation! However, this requires strong organisational skills and can be difficult to do effectively — have a look at the Study Rocket platform, which has created an automatic spacing schedule (so you know exactly whatyou should be doing and when, with clear organisation on your dashboard).

· Test yourself. Work by Dunlosky and colleagues evaluated the effectiveness of ten common learning techniques (including highlighting, summarising, rereading, and self-explanation). Of these ten, they found the two most effective techniques with the strongest empirical support were spacing (see above point) and practice testing. Over and above all other techniques, practice testing led to enhanced memory and comprehension across different ages and abilities. Try testing your knowledge after a revision session, and once you feel confident in your knowledge, have a go at past paper questions.

Find a system that works for you.

Incorporating evidence-based revision techniques, alongside positive and healthy habits, into your revision schedule will maintain motivation and ensure your time is used effectively. Try the techniques outlined above and find out what works for you!

· Plan — schedule what you revise around your exam dates.

· Fuel your brain — get a full night’s sleep, eat a healthy breakfast, and take breaks.

· Spread it out — specify blocks of time across your revision period for each topic.

· Reward yourself — set manageable goals and reward yourself when you meet them (even if it’s just the satisfaction of crossing out a bullet point on your to-do list)!

· Test yourself — test your knowledge after each revision session and get your hands on past papers.

Ultimately, it’s never easy to apply all of the best study practices yourself into a seamless workflow. If you find it hard to stay motivated, engaged and work effectively, Study Rocket helps to take the hard work of creating a study process out of your hands and engrain these tips, along with gamification software to remove procrastination from your studies, as you study all the content you need for your GCSE or A-level exams.

It’s free to try and you can get 50% off your first month for a limited time using the code ‘STUDYPRO’ at checkout.

Revision can be a long and gruelling process, but it doesn’t have to be! Equipping yourself with effective study techniques can optimise your motivation all the way to exam time — and ensure you get results.