You Need to be Taught how to Focus

A pattern I keep noticing: Parents tell me their kid is struggling with focus. So I ask, what have you been doing to support them through that? And almost every time, the answer is some version of: I keep saying "focus, you gotta focus" while they're doing homework.

My response is always the same. Have you ever taught them how to focus, instead of just telling them to do it? That's usually when the light bulb goes off. Then I ask the parent the same question about themselves:

Has anyone ever taught YOU how to focus? Same reaction. No.

Here's what I actually teach, and it takes as little as 30 seconds a day. People always get a little apprehensive when I say that, like the short time frame is somehow the catch.

Put your finger where your nose meets your upper lip. Focus on the sensation. After a few seconds, pull your finger away and keep focusing on that same spot. Sit up straight, body symmetrical, feet on the ground. Then breathe in and out through your nose, and shift your focus to the sensation of the air instead of your finger.

Your mind is going to wander. That's not a failure, that's the whole point. The skill isn't turning your mind off. It's catching the moment it drifts and bringing it back. Do that enough times, and you start catching the drift faster, more often, and for longer stretches.

That skill transfers directly. When a kid's mind drifts off task in class, or during homework, they're able to catch it and come back. That's the actual mechanism. Practice it consistently and the mind gets stronger, the same way a muscle does.

People talk about diet constantly, but only in terms of food. What about what you're feeding your mind? TikTok, fight videos, reality TV, in small quick doses, day after day. That's junk food for your attention. No wonder sitting down to focus on one thing feels so hard. You've trained your mind to expect a hit every few seconds.

It's not easy. But what's the alternative? Brain rot. Slop. Endless Reels?

-SL

I Was the Master Student Before I Was a Master’s Student

Doing well in school is valuable, but it’s second to doing well in life.

I always ask parents: Why do you want your kid to be good at school? The answer is almost always some version of, “So they get good grades.” But grades are meaningless unless you know how to apply the skills behind them in real life.

Take arithmetic for example. You use it every day; Calculating change at the grocery store, figuring out the cost of what’s in your cart, reading an analog clock, working out how much time you have left to get something finished. Skills like that, done with fluency, make your actual life better. That’s the test that matters.

Again, the point isn't that school doesn't matter. It's that school is only as valuable as your ability to apply what you learned there in real life. Life is the actual teacher and the test. School can help you learn the skills to do better on that test.

When I say I was the master student before I was a master’s student, I mean it literally. I’ve always treated life itself as my classroom. That’s how you learn from your mistakes. That’s how you learn what to do, and what not to do. Life will teach you if you pay attention. Walk through it with your eyes closed, metaphorically, and none of that learning gets through.

I know that’s easier said than done. Paying attention, staying engaged, doing the hard thing consistently, that’s the actual work. Which raises real questions: How do you make sure you stay in that mindset?

How do you keep yourself in the position of being a student of life, not just a student of school?

-SL

Teenagers Struggle When They Dont Know Thier Interests

When I talk to high school kids, there's a pattern I see constantly: They don't know what they're interested in. Point blank. Maybe they like sports, but not seriously. Beyond that, not much else.

Not every kid. Nothing's absolute. But a lot of high schoolers are stunted this way, and it could be for any number of reasons. Too much time scrolling. Too much time gaming. Or parents working hard just to put food on the table, without the bandwidth to expose their kid to different experiences. Could be anything, really.

Here's why it matters so much: If you don't know what you're interested in, every decision after high school gets harder. 

I see it all the time with high school athletes. They say they want to major in sports management. Fine. But did you grow up wanting that, or is it just the only thing you know because sports are the only thing you've ever been interested in? Do you actually know anyone who works in that field? When you're a junior or senior checking boxes on an application, are you actually interested in liberal arts, or are you just checking a box? These are rhetorical questions that don’t need to be answered, but the point remains that planning for college gets so much easier once you truly know what you want to do there.

So a parent's top priority should be helping their kid figure out what they're actually interested in. The way you do that is exposure to as many experiences as possible. There's no magic number, there’s no one right way. You just have to follow the trail.

Why does this matter more than almost anything else? Because the old adage is boring but it's true: If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. Would you rather your kid make $100,000 doing something that drains them, that's bad for their mental health? Or make $50,000 doing something that energizes them, pours back into them in a way they actually love?

You already know the answer.

-SL

I Don't Like to Read

Yes, I know how that sounds coming from me. I teach people how to read. I've built curriculums around it. But I think it's an important distinction to make with parents, because a lot of the time, their idea of reading success is skewed toward wanting their kid to enjoy the act itself vs being able to do it.

It would be great if every student loved reading. That's just not the reality for most kids. Or for me. Reading is something I know how to do very well. I view it as a tool I deploy at my leisure. When I need it, I use it. That's when I read. It's not something I do for fun. Ever since I was a kid, I remember opening a book and immediately checking how many pages were left in the chapter. How many more pages until I've read enough of this thing. I never enjoyed it. I just got really good at it. Knowing how to read well and enjoying reading are two different things. Two different acts entirely.

When parents try to shoehorn their kid's interests into loving books, it usually backfires, because reading isn't the medium that kid naturally wants to take information in through. So how do you get a kid who genuinely doesn't want to read, to read? You start comically small. Thirty seconds. Not a chapter, not a page, thirty seconds, and then they're done for the day. Build it around something they actually care about. Kid's obsessed with butterflys? Have them read about butterflys for thirty seconds. Repeat that for two weeks. Then bump it to one minute. Two weeks. Then two minutes. Then three. Small habit, repeated until it's easy, then stretched just slightly. That's it. That's the whole mechanism.

The point of this one is simple. Most parents are trying to get their kid to enjoy reading. What you actually want is for them to be able to do it really well, so they can deploy it whenever they need to.

Enjoyment is a bonus. Competence is the goal.

-SL