🧠 Lectures Stink, 1/4

Lectures stink. Let’s just get that out of the way.

What’s up students, parents, teachers—anybody who’s interested in supporting kids with executive functioning challenges. My name is Seth Perler, from SethPerler.com.

Lectures stink.

I’m going to talk to you about a student I was coaching the other day. I’ve been working with this student for a couple of years now. We were chatting about some stuff, and she asked me a question. The question was: How do I pay attention to lectures?

She’s taking a personal finance class, but that doesn’t really matter. She’s a senior in high school, but it also doesn’t matter whether you’re in middle school, high school, or college. The information here can help you regardless.

But she was asking: How do I pay attention during lectures?

I have a few things to share. I’m going to tell you how I worked with her so that you can use these ideas yourself.

The first thing I want her—and you—to know is this: lectures stink when it comes to actual learning. When you look at the scientific evidence and research on lectures, they’re actually one of the worst ways to learn something.

Yet our school system, at least in the United States—and I know people watch from other countries too—is heavily based on lectures.

Lectures tend to be boring. They can be uninteresting. Students are all at different levels, so it’s often hard for them to stay engaged. I could go on and on about why lectures stink. You can probably fill in the blanks yourself.

But since lectures are something we do have, we need to make the best of them.

In terms of your education, you want to learn as much as you can so you can have an awesome life. So we want to get as much value as we can out of lectures. You also want to get your good grades, for whatever that’s worth. I’m not really a “grades person,” but still.

This is going to be a four-part series, and this is part one. I’m going to tell you how I coached this student and what happened.

When I’m coaching someone, I want them to come up with their own solutions. I will offer solutions when it’s time, but I usually hold back. It’s almost always better if parents, teachers, coaches—or anyone helping someone—can guide that person to their own answers.

Usually, we actually do know the answers ourselves. And when we discover them, it’s very empowering.

That’s my philosophy.

So on this particular day, I was doing something I often do with students called temperature checks. I do different versions of this.

I asked the student:

“On a scale from 1 to 10—10 being the best and 1 being the worst—how would you rate yourself in terms of how well you pay attention during lectures?”

In other words: with what you’re currently doing, what number would you give yourself?

The student said a six or a seven out of ten.

Whenever I do a temperature check and a student gives me a number, my follow-up question is always “Why?”

And then she told me why. The details aren’t important right now.

Then I asked another question:

“What would it take to get that to a solid eight?”

Notice what I’m not asking. I’m not asking, “What would it take to get to a 10?”

For those of us adults who are perfectionists and want kids to do everything perfectly—that approach doesn’t help. It’s not realistic, and it doesn’t help people grow.

People need goals that feel manageable, bite-sized, and achievable.

So I break things down.

Instead of “How do we get to a 10?” the question becomes: How do we get to an 8?

When I asked that, the student came up with some really good ideas.

First, they said: turn off notifications on the phone.

We realized that notifications on the phone and computer were distracting. And again, the student came up with this idea themselves. I didn’t tell them.

They said, “Yeah, I get all these notifications, and they’re distracting.”

So here’s what we did.

First, we turned off every notification we possibly could.

Second, we changed the type of notifications for certain things so they wouldn’t make an audible sound, wouldn’t vibrate, or would only appear if the student manually checked them.

Third, we deleted apps that the student didn’t really need but were constantly sending notifications.

So again, the goal here was to look at lectures—which are already hard to pay attention to—and ask:

What small changes can we make to help this student focus better?

In video number two, I’m going to talk about the next step.

In this video, I asked: “What would it take to get from a 6 or 7 to an 8?”

Next, I asked: “What would it take to get to a 9?”

And I’ll explain why I asked that question—because I don’t always ask it, but in this case it was important.

My name is Seth Perler. Check me out at sethperler.com.

If you like what I’m doing, share it with your friends. Share this video or my website.

Leave a comment if you have any ideas or takeaways from this. And if you want to support me, you can give it a thumbs up, like the video, and do all the things.

Take care. I’ll see you in a moment.