I don't think you can truely learn to be a self-starters. Being a self-starter myself, I have friends who just don't have the drive to do it themselves, even a

I don't think you can truely learn to be a self-starters. Being a self-starter myself, I have friends who just don't have the drive to do it themselves, even after knowing/seeing that it's the only way to get things done. Thus I'm convinced that this drive is mostly genetic. Plus, isn't the definition of a self-starter someone who accomplishes things on his own without prior instruction? Then being a self-starter is independent of the amount of instructions. If anything I'd throw my kids in public school to make them better self-starters, because self-starters have to learn to keep that drive going even when the mainstream population are followers. That is not to say you can't learn the trades of being a self-starters, such as discipline, progress logging, mini-goal management, lauch-then-iterate, etc. But that comes with experience. I won't even attempt to teach these things to kids under 12.