Motivation is a desire that activates us to take action to fulfill that desire.

So, what is your motivation to appear in IIT JEE?

This is a question only you can answer. Whatever the reason, please remember that it is choice you have made. It has not been thrust upon you by somebody else. If you choose to compete for IITs then you should raise your level of performance to be able to crack it.

Considering the level of competition, it calls for a tremendous effort mentally and physically.

If you don’t have a very clearly articulated reason to appear in IIT JEE, you may find it difficult to keep yourself motivated through the period of preparation.

Most people are very enthusiastic and motivated when they start their preparation for IITJEE. However, only those few, who manage to maintain that motivation till the end, crack good ranks in IIT JEE

Create a ‘Motivational Strategy’
Write down all the desires in your life. It is the knowledge of these desires that will propel us towards our success. Be absolutely honest while writing them down. Don’t worry if your desires do not look good when you write them down on paper. Link those desires to your success in IITJEE. Some examples of these desires are:

‘I want to learn’: If we look at ourselves, we have always been very keen and curious on learning new things. This gets lost somewhere during the school education.

IITs provide a great opportunity to satisfy that desire to acquire knowledge.

‘I want to be independent’: We all grow up to be independent adults. Independence can be financial, social and emotional. We live in the protected environment of our households, schools and society.

IITs provide the best grooming environment for professional, sports, academic, cultural and literary growth.

‘I want recognition’: All of us like to be recognized for being good at certain things. It helps us feel good about ourselves.

IITians are recognized the world over for their knowledge and skills. They are treated with respect and love.

Similarly, link all your goals and desires to the positive outcome of what you want to achieve.
This way, you will be able to pull yourself back whenever your enthusiasm is going down.

Secondary Motivation
Sports champions are the most competitive people. Most of them overcame great challenges on the road to championship. In the process of their discovery of life, they found great ways to keep themselves motivated. Read up the quotes and biography of sportsmen. Emulate their strategies.

Motivational Support
Take help from people around us in keeping us motivated.

Self-motivated people also, falter and need help getting back on track.

Setup a motivational support system at home, at school, and at work. The support system may be as simple as a “buddy system” with friends.

Declare your intentions of cracking IIT JEE with good rank, among your family members. Let them know how you are completely focused on it. All those who care about you will, thereafter, automatically support you. They will encourage you to keep putting your best.

Have discussions with them related to IITs and IITJEE. Keeping IIT JEE at the top of your mind helps in keeping the focus. It helps to talk and discuss your problems with your support system. Such conversation help in breaking the monotony and boredom

Check the following sources for motivational support.
* Family members
* Guidance counselors or advisors
* Coaches
* Faculty members
* Classmates

Engage in positive Self-Talk
Self-talk refers to the process of bringing our attitudes to a conscious level. It is what we say to ourselves and it reflects our self-esteem. Self-talk can be negative, positive, or neutral. Learning to engage in encouraging self-talk is an effective motivating strategy. An individual must be his/her own best friend, and to do so involves recognizing one’s assets and reminding oneself of them.

Related Topics:

1. Tips for IIT JEE Success # 5 – Create a competitive study group
2. Tips for IIT JEE Success #4– Attending lectures and taking notes
3. Tips for IIT JEE Success #3 – Develop a System- The Ultimate Weapon

You have so many competing demands on your time: School, coaching, homework, assignments, reading etc. There seems to be a perennial shortage of time. How can you come to grips with all of it?

Time really can’t be managed. You can’t slow it down or speed it up or manufacture it. It just is. Time management is MANAGING YOURSELF when following some basic time management principles

First thing is to determine how you are spending your time now. Capture the last entire week on a piece of paper and see the timetable you followed. Count the total number of hours spent in self study during the entire week.

Once you have completed such an analysis you can begin to change the way you manage yourself in relation to time.

Some time saving tips

1. Identify “Best Time” for Studying: Everyone has high and low periods of attention and concentration. Are you a “morning person” or a “night person”. Use your power times to study; use the down times for routines such as laundry and shopping.

2. Study difficult topics First: When you are fresh, you can process information more quickly and save time as a result.

3. Use Distributed Learning and Practice: Study in shorter time blocks with short breaks between. This keeps you from getting fatigued and “wasting time.” This type of studying is efficient because while you are taking a break, the brain is still processing the information.

