Finding Motivation

Post Reply New Topic

I'm in my 4th (and hopefully last) year at university, and I'm in a bit of a struggle lately. Whenever I need to get work done, I just can't bring myself to start doing it. It takes me longer to start working than to actually do what I have to. I watch cartoons, browse the internet, make food, and other excuses instead of working. I really lack the motivation to do anything useful.

At first, I thought it was because I love talking to my girlfriend so much, but I've noticed this happening even when she is asleep, or busy, and we can't talk. It also happens with other things that require activity. When I want to play a game on my computer for example, I just can't bring myself to click on the icon. I browse the internet for random stuff, and basically waste time instead.

I'm starting to worry that my lack of motivation is affecting my performance in school.

What is happening to me? Has anyone gone through such periods? What can I do?

Truthfully, autistic or not, everybody goes through these sort of periods. I would bet the girlfriend/romance/euphoria of romance might have something to do with it.

You might have what we in America call senioritis. Our 4th year of university/college is known as senior year--and we are seniors.

If you have a decent GPA, and are not perfectionistic, I might not mind it if I get a B, rather than an A, in a course.

I was pretty perfectionistic, though. I didn't mind A-minuses--but B's were out of the question.

I would just make sure I keep up with the minimum requirements of the course for attendance, class participation, etc. Then really cram for the final exam. Then, it's all over--and you have your degree!

Well, I used to be pretty perfectionistic myself, but nothing matters in my 4th year. My grades won't count in the scholarship, and most of my classes are about literature. I applied here for linguistics, not literature, but I have to study literature as well in the English program.

This senioritis sounds interesting. It might be true. I'm kind of fed up with being a university student, and I just want to finish really quick, with minimal effort. But I have to set my brain to recognize that minimal effort doesn't mean no effort.

Having a girlfriend might also do something with it, because I think about her a lot. But in order to be with her, I need to finish university first. This is one reason why I'm so frustrated with having no motivation. It's kind of a paradox situation, isn't it?

I really want to keep the minimum requirements, but when I can't even wake up in time every morning to attend lectures, I don't know how I will perform on the exams. I feel as if an invisible force was stopping me from doing what I have to do. How could I eliminate this invisible force?

Think about making love with your girlfriend. Wouldn't that be motivation enough to get up and go to your lectures? And, once you get your degree, you stand a better chance of embracing her for life.

Lots of literature is about love, too. You could become a better lover by knowing Shakespeare better. And knowing Victorian literature better.

You have a point. This is something I could try. Thank you.

I think one thing that the aspie community keeps forgetting is that we live in a social system created by NTs. I have spent hours upon hours pondering how the formal education system (and many others) should look like to be properly motivating and every time I would be baffled at how different reality is from what I constructed. One great example of this is "Wolden Two" by Skinner.
I did all of this thinking before I was able to accept myself as being different and started identifying with the Aspie community. Now I see the problem of motivation in the system, not in us. As I understand, we lack the ability to be stimulated by the presence of other people, which is why I have no friends. I believe, that this stimulation is what keeps most of the current defective systems running - students not only fear to disappoint the teachers (or professors), but when they reach a certain satisfactory level (that the teacher approves of), they then start feeling an inner sense of satisfaction. It is not because of the work they have accomplished (what would work for us), but the sense that they are in a congruent relationship with the teacher. I often criticize such a style for it not being focused on achievements, learning and science, as much as on expectations of a flawed human being (the teacher. Personally, I would not mind the expectations of the awesome human being, but I am afraid that this Übermensch in my imagination is a successful and independent aspie). Back to the teacher - this image exemplifies the idea. It is often interpreted as the destruction of creative spirits, but it may actually be the development of a NT human being.

lastbackpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Is-this-us.jpg

Hm... For a long period in my life I have had the idea of development as being a universal process. Sort of like in the picture - you start life with a round shape, but life shapes you into a square shape one way or the other. I mean, that it does not matter who does it; every NT is born with a round shape, then encounters life (pretty much the laws of physics and social drives) which forces them to adapt by dropping some of their abilities, which are not useful (this is congruent with the idea of our genome having a vast variety of all sorts of modifications which are just inactive. The same with some of the abilities that we are born with, they may not be useful of needed for survival, so they atrophy).
The aspie individual, on the other hand, starts out with some sort of different shape, for example:

drawingteachers.com/image-files/draw-a-star-shape-05.jpg

When encountering the general system of education which is meant to turn round NTs to square shapes... I wanna mention again, that I mean this in a positive way - it is not removing anything useful, it just concentrates on cultivating the parts of the human being, which, in the first picture, are depicted as a square, while leaving others behind. Here's a picture - imagine that these blocks are what the teachers are able to develop in a child, while all around this block there is a layer or a few of translucent blocks, which were never educated beyond a point of (in game terms) level 0. The school makes sure that every student at least gets this basic education (the depicted square), while the other parts are for circumstances to develop. One note of caution: I know this picture is a model of all the possible intellectual feats, but I use it only for demonstration. Do not try to read the labels and try to understand what I mean through them, I haven't read them even.

alsi.net/Learning/GUILFORD.gif

Where was I... Right, the aspie star shape and the system of education. Some of the corners of the star the system is able to clip, while the troughs are what the aspies (and all sort of different people) are being criticized for. This is basically what I mean when I say that the social system we live in is intended for NTs and not for people with special education needs.

One more idea of interest - there is this Feuerstein institute ir Israel and I've been told of a story where they were able to take a girl with Downs and pander only to her abilities, while not criticizing her weaknesses. This woman has finished college. Though I do take this with some disbelief, since there are mosaic types of Downs, where the person is just partially affected, but the idea still persists from other sources like building on your dominant way of taking in information (visual, aural or visceral).

Anyway, at this point in time, I am blaming the NT system for my lack of motivation and am dreaming of a reality where aspies have their own commune (which would look like Wolden Two).