Why You Have to Put the Value in the Way
My daughter is two and a half. She’s articulate enough to tell me exactly what she wants. But sometimes I need to put disciplines I’m trying to teach her in the way of what she wants right now.
“Watch Curious George? We’re gonna watch George now,” she tells me.
“Did you eat your lunch? You asked for eggs. They’re right there. We’re having lunch first, then George,” I say.
“No eat? No eat lunch!”
“Lunch first, then George.”
“No!”
“Do you want to eat your eggs while you watch George?”
“Just watch George?”
“You seem hungry, and nap time is soon. If you want to watch George, you need to eat your eggs too.”
“Eat? Eat! Eat eggies!”
“Great! Come eat eggs at the table.”
“Sit on the couch and eat with George?”
“You’re kind of messy with eggs. Can you sit at the table?”
“Just sit on the couch to eat?”
Pause.
“Okay.”
There are probably advanced toddler geniuses out there who are better at keeping mealtimes than my daughter is. But right now, keeping her from getting hangry is a whole thing. I get that she likes watching George explore and learn things with his relatably-aged friends. But eating real food at normal times so you don’t feel weird is more valuable even than Curious George.
The truth is, if you’re asking anyone to adopt a new discipline, you must put the value of that discipline between them and the thing they want. (Or stop wasting your time — also an option.)
I used to teach basic graphic design to college freshmen. They worked the same way.
Most wanted to jump right into new work. They’d go nuts adding Photoshop drop shadows, lens flares, and extrusion effects. But if you’re not careful, adding a bunch of effects like that makes Photoshop crash. Before recent file-recovery updates, that meant your file was g-o-n-e if you hadn’t hit Save yet.
They’d never hit Save.
Eighteen-year-olds are remarkably quicker on the uptake than two-year-olds are. I had less work to do to instill in them bedrock practices like saving files early and often. Usually, each cohort required only a single unfortunate example.
“Hey Mr. Hall, can you get my file back?” a student would inevitably ask.
“Maybe, where did you save it?” I’d reply.
Pause.
“I didn’t save it?”
“Ah. I’m sorry, we can’t get it back. How long did you work on it?”
“Since class started?”
“So like two hours?”
“Yeah.”
“When do you think you should have saved it?”
“Probably right away?”
“Probably.”
Pause.
“If I help you redo your file, do you mind if I tell the class about this? No one’s saving right now, but I bet they’d start saving.”
No one saw the value in establishing safe practices until they saw that failing to do so stood between them and what they want. Saving files is more important even than unleashing creativity. Enthusiasm doesn’t matter if your work is lost forever.
To teach anyone something new, you have to put the value of the disciplines they need to acquire in the way of what they want. You’ll probably find yourself compromising along the way, but I think that’s okay. Just try to compromise toward the core values that are really motivating your learners.
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