4. Make Sure the Surroundings are Conducive to Studying: This will allow you to reduce distractions that can “waste time.” If there are times in your hostel or apartment when you know there will be noise and commotion, use that time for mindless tasks.

5. Combine Activities: Use the “Two for one” concept. While sitting in school, finish readings of the textbooks whenever you get time. If you are spending time at the barber’s shop, bring some numerical to solve. If you are traveling to or from the institute in a public transport, bring your notes to study and memorize.

Goal Setting

Ask any successful person, the secret behind his success, and very likely the answer will be “goals”. Goal Setting is extremely important to success.

The personal goal chart is a strategy for setting realistic goals for studying and carefully evaluating the ways by which those goals will be achieved. It takes into account one’s motivations for fulfilling particular goals. It is said that “desire to learn” gives “success” and “success” gives “desire to learn”… so it sounds circular!! But once you get into this circle nothing can stop you from achieving what you want. You might have heard that “nothing succeeds like success”. What that means that it is important for one to get some success to achieve more of it.

Long term plan (Annual) should be made with a view of exams, holidays and school. It creates a overall structure under which smaller milestones are set. In absence of a long term plan,  you suddenly find shortage of time when your exams and tests are close by and you have no alternative.

Deciding on a short-term plan calls for daily and weekly planning. These plans are the most effective because they are more realizable as compared to long-term plans.

You can also make achievable short plans like:

“Completing 25 questions on determinants this Tuesday evening”,

“Revising volumetric chemistry on Monday”, etc.

Related Topics:

1. Tips for IIT JEE Success #1 – Motivation
2. Tips for IIT JEE Success #3 – Develop a System- The Ultimate Weapon
3. Tips for IIT JEE Success #2 – Study Hard & Smart

When there are questions with ‘negative marking’, the first thought that comes to mind is, SHOULD I TAKE A CHANCE? If you are not 100 per cent sure of the answer, then you will not consider answering it at all, lest you get negative marks. But that is exactly what you need to avoid.

Though random guessing is thoroughly discouraged, it may still be prudent to eliminate options and get to probably two likely answers so that your probability of getting it correct goes up. This is possible in all questions, which have Multiple Choices. However, if there are no such choices given (as it was the case in two sections last year), then it is better to leave such questions alone.

Related Topics:

1. Questions with no negative marking
2. DPP – Probability
3. 5 questions: How to prepare for IIT JEE 2012 and beyond?

There are two types of questions, which have no negative marking.

1. Integer type: Students have to “calculate” down to the finest value and then indicate that value in the OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) sheet. This is where the test really lives up to its definition — “objective”. But not multiple choice.

For example, if the answer to a particular problem is 112, then the students have to arrive at the correct answer. In the answer grid that contains four columns of numbers running from 0 to 9, they have to darken 0, 1, 1 and 2. The OMR reader would read the answer as 112 and only to that answer, marks would be awarded.

2. Match the following: The students are asked to match the items in the left column with those in the right column.

A seemingly simple proposition, if you were to exercise ‘fix a couple’ and ‘eliminate one possibility’ kind of techniques. However, it would not work here.

Let the left column have (A, B, C, D) and four options in the right column be (w, x, y, z).

The final marking would look something like this: A- x,y; B- x; C- w,z; D- w,y,z.

You would have to mark exactly like this in the specially designed grid in the OMR sheet to get any credit for this question. If you were to mark all others correct and then D-w,z, no marks would be awarded for this question.

If you were able to get out of the compartment mode of thinking and look for applicability of concepts across subject areas, you would do well. For example, when you look at an area in Mechanics, you should also realize that the same concept may be present in five other topics, viz., Motion in one dimension, Motion in two dimensions, Work Energy Power, Rotational Dynamics and Laws of Motion. Which means you should be able to use one concept in different areas to get these type of ‘Match the following’ questions.

Well, that is what the JEE intends to seek in young aspirants – can you ‘size up the situation’?

Related Topics:

1. Questions with negative marking
2. IIT cut-off raises brows
3. 5 questions: How to prepare for IIT JEE 2012 and beyond?

Once again, class X only shows hardwork and sincerity and class XI only shows potential. Now i shall point out the difference between class XI level of school and the class XI level of what comes in IITJEE.

The following are some of the questions from class XI school level

and the following is a question that came in IITJEE 2006 (based on class XI).

