I usually come home from my midday walks with major insights.
Today I was strolling along, and suddenly realized a major mistake in the way I have been talking to my clients about studying.
The truth is, studying is hard work. When we study, we are doing something that we usually don’t feel naturally inclined to do.
What Studying is Like When We Feel Passionate
As I was walking I was thinking about the things I’m passionate about. Right now, I’m loving playing with my new iPad! Every day I find two or three new apps that would help me in my business or my work with clients. It’s so much fun to curl up on my couch wrapped in a blanket and explore the apps, figuring out how they work, making mistakes, getting lost, having a little successes, and ultimately creating some cool, Cool stuff. I’m doing a whole lot of learning while I’m playing this way, but it doesn’t feel like studying.
Does a kid who’s going out to practice his skateboarding say to his buddies, “Hey, Let’s go study skateboarding!” Of course not. This young skateboarder is simply passionate about his skateboarding, and curious about how to get himself more and more skilled.
Many adults talk about studying as if
- a. It’s easy,
- b. Kids should want to do it, and
- c. Kids know what to do to study.
That may be true for activities that kids naturally like to do. Our passion and curiosity pull us along through all the hard parts about learning. We’re willing to PRACTICE.
What About When We Don’t Feel Passionate (Which Is, Like, MOST of the Time)?
However, everyone needs strategies for keeping their brains focused on unpleasant tasks.Part of the art of studying is learning strategies to get yourself to do something that is pretty hard.
Over my years coaching middle and high school students, and watching them transition to college life, I’ve been practicing a better and better ways to help students tolerate, and sometimes even enjoy, that pesky task of studying. I’m super excited about a new course that I will be offering starting in January.
Once I’ve written it, I’ll be looking for people to give it a test run, because it’s my first on line class. If you’d like to be informed of the release date of this course, and possibly sign up for to be a free beta tester, please sign up here. (You’ll also get, as I special gift from me, access to a webinar about 5 major mistakes students make, and 5 secrets about what to do instead).
I’m super, super excited about coming out with this new and powerful way of helping high school students think about how to get themselves to study. Stress free studying, here we come!
Photo Credit: Mark Dalmuder via Flickr