Outliers - How to Make Your Kids Successful

Now that I'm a parent, I can't read anything without thinking about how it applies to parenting -- even books which ostensibly have nothing to do with parenting. Sometimes I wish I could just sit down and enjoy a great piece of non-fiction on its merits rather than pondering how I might translate that into a learning opportunity. Thankfully, this one is less of a stretch than the last.

Malcolm Gladwell, has written another amazing book: Outliers: The Story of Success. As with his previous books, The Tipping Point and Blink, he totally changes the way we think about the world using vignettes so illustrative and compelling that you never realize that you are reading a scholarly work.

Gladwell studies uber-successful people, finds the commonalities, and then writes a recipe for success that goes something like this:

1) have some natural talent
2) work hard and be prepared
3) be very lucky

Some examples are professional hockey players, Bill Gates, and the most successful lawyers in New York City.

In the "work hard and be prepared" category, Gladwell purports that 10,000 hours is the magic number. You need to acquire 10,000 hours of experience in your field prior to your "big lucky break". Having that 10,000 hours under you belt makes you an expert. If you have it and other don't - at just the time in history when it's required - then you will be catapulted to success. Witness Bill Gates, who had access to a computer in 8th grade at a time when such access wasn't available on most college campuses. Thus, he was able to acquire his 10,000 hours early on in life, and was one of the few people poised to jump on the computer programming opportunities of the early 80's. Steve Jobs was another.

So, what does this all mean for parenting? Gladwell gives only a few hints, so here's my take. 10,000 hours is a lot! It's the kind of time commitment that you can't force on someone who doesn't want to do it (i.e. your kids). It's too many hours to "work" at something. You have to really love what you are doing so much that it becomes "play". Then, you will be compelled to spend more time at it. It's also the kind of time commitment many people will never achieve on any topic because they give up a lot earlier than that. Thus, tenacity is an important characteristic.

So, foster tenacity in your children. Encourage them to stick with things. Don't bail them out too early by giving them hints or the answers outright. Let them struggle with things, and praise them for sticking with it. This is something I could do a lot better.

When talking about successful people, point out all the long hours and hard work that went into getting there. I remember idolizing Mary Lou Retton in the '84 Olympics. My mom noticed my admiration and pointed out to me that Mary Lou Retton practiced gymnastics for several hours day in and day out for years. This idea really stuck with me -- that working hard was an important component of success.

Fostering a long attention span is also important. You can't get to 10,000 hours in 2 minute chunks. Encourage your kids to work on projects and problems that can't be solved in one sitting. You can help by dedicating some space in your home for long term projects.

Give them a love of learning. If they are frustrated over school work, make a game out of it. Have some laughs. Do something silly. Giggling over homework will surely increase the amount of time they are willing to put in.

Show them by example. Let them see you having fun at learning something. Take on something deliberately difficult to show them that you are not afraid to work hard. Talk to them about how hard work is the only way to really learn something completely.

Of course, don't forget the luck component. Not all of this is under your control. But, the skills you are building - tenacity, a strong work ethic, and a love of learning - will serve your kids well even if they aren't the next Bill Gates.

Related Articles:
Other Organized Mommy book reviews
A beautiful review of Outliers (Scribbit)

Medici Effect - How to Foster Innovation in Your Kids

I'm sure Frans Johansson, author of the Medici Effect, never thought his book would be reviewed on a Mommy Blog. But, that's exactly what I'm doing. Please don't laugh.

Being an engineer, technical innovation is what I do for a living. So, I like to study innovation -- the history of it, and the future of it. Recently, I read the Medici Effect (by Frans Johansson), a book about the future of innovation. It's a fascinating book and really relevant to my career. But, as I was reading, I couldn't stop thinking about how it related to parenting. The ideas in this book were so relevant to raising kids, that I just *had* to write about it!

Mr. Johansson did a good job convincing me that success in many careers is achieved through innovation. Not just fields like science and engineering, but creative fields, like art, writing, and music, and others such as economics, marketing, and medicine. Innovation will be a key skill in the world of tomorrow. Well, if it's a key skill, than I want to make sure my kids have it! Reading, writing, arithmetic, and innovation! Sign me up!

The key idea of the book is that the next wave of innovation will not be incremental (like improving the efficiency of some manufacturing process by 2%), it will be intersectional - innovation at the intersection of several fields.

Assuming this is true, how do I incorporate this into my parenting? What skills can I give my kids to allow them to participate in the coming innovation revolution? This was the question my brain kept asking throughout the book.

Mr. Johansson, if you are reading, your follow-on book needs to be, "Child of Medici - Preparing your kids for the coming innovation revolution".

The book gives some great exercises to practice intersectional innovation. Here's my attempt at translating 5 of them for kids.

1. Reversing Assumptions
1) Think about a problem you are trying to solve. Write down the assumptions associated with this problem.
2) Reverse the assumptions.
3) Think about how to make those reversals meaningful.

