When I was a teen, I got little to no intrinsic reward from getting good grades, and lots of reward on learning cool stuff. My grades started dropping, and yet I would not tell my teen self that her priorities were wrong—though I wish I was more able to do boring homework. I learned a whole bunch of math, physics, and basic coding, and I’ve been reaping the rewards ever since. I don’t claim thousand year old vampire status, but I am a bit like that in much part thank to my natural priorities. I don’t think I at any point thought “okay, time to learn a bunch of math for the purposes of long term gain!” until suddenly for some reason near the end I started getting externally rewarded for it (if anything I was actively discouraged—adults cared more about my SAT scores than my textbook reading hobbies).
When I was a teen, I got little to no intrinsic reward from getting good grades, and lots of reward on learning cool stuff. My grades started dropping, and yet I would not tell my teen self that her priorities were wrong—though I wish I was more able to do boring homework. I learned a whole bunch of math, physics, and basic coding, and I’ve been reaping the rewards ever since. I don’t claim thousand year old vampire status, but I am a bit like that in much part thank to my natural priorities. I don’t think I at any point thought “okay, time to learn a bunch of math for the purposes of long term gain!” until suddenly for some reason near the end I started getting externally rewarded for it (if anything I was actively discouraged—adults cared more about my SAT scores than my textbook reading hobbies).