Attentiveness

Web Resources Related to Attentiveness that Parents and Teachers Can View/Discuss with their Older Children.

(For best results, Google the bolded words for each article or video)

The Difference Between Winning and Succeeding- A very inspirational YouTube talk by John Wooden, one of the greatest college basketball coaches in history.  Coach Wooden’s rules have little to do with measuring success and everything to do with a focus on living success.

How to Tame Your Wandering Mind Neuroscientist, Amisha Jha, discusses how attention works in the brain.  Human brains never suffer from inactivity but rather from information overload.  There is so much to focus on that the brain has trouble deciding what is most important.  A solution for the brain’s tendency to wander into the past or the future is to focus on the present through Mindfulness strategies.  Jha discusses strategies for identifying critical junctures where mind wandering can be costly and then developing strategies for focusing attention.  Implicit in her discussion is the decision of focusing on those traits that are desired for attention.  Her concluding council is to “Pay attention to your attention”.

What Do Top Students Do Differently? This is is a very engaging and practical view of what high school students can do differently to become successful in school.  Douglas Barton is the Founder and Global Chairman of Elevate Education.  He presents a very research driven explanation of why top students are successful and what others can do to achieve a similar success. His recommendations are 1. Don’t worry about IQ; 2. Don’t aim just to work hard; and 3. Model the top students.  He then convincingly explains two of 13 factors that emerged from his research on top students.  Barton found, for example, that top students spend time practicing exams but then create a study schedule not based on a schedule of work but rather a personal and comprehensive schedule of homework, tests, and other commitments.

How to Raise Successful Kids- Without Over-Parenting– This is former Dean of Freshmen at Stanford, Julie Lythcott Haims, has some unusual thoughts about the ways we have to be careful about over parenting our children.

Japanese Parenting Rules All Kids Need Many people view Japanese parents as very successful managers of their children.  This video articulates 8 ways that Japanese parenting stands out.

Seven Tips on How to Raise Successful Kids According to Science– Helpful advice for parents on ways to raise successful children supported by scientific research.

Do you know another self- help book, children’s book, article, TedTalk, or video that focuses attentiveness? Let us know with a one or two sentence summary sent to author@johnzurn.com.