This one single question in IITJEE requires a mixed understanding of the all the three questions (school level) that I listed. So if the student has the capability to solve the 3 school questions, he might not necessarily have the approach or strategy in his head to mix the three things to solve this single problem. I have seen this ability in very few students. But, I am not saying that these few students were born with this ability. Definitely not. If that was the case, it would have been sheer discrimination and an incorrect way to select students (like the movie ‘gattica’, only the perfect people survive).

This skill of approach and strategy, can be BUILT in the students mind. There are strategies for that which will be listed in my other blogs.

The bottomline is… IITJEE is not a mystery.

Related Topics:

1. Tips for IIT JEE Success #3 – Develop a System- The Ultimate Weapon
2. No change in IIT-JEE pattern for 2011
3. Last minute preparation tips for IIT JEE

(a). The psychological help: The thing that separates the two ‘helps’ is that this one has at least some acceptance. Almost no one likes to hear ’spiritual lectures’.

You have to know the following sequence -
Thoughts -> Words -> Actions -> Behavior -> Habit -> Personality -> ‘Who you are’

So in a way, we are saying that what you have thought of, will eventually become ‘who you are’. There are just some steps involved in the process that I have written down above. Hence, when you say ‘I do not feel like doing something’, then you are already in stage 2 of the process of becoming ‘who I really am’. Which means you have already thought that ‘I do not feel like it’. Meaning that ‘I have actually made up my mind. And you just listen to what I have committed to myself in my mind, which is, that I do not feel like it’. Well, in this case I really cant do much to help you, can I. Nor can you yourself do anything about it. I hope you got what I am trying to say here.

I am not trying to play with words here. Just trying to help you out a little, to make you realize that your just saying something starts to put shape to what you want to become. The moment you say ‘I feel tired’, you begin to become tired (I mean how can you become tired when you have not moved too much of your body the whole day, and have just been thinking and solving problems). I know so many students who say they get tired by studying. How can you?? How can your muscles get tired or be out of oxygen, when all you were using was your brain?? So in reality, when you said ‘I feel tired’, you wanted to quit doing whatever you were doing, because now you have got ‘bored’ of doing that thing.

But not that you have said that ‘I feel tired’, you will begin to get yawns, your muscles will begin to ache a little and you might want to lie down, or even sleep. “Your body will do what you want it to do”.

Has your brain or your body ever “disobeyed” you?? They just cannot. They are not programmed that way. Then how are they? Well, they will always help you and follow your instructions. ALWAYS. So you will ask, ‘But even when there is exam tomorrow, I feel sleepy, so my brain is not helping me!!’. I will then tell you that you yourself have told your brain to feel sleepy. It is you who thinks!! Its not your brain that thinks. Your brain is what you use to think. Let me explain… does your hand move on its own? Or do you make it move? In the same, how can your brain do anything on its own. It looks like its functioning on its own, but in reality it is you who is asking it to do this, or that.

‘So what do we do if we cannot really control our brain like we can control our hands and legs? What if we just keep thinking compulsively. Thoughts just come in and we do not have a way to close the door?’ … Try N.L.P. (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). Read about it in the book ‘Unlimited Power’ by Anthony Robbins.

This is one of the things that I do… I visualize situations in my head. Suppose that I have a big headache. I will create an image in my head of all the bad, red, hot, angry, negative things in my head and collect them all in a box. I then start shrinking the box in size, and imagine complete peace and blackness outside the box as it shrinks. The peace increases in size and the box reduces in size progressively, till it disappears.I keep doing this again and again for 5 minutes. And the headache goes away. This simple technique actually works every time in all situations. So you could be in a situation where you are feeling lazy, and all you have to do is close your eyes and imagine a situation in which you have been selected in IIT. You have secured a rank of 340 and have just gone for counseling in IIT-Delhi. And you have been awarded the stream of your choice, ‘Computer Engineering’. And you are so happy and enthusiastic with joy that you have never been in life … Just imagining this situation is enough.  The next time you feel lazy, imagine a similar situation, but cook up a different future story, otherwise you will start feeling bored of the same old story.

Related Topics:

1. “I do not feel like studying… please tell me how i can concentrate” – II
2. Tips for IIT JEE Success #1 – Motivation
3. Is coaching essential?