Let Kids Keep More Productivity Gains

jefftk
Wed, 29 Apr 2026 14:00:55 GMT

While I was traveling Julia asked me: why is Anna saying her fiddle practice is only two minutes? In this case, two minutes was the right amount of time!

Anna (10y) and I had been fighting a lot about practice. She'd complain, slump, stop repeatedly to make adjustments, and generally be miserable. I'd often have to pull out "if you want to keep taking fiddle lessons you have to practice": she loves her teacher and is very motivated by the prospect of being good at fiddle. Still, it would take us ages and we'd barely get through anything.

One evening when she seemed like she might be open to it I explained that we were spending twenty painful minutes on two minutes of material. I challenged her: if she focused, and went through with no fussing, we'd be done in two minutes. It did turn out to be the right time for this message, she gave it a good try, and (with a little fussing in the middle) we were done in three minutes.

Over the next few days I continued to remind her that if she buckled down it would go quickly, and we got into a pattern of efficient and pleasant 2min practices. We probably continued this a bit longer than ideal, and then I went on a trip without handing this off well. Julia's question was a good reminder that we weren't done with the progression.

When I came back I started gradually increasing how long we practiced. Now that we had a good non-complainy dynamic this went well, and Anna started learning much faster. She wanted to be able to participate in jamming at NEFFA, worked hard at that goal, and last weekend she got to play Coleman's March at the annual Kids Jam:

Part of why I took a long time to start lengthening lessons, beyond just forgetting, was that I don't want to apply too high a marginal tax rate. If I had said "you still have to practice the full time, even though you're getting 10x done now", that would have been super demotivating. Instead, she got to enjoy a few weeks of the full profits (2min practice) before gradually working back up.

(This is just me writing about a thing that happened to work with one of my kids. No reproducibility claims here, your fiddleage may vary!)

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