Editor’s note: Edward (Ned) Hallowell, M.D. is a child and adult psychiatrist, author and senior consultant to Avenues. He writes periodic blog posts that appear here. This is the third in a series on what he terms “the cycle of excellence,” the way to maximize the chances a child will become a happy and fulfilled adult.

We all know what work means. The problem that usually vexes parents and teachers is how to “get” a student to work up to full potential.

“Work hard!” is probably the most time-honored of all advice on how to succeed. We admire people who have a strong “work ethic,” which is taken to mean they work very hard out of some ethical belief that it is good to do so. So parents and teachers exhort children to work hard, no matter what the task, telling them anything worth doing is worth doing well, trifles make perfection and perfection is no trifle, and on, and on.

But look at the adults you know who work really hard. Most of the time they work really hard because they want to. Leaving aside people who work really hard because they must in order to bring in sufficient income, the children attending Avenues will see as role models people who work hard because they have found some task they really like to do. I tell my kids that a career is simply finding some activity at the intersection of three spheres: what you love to do, what you’re really good at doing and what adds value to the world—what someone is willing to pay you to do.

The beauty of the first two steps in the cycle of excellence is that they set up the conditions that make it most likely a student will want to work really hard. Of course there will be subjects, and there will be times, that the work is pure drudgery, and this is when the work-hard-and-do-your-best lecture can help. But the more a student lives in a culture of connection and learns through imaginative engagement, the more he or she will want to work hard. Then working hard becomes a habit, a habit that does transpose into other areas of life. I think this is really what is meant by a strong work ethic: it is a strong work habit.

The student then naturally develops habits of discipline that last a lifetime. Such discipline is one of the attitudes that does predict success and joy in life.

From a practical standpoint, when a student is underachieving and seems to be lazy, a parent or teacher should look first at steps one and two before launching into the “work harder” pronouncements.

In addition, in the context of connection and play, teachers should challenge students (as should coaches and all others interested in developing peak performance). The best teachers are “tough,” if by tough you mean challenging. The trick is knowing which student to challenge with what. When my 12th grade English teacher at Exeter challenged me in September to write a novel, I thought to myself, “Gee, I know Exeter is a tough school, but I have to write a novel?” Yet I was also flattered. I was the only student Fred had so challenged. So on my own time, I gradually added page after page, and by spring I had produced a novel. It won the senior English prize and gave me a career as a writer. But it also did something even better: it got me to prove to myself that I could do something I had thought was impossible.

This is one of the great services a teacher can provide: helping students draw more out of themselves than they believed was possible.

Students should be challenged to do the difficult, the seeming impossible. Just challenge the right student at the right time.

Future blog entries will deal with the next two steps in the cycle of excellence: growth and progress and recognition.

For more in-depth discussion of these topics, see Dr. Hallowell’s book, The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness (Ballantine Books, 2003), from which this essay is adapted.