Austin Scholar #50: How to Motivate Your Teen to Push Their Limits
& The Alpha Rocketship
Hey, y'all!
A lot of kids get comfortable doing the bare minimum to get by. But to be great, you have to push and challenge yourself to do more than what's expected of you.
In the real world, you get real-life rewards for pushing your limits.
While your kids are still in school, you can simulate that by offering rewards yourself for great performance. This has been incredibly helpful for me in my own journey.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
This week from Austin Scholar...
Austin’s Anecdote: The Alpha Rocketship
How to Motivate Your Teen to Push Their Limits
Scholar’s Sources: Three Awesome No-Downside Risks Your Kid Can Take
Y’all–my poetry won an award! A few months ago, I submitted some pieces to the Scholastic Awards, just because. I wasn’t really expecting anything from it. And I forgot all about it until this week, when I got an email from Scholastic telling me I won an award for my collection. The certificate is now hanging on our fridge.
This really reminded me that taking no-downside risks like that can actually pay off. And, it gave me some confidence to continue taking those risks–which, for now, means I'm going to be bolder about sending DMs to people I admire on Twitter.
Just take the chance. Do the cool thing. It might just pay off. (Check out Scholar’s Sources for some ideas on risks your kid can take.)
Austin’s Anecdote: The Alpha Rocketship
My school, Alpha, recently implemented a new motivation system called the Rocketship.
The Rocketship is a special program for students who exceed standards in both academics (regular school subjects) and our Masterpieces (our individual 4-year graduation projects) standards.
The benefits of the Rocketship include…
A Rocketship-only room at school to work in
A mini-fridge and snacks
$3,000 to invest in each person’s Masterpiece
An incredible trip to Mexico to build a workshop to be distributed online called "how to have a 75% chance at getting into an Ivy League."
Yeah, there are some pretty extraordinary rewards.
But, there's a catch.
To stay in the Rocketship, each student must achieve a challenging, almost impossible goal every session (a six-week period of school, which we use instead of semesters).
For example, by February 24th, I need to reach 10,000 Twitter followers and my two best friends need to reach 25,000 TikTok followers. (The purpose of these goals is to dramatically increase our real-world credibility and reach in our fields.)
But really, these goals are no joke and require an insane amount of hard work and dedication.
For the past month, I’ve been at school until 8:00 pm, posting on Twitter and DM-ing experts and doing all the things I need to do, but I’m still off-pace.
At my current trajectory, I’m not going to be in the Rocketship next session. But you know what? I want to stay.
I want to keep my mini-fridge. I want to see what new privileges the Rocketship will have next session. And, I really want to be a part of this amazing group of other motivated students.
So to reach my goal, I’m going to put in even more effort. I’ll work that extra hour every night and ask more people to retweet my content and ask for help. (Seriously–if any of y’all could support my Twitter journey, I would be so grateful.)
And the rest of my classmates who didn’t get into the Rocketship this session are also working harder than ever to reach their goals, so they get invited into the Rocketship next session. They understand the high standards and are working toward them, something they didn’t care about before.
The Rocketship program is a fantastic example of how rewarding kids for their hard work and high standards can lead to really cool outcomes.
It motivates students to put in the effort to reach their goals and be the best version of themselves. Everyone’s putting in the work to get a chance to be in the Rocketship.
And I think that might say something about how to motivate kids.
How to Motivate Your Teen to Push Their Limits
Y’all have probably heard that “teenagers don’t have high standards,” or that “teenagers don’t work hard.” When true, both of these things can be absolutely detrimental in today’s ultra-competitive, AI-driven world.
Why? Well, the competition is tougher than ever. So many people are vying for the same opportunities–and it’s crucial to stand out among the crowd.
High standards will set your kid up for a path of success–one where they’re always thinking about improving a little bit every day.
But I’ll admit: getting teenagers to actually have these high standards for themselves can be pretty challenging.
Most of them have lived their lives by the philosophy of doing the bare minimum to get where they need to go–but that's the path to mediocrity, not success.
So, how do you motivate kids to put in the work and have high standards for themselves?