seventy three percent of high school student don't enjoy school
of high school students don't enjoy school. That is a scary number
it should be a scary number to you
why should so much of our population
be spending over a decade of their lives doing something that they don't enjoy at all
it just doesn't make sense
my name is John Fish
and I'm a Harvard student
and I wanna share with you the intuitive way that i turned school from being an experience
that i was not enjoying into one that i really enjoyed
and then back it up with some real psychology
so the intuitive way that I learned to enjoy school came from my dad
who is an amazing teacher, and what he taught me is to
have fun in school by treating it like it's a game
so I come from a fairly high level sports background
I've played sports all my life, and so looking at classes
as practice, time to own my skills
for the game, the test
was very intuitive to me
and it, it made a lot of sense and it made school be enjoyable
when i framed it that way
Now, over the past year I've been reading a lot of positive psychology and I've been taking classes on psychology here
and one name kept coming up for me
He's a psychologist that pioneered the concept of flow
Which is basically a highly focused mental state
that leads to enjoyable experiences
So, in this book "Flow"
he breaks down the main principles that make an experience a Flow experience, and
I mean i briefly summarize them because i wanna mostly get to the recommendations
But,
If you haven't read "Flow" I definitely recommend picking up a copy because it's a GREAT read no matter who you are
So the key elements of Flow experience is are these
There's a clear goal, something that you want to be doing with the task
There is a clear & immediate feedback mechanism
that gives you a sense of progress towards that goal
your skills match the challenges presented by the activity
you're concentrated on the activity at hand
and you feel like you're in control
of what you're doing in order to achieve that goal
and there's a few other things that make a Flow experience a Flow experience
but for that you're gonna have to read the book
because these are the five things we're gonna be focusing on in this video
So with this in mind it's pretty obvious to see why sports are enjoyable
because they're pretty much by definition a Flow experience
The goal, winning is obvious
The sense of feedback, the feedback mechanism, the score. Again, fairly obvious
Games are only really fun if your opponent is at similar skill level to you
in other words, you know if you're a house league team you're not gonna be playing professional team
Cause that would be not fun
and you're not gonna play a team of toddlers cause that'll be too easy right?
So, the skills match the challenges
You're obviously concentrated at the task at hand
When you're on the soccer field you're not on your phone texting your friends or whatever
and finally, you're fully in control of what you do
you are in control whether you chase after the ball
whether you kick it in score
it's all on you
So, it's also pretty obvious why school does not fit the definition of Flow experience
It's-
Well there is a clear goal kind of ? in that you want to get good grades
But when you think about the sense of progress towards that
The feedback mechanism is almost always delayed
You hand in a test and you have pretty much no idea about what you're grades gonna be
It takes days or weeks, same thing with homework
and further more the skills don't always match the challenges
Sometimes things are way too hard sometimes they're way too easy
So, it can be overwhelming at times, and it can be boring at other times
You're not always concentrated either
I mean..
pretty much everyone's on their phone when they're in school
doing work, it's pretty much the norm
and you also don't really feel like you're in control
So, it's pretty obvious that school isn't a Flow experience for most people
and i think that that really shows why 73% of students don't enjoy it
But here's the promising thing
As a student you can make school a Flow experience and here's how i recommend doing that
So the first thing and the most important thing that you can do is
You can set goals outside of grades that you can evaluate yourself on
and that 's the key thing. Okay, so i'm gonna give you an example
For my english class one of my goals, and i set a few,
but one of them was to get better at writing arguable thesis
Okay so when i write a thesis i want it to be something that is actually arguable
That's not something that my teacher's gonna tell me that's something that i can figure out on my own
When i'm looking at my writing i can say "Is this arguable?"
