Tag Archives: effort

Thinking Requires Effort

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I recently read a great article by Alec Couros, The Radical Act of Thinking. In it he said, “The challenge isn’t finding the tool anymore. The challenge is avoiding it. We’ve reached the point where AI is the path of least resistance for almost every task.”

And then he concluded with this:

“To succeed, we need to fundamentally reframe “effort.” We have to stop viewing the struggle of thinking as an inefficiency to be solved, and start protecting it as the very thing that helps us grow.”

Here are a few ways that I see teachers doing this at Inquiry Hub:

  1. Community video or podcast challenges. Part of the challenge might include creating the video in a specific genre, or a meta part of the presentation where students explicitly describe what they have learned.
  2. Personalized inquiry projects. This is offered through a course designed around the process of learning, not content. So it doesn’t matter if a student is learning to code, designing a website, publishing a book, learning a specific skill in art, composing a song, starting a business, or even learning to crochet… the inquiry is designed around students learning skills they want to learn.
  3. Solving problems in class. I’ve questioned the value of homework for over 15 years now. Watching our senior math teacher teach Math & Physics, I see him focusing on the why of questions. I see his students working in pairs and groups to solve problems together on white boards. I see students actively struggling and learning in class, where they have access to support, and the focus is on the struggle and understanding the problem.

Something else that we do is to be careful not to add things to students loads unnecessarily. I can’t tell you the countless times I hear well-intentioned educators say, “You know what would be a good project for your students to do?” Followed by a legitimately good idea. But we are not an alternate school, we are a regular school with an alternative approach. Our students still need to fulfill the entire regular curriculum on top of the inquiries they do for credit. As good as other ideas may be, they become make-work activities that not all students are interested in, and this just invites students to use AI or to feel like the work is just busywork.

Will Richardson asks, “Every time you’re about to implement a new program or pedagogy or technology or initiative or building project or anything else, ask and answer this simple question: “In service of what?””

When we add anything to our schedule, it’s to serve one of two purposes:

1. Integrate curriculum or make the curriculum more engaging. Our students go on to universities, colleges, and technical institutes, and they need the required courses to get there and do well. But the required curriculum doesn’t need to be taught in a linear, boring fashion. When a project is added in class, the intent is to meaningfully cover more curriculum in less time.

2. We add things in service of students. A recent example: For the last 10 years our PAC has fundraised to provide students with FoodSafe every 2nd year. So all our students learn life skills around preparing and serving food. This year our PAC is also providing our seniors with first aid training. The plan is that they will alternate years between FoodSafe and first aid so that every student who goes through Inquiry Hub will have these life skills when they leave the school. Carving out 8 hours of training time over 2 days involves our senior teachers reworking their schedule… in the service of giving our students a life skill.

I won’t pretend that everything we do is AI proof, and that there aren’t lessons and activities where students could avoid thinking using a tool that does the work for them. I also won’t pretend that every assignment and project is ‘in service’ of authentic learning for students. But I will say that we’ve worked hard to make the learning meaningful for students. We provide them with opportunities to work in our community towards common goals, and we provide them with opportunities to pursue projects meaningful to them, focusing on the process of learning… on the struggle, with a perspective that failure and struggle are a path to real learning, not a barrier.

I’ve said before,

“We talk a lot about ‘learning through failure’ in education, but we don’t really mean failure. Because when a student takes lessons from something not working, then it’s a learning opportunity and not actually a failure.”

This fits with what Alec said above,

“To succeed, we need to fundamentally reframe “effort.” We have to stop viewing the struggle of thinking as an inefficiency to be solved, and start protecting it as the very thing that helps us grow.”

The secret sauce is in providing the space and time for students to struggle out in the open, facing challenges or learning life skills that they will use. However, you don’t create these opportunities by continually adding things to a student’s plate. Adding more to their plates only invites them to find tools to do the work for them.

Thinking requires effort, and providing students with opportunities to demonstrate that effort in meaningful ways is, in my mind, the project of schools. Reducing busywork, and maximizing the problem-solving time, in a community of learners who find benefit from working together, is what schools should be in service of.

Doing hard things

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My workouts have stagnated a bit recently. I’m doing the minimum, but the good news is that I’m still showing up. Yesterday I did my first interval training in about 3 or 4 weeks. I want to do it weekly, but I haven’t made it part of my routine yet.

