It's equally important to share that a good number of our learner-clients don't have a diagnosis–they wrestle with procrastination, perfectionism, pandemic learning gaps. It could well be that the cost of learning is simply becoming too high—rampant stress, "okay" marks despite hours of review, and a kind of ho-hum quality to it all.

Pass this roadmap along to the learners in your orbit who could use a little structure or nudge about how to study, catch up on missed material, move forward with upcoming assignments, take care of other responsibilities, and reconnect with loved ones. It's not easy, and there's a lot going on.

I’m all for scaffolding our motivations (though motivation alone is insufficient for action), just as I’m all for having aims, ambitions, and aspirations (though these, too, aren’t enough on their own to spur or sustain action). What I’m not for, however, are generic, often unquestioned “systems.”

Increasingly, I’ve come to sense that “balance” isn’t very helpful. Not just in terms of language, but in what it implies—some kind of final and static place of arrival. There is an unattainability—that just-out-of-reach quality—that discourages and flattens me.

But what do we do with the pain of learning? We know from our mission that in learning there can also be so much joy, curiosity, collaboration, and fun – but what if school, homework, and studying feel so difficult that it hurts?

For all, we might be wondering how to best support the students in our lives with the quizzes, tests, and exams they’re facing. We’re past the back-to-school buzz, but not yet at the winter break. This in-between time contains a lot of work – preparing for and taking assessments of every kind.

One of my top hits has been some variation of 'I can’t,' or 'not yet,' or, in deep, vulnerable truth, 'other people might be able to do that, but that’s not something I can do’.

The logic is that with a short duration of only 25 minutes, a learner can start more easily and get through the work efficiently. The hope is that students begin to think in pomodoros: how many rounds of 25+5 will a particular task take? For example, a student can begin to internalize that a list of homework questions will take two rounds, whereas an essay will take ten.

There are always individual preferences and differences. There will be some learners who thrive solo, and I’m all about cheering on when a student finds their recipe or repertoire for feel-good learning. 

Between the 73 tabs we might have open to the hypervigilant “what am I forgetting?” feeling, it can feel so hard to stick to the task–any task–these days.