Speaker 1: Carry the one and carry the fun. Are you guys getting this? Uh-huh. Oh, and Mommy, don't forget there's more in the back. And show your work.

Speaker 2: Oh. Show your work. As millions of children head back to school, some parents like Tracy Ellis Ross' character in Black-ish may need help getting their kids to focus on their studies. Researchers have found the typical student is distracted for at least five out of every 15 minutes they set aside to study, and I think they're underestimating. James Clear is the author of the New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits, an easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones. He is here with how parents can help their kids get back into a routine for the school year. Good morning. Good morning. I'm taking a kid back to college next week who is going to be clinging to somewhere I know with the tips of his fingernails. Yes. So how do you get a kid to shift their focus?

Speaker 1: Good question. Well, first, I think we should say there's going to be a wide difference in study habits for like, say, a second grader versus, say, a junior in college, right? Are you sure? We have a difference there. So different strategies work at different stages, I guess is my point. But one thing that I think does apply across all stages is an idea in the book that I talk about called habit stacking. And the basic idea is you take whatever habits you currently do. So let's say, for example, at the end of dinner, one habit we all have is we clean our plate. And then we put it in the dishwasher. Well, you could stack the study habit on top of that. So you could say, after you put your plate in the dishwasher, you immediately open your book on the table. And especially as you get into school again, you're really trying to build that routine. And so whether it's after dinner or as soon as you walk in from school or whatever, building a habit stack that's reliable and consistent is a good way just to get started.

Speaker 3: Does environment matter?

Speaker 1: Of course. You know, if you walk in, if you walk home and you open up the door and your kid sees a video game controller on the floor and the TV is on, like, that's an environment where it's easy to be distracted versus walking in and, like, the table is clean. There's space to put their books. The TV is behind a cabinet or a wall unit. The video game controller is tucked away. That's an environment that's much more primed for studying. And I think that's one role parents can play is to try to prime the environment to make it easy to get into studying with your distractors.

Speaker 4: Yeah, to the extent they can. You know, in a small apartment, it can be difficult. We mentioned at the top that for every 15 minutes that a kid is studying, for five of those minutes, he's probably distracted. How do you change that ratio?

Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good question. You know, a lot of the time we get distracted because of phones. And so, especially as students get older, they start to get their own phones and those things are always creeping in and distracting. Some of that is personal, like, digital habit hygiene, so turning off notifications or maybe putting your phone on silent. There's actually a little device called a kitchen safe. It's like a Tupperware container, but you can lock it. So you can program it to lock for, like, an hour, for example. You could, when you start your study session, put the phone in the Tupperware, lock it for an hour, and set it aside.

Speaker 3: You were showing me your phone. Did you bring it out here?

Speaker 1: Yeah, so...

Speaker 3: I've never seen a home screen like this. I thought your phone was broken.

Speaker 1: Well, so, I don't know if you can see this, but the home screen of my phone doesn't have any apps on the main screen. So I just have the bar down here. And then if I want to get to the apps, they're there. I can just swipe over and they're inside folders and whatnot.

Speaker 3: But it's just one little step.

Speaker 1: When I wanted to build a reading habit, I put Audible for audiobooks and Pocket in the bottom. And so the first thing I saw were apps that prompted me to read. And you can think about this both for digital environment and physical. You're just trying to reduce the number of steps between you and the productive behaviors and increase the number of steps between you and the battle. Should you ever incentivize kids to even pay them to do their homework? You know, external rewards sometimes get criticized, because it's like, oh, well, you don't want to pay them, and then they just learn. They only get good grades because they're getting paid to do it. But the truth is, we use external rewards all the time, right? Like, you get paid every two weeks for your job, and that's an external reward that helps to get you to show up. So I think the key, though, is you want to reward the process and not the outcome, right? Like, there's two very different things between saying, hey, you're rewarded for studying vocab every night or for doing flashcards every evening versus you're rewarded for getting a good grade.

Speaker 3: When the question was phrased, should they get paid for doing their homework, I didn't like it. But when the question was phrased, should you get paid if you get an A, I thought, well, that's not so bad.

Speaker 1: Well, I think ultimately you're trying to build an identity of being a lifelong learner or being someone who's curious, someone who takes responsibility for their studying and their own learning. And so if you can say, you know, we really care about this in this household. Being a lifelong learner is the most important thing. And in fact, we care about it so much that we're going to reward for it. But the signal that you should get when you get paid to study or paid to get a good grade is not that you should only study when you get paid. It's that we're reinforcing being a lifelong learner.

Speaker 4: All these habits can work for parents too. You don't want to make it a chore.

Speaker 3: You don't want to make it a chore. James, people are saying you're going to tell us how to focus and succeed. I hope I was able to help. I want to know how to succeed.

Speaker 1: Focus and succeed. One sentence. The key, you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. So often we think success is about the goal, but it's really about the habit and the system that you follow.

Speaker 3: All right, James Clear. Thank you very much. Thanks.

Speaker 1: Say hello to your lovely wife. Thank you.