#3. Reward Yourself
According to a study from USC Marshall School of Business, your performance will increase when you reward yourself with something, anything. From the 2013 study:
The very act of segmenting rewards motivates people to perform better and longer, even on menial tasks.
The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and their findings concluded that the better the reward, the more motivated someone was to complete the task. .
#4. Do What You’re Good At, Not What You Love
Mark Cuban uses that line often, and he’s right. When we’re good at something and do it well, our egos are inflated and we’re motivated to continue. Researchers in 2002 found that students’ motivation or lack thereof was learned; meaning, if they believed they were failures at something, motivation waned. if not, it spiked. In short, choosing the things you’re adroit in will help you remain motivated.
#5. Collaborate
A researcher from Stanford University found that when people felt like they were part of a group and collaborated on a project, they were more motivated than those who felt as if they were working solo. Perhaps it’s the team mentality of not wanting to let someone down, or that those people were simply teamed up with hardasses who’d beat them senseless if they didn’t continue.
It’s probably not the latter, according to an excerpt from Stanford.edu:
“Working with others affords enormous social and personal benefits,” Gregory Walton, an assistant professor of psychology at Stanford, wrote in an article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology with co-author Priyanka Carr, then a Stanford graduate student.