How to apply this to kids:
Try to change the situation. Try to put a puzzle together upside down. Ask them leading questions, like "What if water flowed up, instead of down?". Kids are naturally very creative, so get them questioning how things work, and what would happen if they didn't work that way.

2. Create Constraints
When a yoga instructor broke her arm, she had to completely change how she taught, what poses she could do, etc.

How to apply this to kids:
Ask them to draw a picture using only straight lines, or only dots. What can you build with only 10 Legos? Dance with your right arm tied behind your back.

3. Creating Intersectional Ideas
Learn to connect seemingly unrelated concepts.
Take a new magazine (one that you don't normally read) and select a random page. Try to connect something on the page with what you are currently working on. If you can't find a connection, or the connection seems forced, flip the page. Repeat.

How to apply this to kids:
I think this one sounds fun as-is. Pick two pages on a magazine and have the child draw a picture that uses both things. Have them tell a story about the two things, or make up a song.

4. Geting Used to Failure
It's impossible to innovate at the intersection by flawlessly executing well-defined plans.

How to apply this to kids:
Let them know that it's OK to try things that might not work. If they ask for your help on something, encourage them to try it themselves. Let them experiment and make several attempts. Don't rush in with a solution. Praise the creativity in the solutions that didn't work.
Remove explicit rewards - they kill off creativity. Reward for the number of different possible solutions, the number of things they tried rather than the result.

5. Acknowledge fear, but don't be paralyzed by it.
NASA astronauts who acknowledged their fear suffered from less motion and stress sickness in space than their fear-denying comrades.

How to apply this to kids:
Use scary situations as a learning experience. Let them know that it's OK to be afraid, but it's not OK to let your fear stop you from doing things. Have them acknowledge their fear, and to have courage in spite of it.

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear." - Mark Twain

What do you think? Is fostering innovation in your kids important to you? What ways do you foster innovation in your kids?

Be the Voiceover for Your Kids' Lives

Photo by Duchamp

When HB was just born, I spent the first few weeks barely speaking a word to her. I remember feeling really sheepish about talking to a little baby. It's just not something that came naturally to me. I finally decided that we couldn't spend the whole day in total silence, so, I started to narrate everything she did or saw. I started to think of myself as the voiceover for her life.

This turned out to be a great tactic, because she eventually became a very verbal kid!

When she was 15 months old, we were at the doctor's office. She and another little boy were playing in the waiting room with the toys. I kept up my usual constant chatter, "What are you playing with? Do you have a ball? That ball is red. Uh-oh, the ball rolled away." HB would answer, "yeah", or repeat, "ball" or "red". The little boy's father was there too, and I remember thinking how odd it was that he said not a single word to the boy the whole time we were there. The little boy was clearly not at the verbal stage yet. The father and I got to talking, and when we realized that the kids were the same age, he said, "Wow, she's very verbal!" I couldn't help thinking, "If you would just *talk* to your kid, I'm sure he would be too!"

When HB was going through her "terrible twos", we found it really important to talk to her about her feelings. I would intersperse words about feelings (happy, sad, scared, hurt) into our running conversation. Giving her words for the emotions she was feeling had a calming effect on her tantrums. Teaching her empathy, by describing how her actions made other people feel, was pretty effective against her hitting outbursts.

As HB has gotten older, this narrating of her life has continued, but in a different way. Now that she is two-and-a-half, it's more of a two-way conversation. I like to ask her what she notices about the world around her. What she thinks about this or that. It's interesting to give her very open ended questions and hear her take on things. I've learned a lot about how she perceives things, what matters to her, and her likes and dislikes.

I would really love to continue this running conversation throughout her life. Though, I'm fully prepared to take a several year hiatus during her teenage years when I'm sure she won't want to talk to me at all!

If you have older kids, I recommend the book, Between Parent and Child. It teaches respectful and healthy communication styles for dealing with kids (and, for that matter, everyone in your life). I think it's a must-read for all parents!

So, even if it doesn't come naturally to you, I encourage you to talk to your baby. It can set a really great precedent for the rest of your lives!

Toddler Astronomy

We got a bunch of great educational place mats in the dollar bins at Target. One of them shows the planets. I was explaining them to HB tonight at dinner. Here's how it went:

Me: "This one is called Mercury, this one is Mars."(absentmindedly pointing to the second planet).
HB: "No, Mommy. This one is Mars!" (correctly pointing to the fourth planet).
Me: (astonished) "That's right! How did you know?"
HB: (duh-every-body-knows-this tone) "Mars is red, Mommy."
Me: "That's right, honey, Mars is red!"

And that, folks, is a Toddler's knowledge of Astronomy.

As a budding astronomer, HB has also developed a fascination with the moon. We got her Uncle Milton Moon in My Room (a wall-mountable moon that lights up to show the moon phases) and she loves it!