Graduate school could be very tough for a lot of people. If you are doing a research degree, maybe you find yourself working on a very specialized topic alone. Or, maybe, you are earning very little and living in a demanding city and have a family to support. Finishing a graduate school, usually PhD, is not piece of cake and numbers don’t lie. For example, in the US, PhD dropout percentage reaches 25%¹, a very serious matter, albeit sometimes the reasons are valid, such as family issues or high-paid job offers. Nonetheless, researchers have been identifying motivation as a fundamental pillar in achieving academic success and completing a PhD^2,3.

First, let’s make sure we’re on the same page by what is meant by motivation. Motivation is channeling one’s efforts toward achieving a predetermined desired goal⁴. Motivation is also subdivided into internal (IM) and external (EM) levels. To be more exact, there are five types of motivation, namely intrinsic, integrated, identified, introjected, and external, according to self-determination theory but only two of these will be discussed in this article. Anecdotal evidence and studies suggest that the successful completion of a PhD requires both internal and external motivations.

Loosely speaking, in the pursuit of graduate studies IM develops before EX. Whether that is because you love a particular subject, you have an idea in mind you want to explore, or a hypothesis you want to test, etc. It could be anything. IM is closely tight with the set of goals or expectations you have in mind before you start whatever you think you are passionate at. And, is just as valid as your goals or expectations. There’s no such thing as a scale that defines the validity of one’s self-motivation in academia. Or is there? (Actually, there is! The next article goes into detail about one of these scales. Yep there are more than one.)

One study carried out in China showed the importance of motivations in successfully granting intentional PhD students their certificates in STEM⁵. It concluded that all recent PhD holder participants had a mixture of both internal and external motivations. For some, the IM was related to their passion for study and science since their childhood, while the EM was related to the pressure of failure that was imposed by their societies. To some extent, it’s up to the individual to decide whether or not his/her IMs are valid ones as long as they’re working for him/her since the topic is merely subjective.

It’s crucial to be familiar with what is exactly pushing you to spend at least 3-4 years of your precious time doing something. If you enter a graduate school with a solid IM(s), then when you face obstacles (you will and there’s plenty of them of all sorts) your IM(s) could support you long enough to handle that before you feel burnt out. For example, when you have some daunting writing tasks to take care of (PhD progress reports, manuscripts, projects, etc.), you’d try attach finishing the task with the idea of “if I don’t finish this neatly and on time, then I failed and this failure will likely to pile up and lead to bigger failure”. Here, one of your IMs (avoiding trivial failures at all cost because it will lead to bigger failure) formalize in fearing ultimate failure and, consequently, you’d, unconsciously, be pushing yourself just enough to avoid burn out or missing deadlines.

Although IM pushes you through difficult times, you still need the appropriate tool to tackle issues you face. IM is simply not enough on its own. Therefore, in a perfect world, prior to facing issues, one should be prepared with a set of tools so that could be employed immediately in a time of need. For instance, although you unconsciously know that avoiding trivial failures is important for you during a writing task, you usually divide the writing task up into smaller tasks and spread them in the mornings, when you are the most energetic, keeping an eye on the deadline. This way you don’t overwhelm yourself, and every morning you feel procrastinating you would casually remind yourself that you need to finish this on time; otherwise it will eventually lead to a big failure. In this case, one utilizes a tool (dividing writing tasks into smaller ones and doing it during suitable hours) supported with the power of IM (fearing trivial failure) to face a routine obstacle. If you’d like to check out a badass utility tool belt (Better than Batman’s) to help you navigate obstacles during studies you may want to check this article.

Knowing your hidden and true IMs doesn’t just help you through facing issues, but also sets out a clear motivational route you get to keep at the back of your head to navigate through graduate school. You also need a unique utility belt from which you could select an appropriate tool to help you through. Therefore, having a solid set of IMs with a bunch of tools goes a long way. That said, besides the scientific literature presented here, the personal insights here are not the absolute truth by any means.