How do I help change my friend's focus to studies and come out of laziness and procrastination?

Do not push him towards studies . just state to him the facts about the things which may get worse if he dosent study , list to him the things which he is set lose because of his attitude ..

Getting anyone out of laziness is not an easy task. it is just a matter how much can you convince your frnds. your frnds can only focus on studies if they start believing that studying is their top priority and the only way to achieve what they want is through studies. Just to show u or keep u have they may act to study but it wont do them any good.

What if study is not his thing. May be he is not lazy, but he pretend to be one to escape his studies. A man cannot cook a shawarma if he doesn't like chicken. Make him do what he loves to do. And you will see that he was never a lazy person.

If they are going to procrastinate, they are just going to improve not today but the day they do their work. "Improvement delayed". Ask them to procrastinate their procrastination. The most logical motivation...  simple Mathematics, with huge implications  "SEE what you can Achieve by improving yourself by just 1 % daily,  & till what extent you can deteriorate yourself by doing the opposite"  in just a year (i.e 365 days) (found this on Quora itself)

You cannot motivate them enough ever. The motivation must last. Procrastination, most of the times is due lack of routine, starting a thing from scratch, having low confidence. This is detrimental when things of academic interests are concerned.     What you can do is, get them involved, give short term assignments, plan the schedule. Give them little awards for doing a thing they need to do. Now when they are really into it, you can have a long speech ready to deliver. And make them realize see how lively it feels to do things and activities instead of procrastination and lying around lazily. Its very difficult to change someone's mind without Realization of their own. Remember one thing: You can bring a thirsty horse to river, but water he only needs to drink.

If you are asking about changing his focus to studies, that certainly means he is into something else. If it's something productive I think that will always be his top priority, however if it's countering his abilities you will have to divert his focus to something productive first. That thing will then become his top priority. Then maybe there is a chance to make studies his second priority , which is good enough. We can't fool ourselves about studies nobody wants it on the top of their to do list, second topmost, they don't fight that. Once that is done it's easier to show them how being educated opens up more possibilities for them. Best results of this come out when you can relate even one of their subjects to their top priority because then they are hooked and obsessed and no one can study just one subject, so eventually they go after the whole course. The matter of being lazy is just not that important, people aren't lazy they just get bored doing the same monotonous things. So better not suggest anything monotonous and compell them. Hope it helps. Thanks for A2A Seema :)

I believe it has all to do with motivation, and not the conventional kind of giving some sort of prize at the end of the year. So, it has to do with proper motivation. There is no procrastination when it comes to playing video games. Maybe because it is so gratifying. If the topic to study was presented in such a way that it was as engrossing, then the joy of studying could become it's own reward. Also, giving conventional rewards like prizes or some other monetary value doesn't quite work. This is shown well by Dan Pink's wonderful TED talk. http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation Another factor is how the subject is being taught. Growing up, I had a fondness for physics, but hated the way it was taught in my school. My dad then taught me by showing how it actually worked, rather than just from the books. Richard Feynman is a perfect example of how the subject should be taught. The excitement he shows while explaining things, the way he does it is, charming - there is no other word for it. So, what I believe the solution would be, is to find a proper way to motivate the student, and finding a proper way to study/teach the subject - in a more hands on, practical based approach.

Getting anyone out of laziness is not an easy task. You are his friend so you will be knowing the activities that he is interested in, see how he is doing those activities and tell him to keep the same energy while doing other things. Show him the benefits of coming out of laziness, Keep him inspired and he will learn it and come out on his own.

you can highlight some interesting facts about the subjects he has taken that would make him think out of the box .he would soon explore things by himself and collect knowledge more than required i believe. and when something is really interesting,it overpowers the laziness and procastination!