"The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it."
~John Ruskin

Many of you have noticed my interest in a certain little chap from Great Britain.  No, we are NOT related!  I discovered Elliot innocently enough.  A cousin of his recruited me to give Elliot an interview.  Seems he was running out of family members to interview for his weekly podcast.  When I finally listened to his show, it was amusing and interesting.  Knowing that Elliot was only 8 and half years old intrigued me.  Clearly this was a very smart boy.  I assumed his parents were into podcasting or perhaps were in the broadcasting field.  Sometime after my interview with Elliot, his dad shared the story of the podcast's conception. The story has stayed with me.  

When Elliot was about 7 and a half, I decided the only way to stop him from going around saying how bored he was when the family computer was being used by his mother or brother was to buy him a laptop.

Rather than "chucking money at him and spoiling him", we agreed that he would sit with me for an hour each Saturday for six months to learn how to do everything: word processing, spreadsheets, databases, operating system configuration, you name it. As you might imagine, Elliot tore through everything.

By the time we got around to buying the laptop, Microsoft had put Vista on every PC that you could buy. (A happy day for Apple - Gayle would like to add). So we bought Elliot a book on Vista to go with the laptop and gave it to him for his eighth birthday.

I had previously struggled for two weeks trying to get Vista to talk with my wireless router.   Apparently MS changed the broadcasting settings and I gave up trying to fix it.  Two days later, Elliot had solved that particular problem on his own.

In the Vista book, there was a chapter on podcasting and one week after his 8th birthday, he produced his first podcast on his new laptop.  It took me a few weeks to sort out the website etc.. by which time he had completed three podcasts. He is less bored now!

I wonder what might have become of Elliot without ingenious parents who were willing to help him channel his interest into something useful.  They taught him how to "use his powers for good (not evil)" so to speak.  What's even more amazing than an 8 year old creating his own podcast (which includes looking up facts, learning to say hello and goodbye in a different language each week, finding people to interview, writing scripts, finding jokes, creating listener competitions, and delivering a ponderous thought for the week to end each show) is that he hasn't missed a show in 37 weeks.  Talk about follow through - I can't even get my weekly pondering out every week! I need to call it the "every so often" pondering!

Elliot needed to be guided into finding something useful and stimulating to do with his 150+ (my guesstimate) IQ points.  Perhaps he could have mastered Guitar Hero or World of Warcraft.  His parents thought outside the box to find ways to supplement his education.  Rather than punish him for bugging them about the computer, they found a way to use his interest to educate him.  I wonder how many brilliant kids out there are falling through the cracks because their parents impose their will on the child without regard to the child's talents and interests. The story could have gone quite differently had Elliot continued to complain about being bored and his parents hadn't come up with the splendid idea of letting him EARN his birthday present. He might be sitting in his room right now figuring out a plan for total world domination

I challenge you to notice where your attention is naturally drawn.  Are your interests idle hobbies or might they be used in a different way?   Could you focus your energy into something that would make your life richer?  Perhaps your talent might make you extra money or even help someone else.  If you have children and find yourself fighting the same battles every week, ask yourself what you can do to help your child channel that energy into something creative and useful.  Quit fighting with the energy and see where it is pointing.  Chances are it is leading you to a strength that just needs help being cultivated.