Working Hard :: day 3
2012
In Malcolm Gladewell’s book Outliers he makes mention of the “10,000-Hour Rule”, claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for about 10,000 hours.
Mark Hamby of Lamplighter Publishing makes a similar claim; “It takes a minimum of 10,000 hours to be great at something. Most people don’t put that amount of devotion into anything.”
To back this up, a fascinating read is The Dan Plan. Dan decided to put this theory of 10,000 hours of practicing a specific skill to produce excellence to a test. In 2010, as a 30 year old man, with no professional golf experience, Dan left his job as a professional photographer in order to pursue becoming a professional golfer. Devoting 30 hours a week to this, his experiment will come to an end in October 2016.
Reading through his blog one thing is clearly evident :: this takes hard work.
I have deeply appreciated these insights and the thoughts they have inspired when considering how it relates to raising my children.
Children need to be taught the value of hard work.
It isn’t a matter of committing my children to 10,000 hours of practicing something, though that can most definitely fit within a family culture beautifully, but it is a matter of teaching them how to work hard and appreciating hard work.
Our children are growing up in a society that does not show appreciation for hard work. Skills, talents and head smarts are praised – but a sincere appreciation for hard work is not often come by.
You can teach your children to work hard by praising hard work.
And this is done by having an intimate understanding of your own child as working hard cannot simply be measured by results.
Let me give you a real life example of this; if you were to try to teach my 5 year old a piece of memory work all it would take would be for you to say the piece to him one or two times and he would then retain it like a sponge. Give the same piece of memory work to the 4 year old and it would require several days of focus, with actions, clapping and tone variants needed.
Even though the 5 year old produces the end result more quickly, the 4 year old works much harder. If we praised results the 4 year old would very quickly learn that it’s too hard to memorize, but instead we focus on hard work and make the attention all on their hard work so that they can learn to take pride in working hard and appreciating the results of hard work.
“No one is born talented. Don’t tell your children they are smart – tell them how hard they work. Talk about their work.” – Mark Hamby
Since adapting this into our family it has been neat to see it working into the boys interactions with us. They talk about their hard work and have made the connection that hard work equals results, which is really encouraging to see in young children.
As a mother, it has been very tricky to wrap my head around how to talk about hard work rather than praising results. As mothers we want to encourage our children – we need to! – but encouraging them in a way that will aid in motivating them to continue working harder rather than sitting comfortably in their own pride and/or skills is a challenge.
A challenge I am convinced is going to be worthwhile.
Day 3 of 31 Days of Communicating With Our Children. Click here to see all posts in this series.
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nice post… out of curiosity… is it possible to put to much emphasis on working hard? i have read (actually listened) to outliers as well as several books that he references. it certainly influenced me to think bigger about what is possible and how the kids are raised. one issue for me is personally is that I am a compulsive hard worker… sometimes to the detriment of my family. i tell myself I am not a work a holic… and i think I am correct… but where is the balance and discernment. i sometimes work for reasons other than getting the work done. sometimes it is out of feeling of not being good enough. sometimes it is a feeling of not making enough money. and what i have noticed is that really i needed to work at being with my family and if i had done that I would have recharged myself and been more productive. which ultimately brings up the question i think of quality practice. I another one of the books i read about the same time I read outliers, and I can't remember the name of the guy that even wrote it. but i think gladwell and this author reference each other. – anyways this book was on bractice and world class performance. it made the delineation that in order to actually be worldclass the 10,000 hours needed to be highly focused practiced, high quality practice. Most people have their 10,000 hours in just by going to school every day or going to work. But they aren't intentionally focusing on a single essential skill for that 10,000 hours and getting proper feedback etc on their success and growth at that skill. this author was of the opinion that true world class practice was not possible for most people for periods of more than 3 to 4 hours in a day and that there should be built in down times (the principle of oscilation in human growth). i think also he said that generally that 3 to 4 hour periods for most people need to be broken into periods that are 20 to 50 minutes in length with intentional rest between. i read an author joshua waitzkin (feature in finding boby fisher, art of learning) who personally was a teenage world chess champion and went on to become world champion in the martial art tai chi against great odds and is now hopeing to achieve the same in brazilian ji jitsu. he said that great care needs to be had in complimenting a child on things to do with who they are. that can have a freezing effect on their development as it forms there self image into a kind kind of influencable belief system that causes them to not look at the actual feedback on the quality of their work output. so in effect they are not able to have quality practice because quality practice involves the ability to do something and then have a very precise and subtle understanding as to how that met up to ultimate world class standard the student is ultimately shooting for. i think in that practice the feecback must not be a number but that the smallest micro skills have to be brought to awareness and then consciously cultivated. i think many teachers don't want to discourage kids with a high standard. but i think vision for what is possible should be set, and micromovements towards that vision should be reworded, celebrated and complemented. kids also should be encouraged to enjoy and take pleasure in their practice (or maybe practice what they allready enjoy), as that more than anything will mobilize there full mental resources to improve. sorry to write so long. my thoughts on this have been percolating since i saw a facebook post you made on complementing for hard work but I failed to comment on that then. I highly agree with encouraging hard work by the way and I believe in rewarding hard work. it is certain in keeping with the proverbs that talk about the fact that hard work will be rewarded with income.
You bring up a number of good points.
As with anything that one embraces for their children there needs to be boundaries. I want for my children to be hard workers, but what I want more is for them to be able to sit and be still in the presence of God – to be able to hear Him and for their work to be to His glory.
So our goal for our kids to be hard working does not end with them simply being hard workers. A balance needs to be there.
It will translate differently in different families how it is played out to encourage "hard work." It will even vary what hard work is from family to family.
And I think Gladwell talks about the hours needing to be highly focused too in order to be world class.
Mark Hamby talks about how we need to surround our children with the best in order that our children might surpass them, not out of pride but out of appreciation to the teacher. I can't quite articulate my thoughts on that, but I love the challenge it puts out there. As a parent I want my children to "surpass me", but as a friend and mentor to younger women it is a challenge to really focus on enabling those people to go further too.
thanks… i agree… Great posts.
My recent post Homeschool Planning for 2012 – 2013 in the Morris Family
Oh, wow….this is so good. I think I've heard this quote before – probably from you! – and I love it. It stuck with me and I've been trying really hard to apply it in how I encourage Leah. It feels weird – saying, "WOW – I can see how hard you worked on that!" instead of just saying it's great…that she's a great painter….whatever….but she's started recognizing the difference, too. She will say, "Mama, look! I took my time and worked hard and LOOK!" This is a really, really good thing for me to remember, too, because growing up, I was always praised for being the "smart one." I still maintain that I WASN'T and AM NOT any smarter than anyone else, but I can work hard.
It really does feel weird to reword things!! It still feels weird and I have been focusing on it for awhile