Simplicity: Transforming Your Teen’s Schedule for a Big Impact

“It should have been me,” “I wish I knew an opportunity like that existed,” exclaimed one of the young leaders from the Gooddler Foundation delegation after attending a plenary session at the United Nations Youth Forum and hearing her peer, a 16-year-old young man, share the story of creating impact in the villages of Bangladesh.

Parents, if your high schooler possesses intrinsic motivation, literally dreams about changing the world, sets the bar high for a dream college, and is going for a hard-to-reach school, and if you are wholeheartedly supportive of all their efforts, this post is for you.

The young man from Bangladesh shared his journey, which had many bumps on the road, but he was able to connect in many ways with every young person in the audience. After he finished, the room in the United Nations Headquarters erupted in a standing ovation. He inspired everyone with his life's authenticity and simplicity, bringing forth an incredible impact.

As a parent, you are able to create a framework for your teenager that embodies just that: simplicity and impact. Your assistance should lie in helping your teenager to strategize all the extracurricular activities to minimize the rat race, a game of adding more and more on the plate to outdo the peers. Most of the driven high schoolers have the same list of activities: debate clubs, Model UN, tutoring, volunteering, some arts, sports, and, of course, they are either class, school, or club presidents. With that extensive list they are hoping to get into the best colleges. However, this model is a losing proposition! While the differentiation factor is minuscule, the effort required to keep up with all the activities is unimaginable and a lot of times unbearable.

I can show you a better strategy, which frees you several hours a week, reduces stress, and adds joy. Start with figuring out your child’s natural traits, narrow down activities that bring joy, invest in adding appropriate skills and knowledge to these activities, and focus your attention on one or two carefully designed projects that hit the following important elements and answer the following questions:

1. Leadership — does your teenager have ownership of the project, with a carefully selected team to get the intended results?
2. Impact — Can the impact be measured? Use “Theory of Change” as a model to align business and impact metrics;
3. Research — can research data be collected as a result of this project? Can the project be created around the possibility of conducting research?
4. Innovation — is there an element of innovative thinking behind the project? Are you able to grab the attention of industry leaders?

And, of course,

5. Accomplishments — Does anyone care that this project exists? Can the hard work your teenager put in be rewarded by some well-known entity (business, foundation, government, university, etc.)?

While there are certainly other ways to approach the situation, following this basic framework can help you, a parent, assist your teenager in efforts to stretch himself, grow character, and have an amazing story to tell on a college application.