The Difference Between Goals and Dreams
Decades of experience as an educator have confirmed a solemn truth most people understand intuitively: earning superior test scores isn’t easy. Even if you know the path–deliberate practice and expert coaching, naturally–execution requires real effort, commitment, and sacrifice. But why would someone want to work so hard and invest so much in something as uninspiring as a test score? The answer for most people is obvious: you wouldn’t. A score on a certain standardized exam, no matter how weighty and consequential it may be, is too small and specific to command the long-term toil, trouble, and time investment required to achieve it. Luckily, the score isn’t really what you’re working towards. High achievers in every form of human endeavor find inspiration in something that transcends their day-to-day training and development. In fact, most of them are driven by a grander aspiration that can only be achieved through exceptional performance. Olympic…
Make This Your Year of Preparation
One topic I never tire of hearing, learning, talking, and writing about is preparation. What makes the principle of preparation so compelling? Simply put, all of our wildest dreams and aspirations become possible and perhaps even easy to achieve with the right preparation. Do you have big goals for this new year? Have you resolved to be better than you were last year? The path to everything you can hope for lies through preparation… We hope you choose to make this–and EVERY–year your year of preparation!
Meditations on Preparation: Ambition
Is it hubris to want to be the best you can be, to scale the heights of accomplishment to reach its pinnacle? Our most audacious goals are driven by our most fervent desires. Embrace your aspirations in order to make them reality. Achievement results from work realizing AMBITION.
Perfection is Overrated
Summer break is already about halfway over, and for a lot of high school students, that means the pressure is already back on. You’ve got summer reading to do, math practice to finish, tutoring sessions and extracurriculars to sign up for before they’re full. It’s all overwhelming enough without knowing that colleges are getting pickier every year. If you’re aiming for a top school, you’ve probably gotten the impression that you need a schedule full of AP classes, a 4.2 GPA and flawless SAT and ACT scores to stand a snowball’s chance, and in some ways, you’d be right. Ivy League universities and other schools of that caliber can afford to expect perfection, and some students thrive when they’re striving for that perfection. That’s all well and good–our society needs its academic juggernauts. But not everybody is built for that kind of rigor, and if you’re not, it can be…
Meditations on Preparation: Goals
All true preparation begins with the end in mind. Define your desired objective or outcome. Place your future self there, then look backwards and consider all the hard work, the training, the coaching, and the sacrifice necessary to achieve that victory. Before preparation even begins, commit to your GOAL.
What Does ‘Smart’ Mean in the 21st Century
For those of us who work with students to achieve their best grades and highest test scores, conversations about intelligence come up as often as discussions of athleticism in a major league broadcasting booth. Certain attributes very clearly connect to success in a specific task without actually being either necessary or sufficient, and intelligence definitely falls into that category. Part of the problem comes with mistaking intelligence with smarts. The term ‘smart’ seems to be a catch-all for a diverse mix of skills, strategies, and cognitive attributes the elude consensus. I like the spin Seth Godin–a genius in his own right–has on what smart really means these days: Smart is no longer memorization. It’s not worth much. Smart is no longer access to information. Everyone has that. Smart is: • Situational awareness • Filtering information • Troubleshooting • Clarity of goals • Good taste • Empathy and compassion for others…