What is an Optimalist parent?
Ever since we debuted Focusable, the most common first response was “This would be great for my son [or daughter]”. This was true for educators and non-educators alike. It was even true for people that saw us wearing our t-shirts in the airport and asked “What’s that shirt about? My son…”.
Attention is something that is very top of mind for parents, it would seem.
As you likely know, talking about the role of attention is our thing here at the Optimalist. As a result, we’ve wanted to include more guidance and stories for parents. We’re starting this off today with an exploration of what it could mean to be an Optimalist parent.
More specifically, it is a narration of my own ranging exploration of it so far. And we will be welcoming everyone here to join in and expand this definition further.
Generally speaking, parenting is an optimistic act. It requires the belief that life is worth living and you can create a good life for your children. It requires the belief that the responsibility taken to raise children will create meaning and value for you as well.
But lately, we can all likely agree it’s harder than ever to be optimistic. This is why so many are choosing to forgo parenthood. Doom and gloom comes at you in a torrent. You have to really learn how to regulate your reactions and manage your attention and mental health in response to this torrent to maintain any shred of optimism.
You can also find sources of optimism in the torrent, thankfully. As it is said, we are reaching the age of abundance. AI will solve climate change, cancer, and more. Humans will be smarter and live longer than ever, if not forever. While these ideas might be somewhat fantastical for your taste - there’s some rational optimism in there too, if you’re paying attention. We are eliminating poverty. There is less violence than ever. We are decoupling growth from resource utilization. And so on.
The idea that my son could be way smarter and healthier than me sounds pretty great. And if I were on the fence about becoming a parent, this idea could persuade me. But now that I am a parent, I am looking for slightly different information. Information on how to help create a good life for him. It’s not like I can now lock my six year old son in a room with ChatGPT and assume he’ll emerge as a superhuman in 12 years.
I’ve honestly been thinking about all this daily. And it’s a real strain to imagine what the world looks like 10, 20, or even 30 years into the future.
I believe some traditional approaches to parenthood are as relevant as ever - like ensuring his safety and teaching values. I want to teach my son courage, integrity, honesty, empathy, respect for diversity, etc. This desire is likely not lost on many of you reading this.
But beyond values, more than anything, I want to give him choices. I want him to have choices in his life that give him the same chance I have had for happiness, even though he’s growing up in a very different world.
In recent history, this meant developing a love of reading, getting him into a good college and cultivating interest for good career choices.
I know many are salivating at the potential to finally disrupt education - both K12 and higher education. But I have a sneaking suspicion that we’ll soon find that traditional education is more important than ever. I’ll share more on this sentiment at the end of this writing.
With that said, the future of jobs has never been less clear. For example in technology, it’s quite evident that software will soon write itself. And maybe not too long after that, technology will likely build itself. I think creating technology will likely require no special skill by humans, if it needs humans at all. And while this will surely open up some really cool societal opportunities, it clouds my judgment about the jobs of the future in technology and what I should be developing his interest in. If he showed a strong interest in technology, would I support it? You bet. But I am much less inclined to push him in that direction based on this.
I think the same could be honestly said about any profession. Even if the job will still exist in title, what skills and lifestyle that job may bring are almost entirely unknown.
So this has me thinking: I want to find a more future-oriented way to give him choices to find happiness - one less tied to careers as they are defined today.
But I’ve needed some more tangible mental models of where the world is going to base this on. And these are harder to come by these days.
I believe one of the few things that can be stated about the future with utter and complete confidence is this: it will be more entertaining, engaging, and rapidly-changing than ever. It will exceed our wildest dreams and imagination of what is possible. It will be personalized to our interests beyond what even we can comprehend. And it will be available to you 24/7 wherever you are for instant gratification.
There will truly be abundant pleasure.
Generally speaking, I am grateful for this. Pleasure is a big part of happiness. And my son will experience more pleasure than most humans ever have. As a parent, I don’t have to worry about this aspect of happiness.
But pleasure is not happiness itself, despite wishes to the contrary. And this insight starts to give me a mental model to start thinking through the choices my son will need to make - specifically to help him create the meaning in his life he needs for lasting happiness.
So what brings meaning?
Work can bring meaning. I want him to have the choice to be able to work. I believe there will be jobs even if there isn’t the same obligation to work. In order to do this he’ll need to be educated at some level and willingly be able to take a break from abundant pleasure and regulate his attention. He’ll need to know how to avoid pressing the button and engage deeply in a challenging task. If he can do that, I am confident he’ll be able to develop whatever skill is needed to work.
Relationships bring meaning, especially human ones. And I want him to have the choice to have human relationships. AI is already presenting an alternative source for intimacy to human connection. It will only get better at it in his lifetime. And it will almost surely feel more calibrated to his immediate needs than a person ever could. Being able to engage with other humans, to be able push past the misalignment, inconvenience and risk in comparison, is what he’ll need to find value in human connection.
