A Handy Weight Loss Metaphor

When you're trying to lose weight, you shouldn't focus on the scale. If you weigh yourself each day and put your focus on the weigh-in, you're going to see fluctuations that distract you from your goal. You might do exactly the right thing with your diet and exercise plan one day, but see your weight go up slightly the next. It might simply be that you're better hydrated today, but it looks like you've gained a pound. You did exactly what you should do, but by focusing on the measurements instead of on the actions, you've undercut your success. You'll experience frustration that will decrease your ability to continue making the right choices for the rest of the day.

Instead, you should have relied on less frequent weigh-ins, or—if you're like me and love playing around with data—you should have averaged your daily weight over a longer period. Then, blips in the data—things that human psychology might overstate or misinterpret—take a more accurate place in context.

I'm sure you saw the grading metaphor coming a mile away. By encouraging kids to obsess over the measurements of academic success rather than the process that leads to it, we undercut their potential. If I want an A on the Lord of the Flies paper in three weeks, focusing on wanting an A and stressing out about it are not productive.  Instead, I should focus on developing and following the daily process that would lead to the best possible performance. I should take notes during class discussion; I should mark quotations during each night's reading. I should plan the paper early, start writing the day it's assigned, and meet with my teacher at least once before the first draft is due.

And even then, the single paper might have glitches that were beyond my control. Or, like the hypothetical hydrated individual on the scale, I might have done something right—like experimenting with my paper's structure—that seems to have moved me away from my goal, even though it was actually a great move for my longer-term growth as an intellectual. If the grade defines my experience, then I've failed. If my work process and my mastery define my experience, I've succeeded.

Believe it or not: it's easier to continue behavior that makes you feel stressed than to follow through on a plan which will ultimately make you feel better and more relaxed in the long term. In fact, in my experience, stress gives students a reason to engage in avoidance behavior, and they often end up doing less work. The work they actually do is less efficient and less useful. It's Psych 101 that the mind will prefer a distraction to a stressful, unpleasant confrontation, and it's Psych 102 that the emotions associated with stress interfere with our ability to reason and remember.  That's the basis of procrastination, and it's one of the reasons a kid will spend ten hours in a week poring over Facebook or grinding out an obscure achievement in a video game rather than spending one hour devoting attention to a simple task that will pay off in happiness and respect down the road.

If you want to lose weight, you need to focus on getting yourself into your running shoes, not on beating yourself up at the weigh-in. If you want to gain intellectual ability, you need to focus on the daily process and trust that doing things right will make you a better intellectual in the long run. Then, the longer term measurements (e.g., quarter grades), can actually make some sense as useful benchmarks of your progress. Mastery may be harder to benchmark than a GPA, but that's where our kids' focus needs to be.