• by Kaila Colbin , Featured Contributor, January 5, 2010

Happy New Year! I hope yours was a good one. I spent mine camped out by a lake in the New Zealand high country. With no Internet access and lousy weather, most of my time was spent reading -- and in amongst novels like the incredibly entertaining Shantaram, I managed to devour Malcolm Gladwell's latest, Outliers: The Story of Success.

Yes, it's been out for over a year now; you've probably read it, formed your own opinion, and moved on. Will you take a moment to return to it with me? There's something really important in there, something that could be the single most important differentiator between success and failure. Gladwell describes a trait that distinguishes every entrepreneur I've ever known, with the good ones having the largest measure. Furthermore, it's a trait that can be acquired and cultivated by anyone, and which is phenomenally facilitated in our interconnected world. It is, quite simply, the ability, inclination and necessary discernment to figure things out.

As a case in point, he describes a video of Renee, a woman attempting to understand the concept of slope (the term that describes the angle of a line). She's figuring it out on her own, using a computer program that allows her to change the x and y variables:

Twenty-two minutes pass from the moment Renee begins playing with the computer program to the moment she says, "Ahhhh. That means something now." That's a long time. "This is eighth-grade mathematics," [researcher] Schoenfeld said. "If I put the average eighth grader in the same position as Renee, I'm guessing that after the first few attempts, they would have said, 'I don't get it. I need you to explain it.'"

It's certainly important to know when to ask for help, but the typical eighth grader described by Schoenfeld isn't just asking for help; he or she is giving up, making it the teacher's responsibility whether or not the student acquires that particular bit of knowledge. As a grown-up in the modern economy, though, the most powerful position is always, "Even if I don't know, I can figure it out, and if I ask you to help me it's because you can give me a shortcut, and if you can't I'll Google it or I'll go to the library or I'll take a course or I'll just sit here and think until I can find the answer."

Thanks to the Internet, Google, and the search industry at large, the current generation and those who come after are much more likely to have that mentality -- but all too often it starts and stops online. Last week, a New York Times article described the steps Google is taking to make it easier for kids to find what they're looking for. But kids need to exercise their search muscles. They need to know where to find additional sources of information and how to filter, analyze, and process content to arrive at thoughtful solutions rather than just, "I read it on the Internet." Most importantly, they need to learn to not give up if the answer isn't in the first ten links.

There's only one difference between you and the person who already knows the answer: time. If we teach our kids to search consciously and with awareness, time will not be a barrier for them. Instead, it will be a normal feature of their road to knowledge.

If, in 2010, I can help someone discover their own ability to figure things out, then I will consider it a successful year. What's your New Year's goal?