The reason I haven’t made interval training part of my regular schedule yet is embarrassingly simple: It’s really hard. The purpose of doing intervals is to maintain and improve my Max VO2 levels. To increase Max VO2, I need to not only do intervals, but do them at a very physically taxing level. That’s hard to do when just showing up is a challenge for me right now. But yesterday was a day off work and so I used the day as an opportunity to get an interval workout in.

I did a warm-up then eight 1-minute sprints. My sets are actually 1:15 hard and 1:10 easy, because it takes about 13 seconds to get my treadmill from my easy recovery speed to full sprint and I want the sprint to be a full minute. It’s not fun, but it’s much easier than the Norwegian Protocol which is four 4-minute sprints with 3-minute rest intervals. And I think that’s going to be my ticket to get back into regular intervals. When a task is hard to do, break it down into something more manageable. I can talk myself into 1-minute sprints even when I’m not feeling fully motivated… four 4-minute sprints feels like torture right now.

Through all this I’ve still been very consistent with my zone 2 training, but I think even that has not been ideal. I’m not sure how effective I’ve been because I haven’t been tracking my heart rate and so I’m not certain if I’m getting and staying in the zone. That’s changing this month, when I buy myself a Garmond watch, then I’ll really be able to track my cardio workout progress. I’m hoping the extra data will help motivate me to push myself.

When consistently doing hard things, maintaining motivation is important. I’ve become a master at showing up. My dedication to my workout habit is unwavering. Last year I did 326 workouts, and I’m on schedule to be around that total this year. I know how to show up! But if I were to rank myself on an intensity scale, this year would be much lower than last year. So my focus is to finish the year hard and strong. And I’m fortunate that I’ll have the tools to help track this. It benefits no one to lie to myself about how hard I’m working, and so the extra data the watch will give me will both inform me, and keep me honest about my progress.

Effort over output

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On my fitness journey, I’ve learned that building up my strength with certain exercises does not progress evenly. There are times when I get stuck on a weight and can’t seem to improve, and other times when I see surprising progress. I hit plateaus as well as peaks. And it can be a bit demoralizing when I hit a peak and then can’t replicate it for days or even weeks.

What I’ve come to realize is that the personal bests don’t matter, what really matters is the effort. Today I couldn’t lift nearly as heavy as I have in the past. For example, in my morning workout I struggled to get 6 reps of 185lbs once (with assistance) on incline bench. Yet I did 3 sets of 7 reps just a couple weeks ago, with no assistance.

However, I pushed myself really hard today. My muscles got a good burn, and I feel like I left nothing in my reserve tank when I did that heavily assisted last rep today. If I tried another rep my spotter would have had to do more work than me.

Effort over output.

Some days getting to the gym is hard. Some days in the gym are hard. Today was hard, but in a different way. Today was hard because I couldn’t lift as heavy as I usually do. I felt I needed more rest between sets, and everything seemed more challenging than usual… and yet I still pushed myself. I put in maximum effort.

So leaving the gym I felt good. I know that I put in the best effort I could, and I realized that it would have been easy to be disappointed if I paid attention only to my strength during the exercises. However it wasn’t the strength output that mattered it was the effort input… and with that as the measure, I rocked it! I kicked @$$!

Effort over output for the win.

💪😀👍

Team Sport Roots

Some days in the gym can feel really strong. My buddy and I were both having one of those workouts yesterday. We both lifted a little heavier than we usually do, and felt strong throughout our sets.

We were discussing how working out with someone is a real motivator compared to working out on our own. It was at this point that I realized we had something in common, and that’s playing competitive team sports.

For both of us, working out with someone and doing more than we would on our own is not about showing off, it has much more to do with giving our best for the team. He’s relying on me to perform well, and I’m wanting to do the same for him.

When you’ve played team sports, you understand that the team relies on you and there is a kind of pressure to be better than if you were just doing the practice, workout, or even game for yourself. There is a mutual understanding that ‘we rely on each other’, and that not giving full effort is letting down everyone, not just yourself.

I wonder if this is something felt greater in people who have been on a competitive team compared to someone else? I wonder if people who choose solo sports rather than team sports get that same boost from some else? Or if they just innately feel that extra push and don’t need an outside influence?

I for one thrive on it. Most of my workouts happen alone, at home, in my basement. There are days I push, and days I kind of just go through the motions. But when I’ve got a workout buddy, that’s the motivation I need to thrive and have a really good workout every time!

Persistence and Patience

I like images and graphics that make you think, and especially ones that are motivating. But sometimes for the sake of an image trying to tell a story, another narrative can either be missed or take over from the intended message. That’s something that immediately occurred to me when I saw this ‘inspirational’ image.

