What is Motivation??

Hey! My name is Yousef, and I will be writing the first blog post of our blogpost series for this summer! Along with all my peers, I will be recording my own experiences, advice, and rants for all of you to see. As some of you may be high school students, you might form some expectations of what you can expect after graduation.  

Ok. Have you guys ever felt lazy? You are sitting in your room and want to find the quickest way to study for your upcoming test. After all, you want to relax on your phone, play video games, or maybe hang out with the boys/girls. For you, everything else is a chore. Not only do you not want to do schoolwork, but you also do not want to clean the house, go to the gym, etc. At some point in high school, I was in the same place. For me, there was none of that “motivation”. If I were only motivated to do things, everything would be good. Now, five years later, I am in a more productive state. Now, you might ask, how did you get to that point? With all the brain rot on TikTok, you may recognize that our attention spans are decreasing to the point that social media accounts are inserting subway-surfers gameplay in every video to keep us hooked. If you have fried dopamine receptors, you likely know you have an issue but think that there is no way out. You can’t physically force yourself out of spending hours on social media platforms.  

So, we all know that social media usage is part of the problem. Companies intentionally program these platforms to steal as much attention away from what we are supposed to be doing. If this prevents you from being productive, as it was to me, there can be a few potential solutions: 

1. Sleep is important. Try to get at least 7 hours of sleep a day. I suggest not spending time on your phone before bed, as it can lower the quality of your sleep. 
2. Try to be as busy as possible. Do as many extracurricular activities as you can. Participate in your community, go to the gym, or apply for a part-time job! 
3. When you are at home, leave your phone far enough from you while studying or doing housework. Only have your phone with you for phone calls or once you are completely free.  

If all these suggestions do not work, you can start deleting some of those distracting apps. The first apps you should delete should be the ones that take the most time out of your day. For example, you should delete TikTok if it spans 5 out of 6 hours of your screen time. If other apps begin to overtake those hours, you can delete them too. This will prevent any kind of “withdrawal,” as you will be able to have a much healthier screen time from other apps which will incrementally decrease your previous cravings. From my experience, you will have an easier time dedicating your time to other activities throughout the day.  

As a last note, all this work requires some level of discipline and consistency. The idea that you will magically get motivated to improve yourself is untrue. The goalposts to improving yourself in high school and beyond will keep shifting. So, you’ll need to set small daily goals to achieve one major achievement. Overall, I hope this advice helps anyone who needs it. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us via Insta or email! (@mapmentorship / mapmentorship@outlook.com) 

Thanks to all who have taken the time to read this post!