Discovery Exercise

About those learning habits: I go along with the general sentiment of enjoying play—play as a learning mode. That’s what LEAP, our preschool initiative is all about. Once you frame your behavior as play, you remove the stakes, and all the pressure that goes with it. Children who feel too intimidated by the very grown-up prospect of writing will refuse to try to write. But they’re eager to play at it. Give them a play scenario—like pretending to be a pizza maker—and they’re happy to pretend to write a menu or a guest order. No grades, no pressure—they can’t fail.

Seeing problems as opportunities, for me that’s hard. I get so focused on completion that I’m impatient with problems, slap them down. It's a plough-horse quality, but you can get mired in opportunities. (There's a good name for a blog.)