To me, the intended message is that we always need to keep learning, but it suggests a uniformity of practice and process that’s just plain wrong. To the person who posted it, Steven Bartlett, the message was about relentless consistency. He said,

For anyone frustrated with how long something is taking you right now…

Remind yourself of this.

Relentless consistency is usually the answer. I’m not talking about a sprint, I’m talking multi-decade.

What’s one thing you do to remain consistent?

But that uniformity between LEARN and APPLY in the image really bugs me no matter what the intended message. While other commenters mentioned positive interpretations like, ‘Consistency is key’, and ‘Focus on the long game’, I commented:

I think my greatest learning is that application always takes longer than you think. Persistence needs to be tempered with patience.

I wish learning was that easy. I wish I could apply everything I learned so consistently and effortlessly. I can’t. And I don’t think anyone can. There are hours of practice, there are mistakes made, detours and distractions. There is never the consistency and uniformity off application of learning seen in the image.

Is the message of relentless consistency over a long period of time important? Absolutely! But I really think this image misses the mark in sharing what relentless consistency looks like. The hardest part of relentless consistency is when application of learning does not go smoothly and application of what you’ve learned takes months to accomplish. And yes, sure that also often means more learning, but the grunt work of making things work can often be the times when consistency really matters, and isn’t so evenly worked through as suggested in the image.

Persistence needs to be tempered with patience. If constant results and application of learning are expected, this will lead to disappointment and frustration… neither of which inspires consistency.

To decide or to deny

I love this Seth Godin quote:

“You don’t need more time, you just need to decide.”

I have goals that I set, and that I hit. I have other goals, call them lofty, call them challenging, or call them unrealistic, that I don’t tend to hit. Two examples of lofty goals include doing pistol squats, and doing 30 consecutive pull-ups. These are really difficult goals to achieve, they involve considerable effort, and diligent practice… and the practice is hard, it hurts. And yes, they take time.

But time isn’t the issue. I can find the time. I can do less of some activities and put more dedicated effort into these goals. So why don’t I? I haven’t decided that these goals are important enough. I haven’t decided that the pain and effort necessary to accomplish these goals is worth doing.

These aren’t real goals (yet?), they are wishes. I will be denied success because I haven’t decided that I’m ready to put in the time and effort required. I haven’t decided, and so I will not achieve.

I did a set of 15 pull-ups yesterday, followed by two sets of ten. Every set ended with my will power quitting before my body. I am not ready to put my body through the pain required to reach 30. I’m not mentally ready for the pain. Ultimately I’m not ready to push to 18, then 20, then 22, and so on. I simply haven’t yet decided. Of course even if I decided, 30 might be unrealistic, but I won’t know until I decide to try… first I just need to decide.

The effort of learning

As an athlete, I didn’t have very good body awareness. My swim stroke was awful and that’s tough to deal with as a water polo player. My coaches spent a lot of time trying to fix my stroke, and they’d have me try all sorts of drills and drill strokes, but I often wouldn’t feel the difference or wouldn’t be able to get my body to do what my coaches wanted it to do.

I was also a player who has no issue being yelled at. I listened whether the coach was speaking at a regular volume or yelling at the top of his lungs. Didn’t matter if it was encouraging or angry. I heard, I tried. I tried again. And often again because listening wasn’t doing, and I had to work extra hard on the doing.

For me, learning new skills was always something I had to work at, and the idea of learning being an effort has stuck with me. Maybe it’s not true for someone who finds that skills come easy to them, but for me if there isn’t a struggle then there isn’t much learning happening. That’s why I frequently go back to the ideas I shared in ‘learning and failure‘. We should teach kids to struggle through things that are not easy and not guaranteed to work. We should have them feel the struggle of failure… even if they are solid ‘A’ students (perhaps especially if they are – see #3 here).

I think sometimes we try to make learning too easy. We forget the sense of accomplishment that comes with succeeding at something hard. We forgot that the challenge is what makes the learning stick. Learning can be fun and hard. It can be challenging and rewarding. It is seldom effortless and still processed meaningfully. The effort is what helps make the learning stick, and while it need not be painfully hard, it does (often) need to at least be uncomfortable. Easily learned skills are not nearly as rewarding as the skills that are more challenging and harder to accomplish. Real learning comes with effort.

Getting technical

While others see me as tech savvy, I know that I’m not. What I am is patient, and willing to experiment. That’s different than savvy. Why do I say this? Because I struggle. I get lost, I make mistakes. I screw up. A lot!

