I agree with long-term goals and knowing what you want, but I feel for some people there also needs to be some kind of pressure. Mine was 'I'm afraid to be poor

I agree with long-term goals and knowing what you want, but I feel for some people there also needs to be some kind of pressure. Mine was 'I'm afraid to be poor and if don't work right now I can say bye to this eng. degree' Focus is a complex muscle and it's even worse when you're never challenged during childhood. 'grit', 'hard work' are empty words when you don't see the need. Breezing through school while being a smart ass annoying (childhood trauma will make you a pita to teach...) brat is no recipe to learn 'work'. It's different from physical work that was taught to me early, where you see the chai of effort to the result quite quickly, build a wall, a cement patio, wallpaper, paint, 'heavy' garden maintenance, housecleaning. Immediate or rapid feedback, you do you see. With intellectual concentration, be it books, science lessons, etc. If there's no quick gratification ('oh I understand this immediately, new thing I know, cool' or 'Hu, interesting story') the voluntary focus muscle doesn't engage. It took me years of searching at random how to make myself concentrate enough to 'go through' stuff. I hope my kids won't have the 'panic-level fear of being poor' as a drive, but I also hope I find a way to teach them the value of sometimes forcing yourself without understanding why /right away/ (trusting you're on a path to enlightenment or victory or success...) and to teach them to exercise the focus muscle as they need.