Quotes & Highlights

Create plans for your child when young. Use the expression “Let’s make a plan” and then write it out as a series of steps. Better yet, make it a checklist, so the child can check off each step as it’s completed.

Once you and your daughter set up the desk as desired, make clearing off the desk part of the bedtime routine—initially, with on-site monitoring and supervision and eventually with reminders to start and check-ins when she’s finished. You may find it helpful to take a photograph of the space when you first set it up, so your child has a model to compare her work to. The last step in the process might be for your daughter to look at the photo and see how closely her desk matches it.

Prompt prioritizing by asking your child what needs to get done first. Ask questions like “What’s the most important thing you have to do today?”

There are two sets of metacognitive skills that you can help your child develop. One set involves the child’s ability to evaluate her performance on a task, such as a chore or a homework assignment, and to make changes based on that evaluation. The second set involves the child’s ability to evaluate social situations—both her own behavior and others’ reactions and the behavior of others.

Remember that a child’s time horizon is much shorter than yours. For a plan like this to succeed, the end always has to be in sight for the child. So don’t get too ambitious in teaching this skill. Expectations that the child will save for months or put all his resources into savings are unrealistic. Remember that learning to save requires ongoing and long-term practice. Be prepared to use savings systems over an extended time period.

We need to fear the consequences of our work more than we love the cleverness of our ideas.

Have the child identify what finished looks like.

A designer uses their expertise in the service of others without being a servant. Saying no is a design skill. Asking why is a design skill. Rolling your eyes and staying quiet is not. Asking ourselves why we are making something is an infinitely better question than asking ourselves whether we can make it.

A designer owes the people who hire them not just their labor, but their counsel.

“You may be hiring us and that may be your name on the check, but we do not work for you. We’re coming in to solve a problem, because we believe it needs to be solved and it’s worth solving. But we work for the people being affected by that problem. Our job is to look out for them because they’re not in the room. And we will under no circumstances design anything that puts those people at risk.”