and i can see whether i'm progressing or not
and it's immediate because i'm the one evaluating it
and just a side note i applied this to my daily life too
I write down goals for every single day
and i evaluate myself on whether or not i achieve them,
I'm not nice to myself about it, i truly want to be honest
Because that's the only way that i'll actually see progress
Because i'll know if i'm faking it
So, set goals for everything that you're doing in school
They can be big macro goals that span in an entire year or a semester
Or they can be micro goals, you know in this class i want to get better at X
The most important thing is that those goals
Your- Your progress towards them can be evaluated immediately
Okay? So it can't rely on things like grades because
That's usually not something that you can get immediately, while you're actually in the task
So it needs to be something that, if you're in the task you can say "Yes, I'm doing this well"
So focus, focus is a hard one at school okay? Because
You obviously need friends and you need social activities right?
I'm a huge advocate for balance. I don't think that anyone should be working all the time
Because that's super unrealistic and- and it's not a healthy life to be livin'
But, they way that I deal with this is that i put myself into "School Mode"
Where the only thing that i'm thinking about is the task in front of me
You know, what project i'm working on, the class,
The note that i'm taking, and i tune out everything else
So i turn off my phone I don't really talk to people while i'm doing that
I'm just. In. School.
and then when i'm not in school mode I just take that completely off
I don't think about school at all and i let myself be present with my friends and enjoy that experience
And i think when you apply that as a strategy
You really find that you get more out of both experiences
as opposed to kind of taking those average and having overall mediocre experiences
When you're with friends you're stressed about school and when you're in school you're thinking about your friends
Separating the two i found for me has been tremendously healthy and beneficial
for my relationships and for school
So practice putting yourself into "School Mode"
Practice putting yourself in a state where you are fully focused on the activity at hand
knowing that you know, at lunch you'll go back on your phone,
you'll hangout with your friends
you'll have a good time
you won't need to worry about school because you've been killing it
in your classes and while you're doing homework
So finally, i think that the hardest thing
about a Flow experience to implement in school is control
Because it's very hard to feel control when you're doing the work that a teacher has assigned you to do
But setting good goals will help with this okay? So for example
if my goal is to write an arguable thesis or to get better at writing arguable thesis
and my teacher assigned a video project
Right?
What i'm gonna be thinking about that video project is not "How do i get an A on this?"
It's "How do I make a video that have an arguable thesis in this?"
Okay?
I'm changing the activity to fit my goals
and fun fact when you have good goals like this
You'll probably get better grades as well
Because you're producing passionate and inspired work
as opposed to stuff that you kinda just
whipped out in half an hour whatever because you know it wasn't very fun
If you're having fun with it your teacher will obviously see that and it will benefit you tremendously
So I challenge you to reject grades as a feedback mechanism
and to listen to your own internal heuristic about whether or not you're- you're improving
Whether or not you're succeeding and achieving your goals
Okay? Because you'll have a much more enjoyable experience if you do this, and
to be honest it will help you with your grades as well
So hopefully if you're a student you'll think about using these methods
or maybe some other methods
to make school into a flow experience
because trust me you don't want to spend a decade of your life or more
a lot more in some people's cases sometimes 2 decades
Doing something that's just not enjoyable
You- you wanna make this an enjoyable experience for yourself
So teachers, here's a really important point for you
if you can turn teaching into a Flow experience by applying the concepts of Flow to your work
Then your students are actually much more likely to experience Flow as well
To enjoy school
It's due to a phenomenon known as emotional contagion
and it's actually been documented in formal psychology studies
So, I highly recommend that you figure this out for yourself and on that point
To anyone you can really implement Flow in any part of your life
I try and turn my life into a Flow experience by setting big goals and little goals for every single day
and to be honest when i started doing that i started enjoying life a lot more
So, if you're interested in reading more in the topic
Some really, really interesting literature there's a link in the description to this video
So, thank you so much for watching this video I really do appreciate your support
If you got something out of this video or if you enjoyed it feel free to leave a like
Maybe share it with your friends or your social network if you think that other people could benefit from this message
and as always don't forget to subscribe
I'm John Fish
and i will see you next Friday