Exploring the limits of his conscious mind and body can bring meaning. It’s certainly given me a lot of meaning in my life. I want him to be able to take risks, grow and increase his complexity, and not be stuck in prematurely fixed definitions of himself. And I especially don’t want him to feel forced into transhumanism to feel any sense of progress in his life.
Yes, it is quite clear to me that transhumanism will be a real option for him. This includes brain computer interfaces like Neuralink, genetic alterations or nanotechnology. Setting aside the range of emotional reactions I’ve had to these - there is some exciting promise. But I am also relatively confident that something important will be lost with their adoption - especially to those earliest to adopt them. And I want him to be able to approach those decisions with as much clarity and optionality as possible.
And of course - optimism itself can bring meaning. I want him to have the choice of optimism. This means knowing and believing that the world keeps getting better, not worse. I want him to believe that life is worth living and that he can create a good life for his prospective children, etc. And I know he’ll need to find his own way through what is surely an overstimulating world, if not an ever-stronger torrent of doom and gloom with each passing year.
What is clear to me is that for him to have choices that create meaning - and be aware of those choices - he will need to be able to control his attention. He will need to be able to focus, resist algorithmic influence, and engage himself willingly and deeply in the pursuits that can bring him happiness.
And I find the growing ADHD, mental health, and loneliness crises to be a clear sign that parents are already losing this battle. I, for one, am not going to wait until my son’s attention becomes a problem to start investing in his capabilities. I am building the development of good attention into the foundations of my entire parenting approach.
This is what it means to be an Optimalist parent to me. And I think this is my own personal way of contributing to our mission of an optimal future for humanity.
This starts logically with limiting access to technology, especially personal devices. He can use them during travel, at school and at a friend’s house. He can watch some TV, which I personally find less concerning - especially since it promotes shared experience within our family. No video games. That’s it. We will be holding off on getting him his first personal device till at least age 15. I believe this will help him build the attentional muscles up in his brain before the torrent begins.
In this first step, I am not alone. There are organizations spreading awareness of these very choices and many parents are opting into them. This also follows the ongoing debate we’re intimately familiar with in schools.
But I believe device-restriction or limitation isn’t enough. At most, this is a half-measure.
Given how powerful and persuasive future technology will be, we need to do more. Much more. And this is true as much for parents as it is for schools.
Given my son’s age, I am working on intentional modeling of good attention in a few different ways.
Whenever we are together, I genuinely try to model the behavior I believe he needs to adopt. I make my attention a priority in the morning before work, and at night afterward. I try to stay off devices and prioritize engaged time. I am not perfect, of course, and I lapse from time to time. But what is important is that I show him what an engaged human relationship feels like - to understand the feeling of love and purposeful attention from another person. I want him to know intimately that the difficulties of it are outweighed by the benefits.
It’s not just about time together though. I also want to show him how I give my attention to my work. I want to show him that I work hard and that I enjoy it. And it, too, brings meaning to my life. So I try to bring him into what I do and show him that side of my life too.
Further, I am modeling how I develop interest in new things by supporting his interests. Supporting your child’s interests is proven good parenting anyway, but I specifically want to show him that my interests aren’t fixed and that I can develop new ones along with him. That I can be curious, flexible, and adaptable. It’s my way of modeling how he can do this himself in school and beyond.
And lastly, as we pursue his interests, I try to show him how to engage deeply with them. I want him to get past superficial interest and to understand productive struggle - so that he can find the joy of doing without the need for it to be stimulating or entertaining.
As he gets older, my approaches will necessarily broaden. He won’t look to me so much as a role model. His school work will become more of my focus - helping him prepare for college, which for now, I still believe in. I think the demands of traditional school - to be required to pay attention before he has interest, and learning how to develop new interests as he sustains attention - is exactly what he’ll need to thrive.
And I honestly don’t worry about his creativity. At this point, it is evident to me that schools do not kill creativity given the creative flourishing we see across society. I believe this idea was based on a flawed understanding of creativity and the direction the world was moving in at the time.
I should note that all of this is also why I am developing Focusable. Like everyone else, he’ll need tools to augment his attention on his own in a world we can not predict. I am optimistic that this is possible with the help of technology, too.
What does it mean to be an Optimalist parent to you? Let us know in the comments.
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📣 Bi-monthly Product Tours
Now you have two opportunities each month to join the Focusable Team for a product walkthrough. Learn how you can build routines for better attention using the structure of Focusable – Recharge, Refocus, Record. And meet other educators who are looking to connect and share ideas!
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The Optimalist community is the place for parents and teachers to explore what it means to create an optimal future for humanity in the Age of AI. It serves as an extension of this newsletter, our new podcast, and the work we do to build Focusable. We would love for you to join us! Inside, you’ll find discussions about attention, mindfulness, and the future, teachers sharing how they use Focusable, support from our product team, early access to new features, and more.