How to stay motivated this January

With the Christmas period over, now is the time to achieve your goals and keep your New Year's resolutions!

While it's fun to start the year feeling motivated, it can be hard to maintain that attitude long-term, especially for children.

Fortunately, mindsets can be influenced and there are lots of steps you can take to help maintain your child's - and your own - focus in the New Year!

Break a task down into clear, manageable steps:

You should break tasks into manageable steps and establish a clear plan for how you will achieve your goal. Once you know exactly what you need to do, it's a simple matter of doing it!

A plan will not only help get over any initial apprehension that comes from starting a new task, but having a clear series of steps to follow gives you a series of mini-triumphs along the way, providing more encouragement and motivation.

Get your child's buy-in:

Have an open discussion about goals with your child. You can speak about the value to be gained from following the tasks and activites through to the end, and explain how it will it help them with their future aspirations.

They need to see the importance of completing the task for themselves. If you get their buy-in, they will also be more likely to commit their time and effort to the task, and finish it to a higher standard.

If you are struggling to keep on course, have the same conversation with yourself, remind yourself exactly why you set this goal in the first place, and why you care about achieving it.

Offer an incentive:

A big factor which can help people stay on task is a reward.

If your child knows, for example, that after they complete their homework, they will be allowed to play their favourite computer game, they will be better motivated to do their homework. Once you know what works best as a motivator, you can build your rewards around that. Likewise, If you know you can play your favourite computer game after you put the laundry away, 

The Kumon Maths and English Programmes aim to develop independent learners who are able to focus and concentrate on an activity for a sustained period of time, and see it through to the end. In completing their worksheets, not only do the students get into the routine of daily study, they develop the mindset, perseverance, and positive attitude to stay motivated on a task. In each new topic they master, the students see for themselves the real differences their efforts and commitment to their Kumon study are having, both academically and personally, and this encourages them to continue striving to reach their full potential.

Let's make this year a success by staying motivated!