Whenever I’m doing something technical, I have to go painfully slow, or I have to take one step forward and two steps back. This isn’t about me trying to be humble and under-representing my skills, it’s a reality that I’ve come to accept. This is most evident when I try something new. I’m the guy that misses a step, or tries something that I’m too novice to try.

I can remember when I first tried blogging. I’d play with the HTML and quite literally break my blog. Then I’d spend a couple hours on the back end, going way over my head to try to get something besides an error page to show up. But I figured it out. I muddled through.

Sometimes these trail and error escapades left me pulling my hair out, other times laughing at myself, and sometimes feeling like I wanted to cry (especially if my mistakes cost me money unnecessarily). But I try, and I try, and I try. And unlike the song, I find that my attempts create amazing opportunities to learn… and despite the frustration, my attempts at bring more technical than I am are very satisfying.

If at first you don’t succeed

As the saying goes:

“If at first you don’t succeed… try, try again!”

Working with students, what you sometimes see is:

“If at first you don’t succeed… quit before someone sees you fail.” Or, “If at first you don’t succeed… avoid trying altogether.”

What the saying should say:

“If at first you don’t succeed… try, something different.” (Try a different approach, don’t just try the same thing over again in the same way.)

When things aren’t working, students seem to have two main gears: keep moving forward, because curiosity points to getting unstuck. Or ‘Park’ because it’s not worth the effort or embarrassment.

Teaching students that effort matters more than results or that a failing result can still be a learning opportunity, is to teach them to be resilient and to persevere. This doesn’t mean everyone gets a participation badge, this isn’t just about another quote, “If you did your best, that’s all that really matters.”

No, this is about creating an environment where students aren’t afraid to bite off more than they can chew… to be so ambitious about their goals that a failure to achieve them still puts students much farther than if they had set the bar too low and succeeded.

This is about creating opportunities for students to do something epic, rather than just something every other kid is doing, with a sample you share of the expected result… a cookie cutter task where students produce the same round cookies, but get to decide where the pretty sprinkles go to make their cookie look a little different than everyone else’s.

If you want students to really succeed, well then they have to start a task with the real potential for failure. They have to struggle with uncertainty of success. They have to learn that not reaching a perfectly successful goal can be an opportunity to learn more and different things. Because without authentic struggle, learning is shallow and fleeting.

“If at first you do succeed… the task probably wasn’t hard enough to truly learn something new.”

Iterate doesn’t just mean “do it again”

I’ve written a fair bit about Learning and Failure. One of the things that turns a failure into learning is not giving up and iterating. But I’m not sure that’s the correct term? To iterate is ‘to perform or utter repeatedly’, but that’s not really what I mean. The general point of iteration when you meet a roadblock, or fail in an attempt, is not to try to perform the same task or procedure in the same way, but rather to attempt a different version of the same thing.

It’s not just about applying the same process over and over again, but rather it’s about recognizing what caused the failure and attempting to circumvent it, trying to achieve results by trying something untried, unique, or divergent from the failed attempt. This is what can transform a failed attempt into a success. Core to this idea is not seeing a failure as a failure, but rather as an invitation to learn by trying again. It’s not a failure until you give up.

But sometimes you don’t get another attempt. The question is why not? Did you run out of time? Do you lack the resources, support, or effort? Is it a high pressure test that you can only do once?

Ran out of time? Ask: What would your next step be if you had time? What did you learn along the way? Who is an expert you can follow up with to help you understand what went wrong? You can learn by reflection as well as by repeated attempts.

Lack resources or support? Who can help? What do you really need versus what would be nice to have? Who is an expert you can follow up with to help you understand what went wrong?

Lack of effort? Whose fault is that? What help do you need? What are you willing to do to move forward? What’s stopping you?

Is it a high pressure test that you only get one attempt on? This is often a fallacy. This is often more arbitrary than you think. The reality is that most tests that really matter can be done again, just not in the timeline you hoped for. Tests like the LSAT are high stakes, but many people attempt it more than once. To me it’s interesting to see so many teachers not give students second chances on tests? Why? If a student is willing to put more effort in and actually learn the content, why not give them another try? Is the mark on the first attempt the important thing or is the understanding of the content more important?

That said, to iterate doesn’t just mean ‘do it again’. What makes the second (or third or fourth) attempt different? What new information, effort, or resources are available? What other ways can learning be demonstrated? What else can be done to show learning, to achieve learning, to discover learning that wasn’t done before?

Iterate, don’t repeat failure. Don’t do the same thing over again and expect the same result.