Can you believe that it’s almost time to enter the third month of the New Year? Where is time going! January dragged but February has flown by! This year I set myself quite a lot of goals and challenge to achieve and although I’m moving through them quite quickly, time seems to be moving quicker. One of my goals for 2018 was to expand on my knowledge as a personal trainer and into nutrition, and one of the ways I have been doing this is through enrolling on a course with Open Study College.
I spoke about the course a few months back, which you can read here, and since then I have fallen back in love with learning. One of the things I love the most about Open Study College is that all of the courses are distance learning. You can study whenever you want, wherever you want. Which has come in handy as I’ve travelled a bit this year already and have a few more trips in the pipeline too. But as much as I love travelling, I feel like the slightest bit of disruption to my weekly routine cause my motivation to drop a little bit. With jet lagged coupled with the excitement of exploring a new country, sometimes studying does take a back seat. But here are 3 tips on how to keep yourself motivated and committed to a distance learning course.
Listen to podcasts
I’m relatively late to the podcast game, I didn’t get into them until mid last year but I’m hooked! My favourite Podcasts are Brilliant Idiots, GWF and The School of Greatness. The former two provide me with humour as they’re mostly to do with popular culture but I have found the School of Greatness to be an amazing motivational tool. I’ve don’t usually struggle to motivate myself but let’s be real… I work full time in marketing, run a blog and I have just started a career as a personal trainer. Your girl gets tired and wants to do absolutely nothing from time to time! So whenever I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself and would rather opt for a TV binge session as opposed to a study session, I listen to a Podcast and I soon discover the urge get stuck back into studying for my course.
Schedule your study sessions
I never used to pay too much attention to my diary but now I live by that thing. I used to always tell myself “I don’t have time” but I did. I was just spending it poorly. Time is like money, spend it wisely or you’ll waste it on nothing. Organising my diary has helped with my motivation. It has enabled me to work full time, blog full time, develop a career as a personal trainer and study for my level 2 qualification in Nutrition and Health with Open Study College. As well as being able to go to the gym, see friends and of course have those all important TV binging sessions! Try to plan your week ahead every Sunday and be as descriptive as possible. Once you’ve filled in your core hours (work, commuting, uni…what ever takes up the most of your time), start filling in everything else and you’ll be able to see just how much time you have to spend each week. When do you want to go to the gym and how long for? Are you seeing any friends? How many hours do you want to dedicate to studying? I usually reserve Saturday and/or Sunday’s for studying and it feels so good to start my weekend knowing I’ve done something to help me reach my career goals.
Reward yourself!
Finding the motivation to enrol on a distance learning course is a challenge in it’s self but once you do, your Open Study College tutor will be there to guide you all the way through and provide pockets on inspiration when needed. I find treating or rewarding myself after I reach a milestone really helps to boost my motivation. Every time I finish a module I treat myself to something small and it can be anything from a bottle of my favourite champagne to stylish stationary. Treat yourself, you desereve it and it’ll help with your motivation.
If you’ve got any tips on how to motivate yourself with distance learning, leave them below!
This post is sponsored by Open Study College
