Kobe Bryant wisdom for doing great work
Becoming a world-renowned athlete, Kobe had to put in more work into training than any of his peers. What Kobe focused on was the micro decisions of everyday that he could influence with his actions. Waking up earlier than anyone else, taking the first training session while others still slept. Kobe's key insight was that he could outwork anyone simply by adding more sessions into every day. Then Kobe could compound every session at a faster rate than anyone else. Compare Kobe's three sessions to another's two sessions, and Kobe would compound at a 33% higher rate. Take a yearly snapshot and you'd be surprised with the incredible progress that came from his mindset.
But the incredible opportunity is within everybody to increase our output—our focused time, the time we read, run, or talk with our mentors. This same principle applies to children's learning. Take reading. If you read 20 minutes per day instead of 5 minutes, then you have quadrupled the amount read. 20 minutes will help grow your learning by more than 4x every day compared to just 5 minutes. Zooming out further, research from Ohio State University shows that children read to daily encounter 296,660 words by age 5, while those read to 5 times daily reach 1,483,300 words—compared to just 4,662 words for children never read to. That's a 300-fold advantage for life.
The process can be somewhat hard to fall in love with at first. But focusing on accepting that something is hard can go far. Instead of thinking that it's hard, we are better off accepting that it is indeed hard. And this is what separates Kobe from an average basketball player—he accepted the hardship, and tried to see love in what he did.
Three tools kids can use to build their own “Mamba mentality”:
1. The daily habit
Like Kobe's morning workout, children can create a habit at the same hour daily to learn, read or do certain activities. Times that happen regardless of mood or circumstances will help children become masters of their own minds, realizing they can do things even when they might feel tired or sad. The key is to see that the thing you make a habit out of is something you deep down love to do, the habit will help you keep this love.
Research shows habits actually take an average of 66 days to form, not the mythical 21 days. A systematic review of 170 studies found that children with regular daily routines develop stronger self-regulation skills and show higher academic achievement. The neuroscience reveals that habit formation centers on the basal ganglia, with specialized neurons creating automaticity—meaning the behavior becomes effortless over time.
2. Compound learning
Reading is a powerful tool for creating deep focusing skills and ability to quickly gain knowledge. Therefore increasing time reading will increase the amount of learning we are capable of digesting. For children this could be adding small reading sessions together with parents in the evening, or doing 15 minutes of maths in the morning. These seemingly infinitesimal sessions add up quickly into hundreds of hours over time. Just 20 minutes of reading daily adds up to 121 hours and 40 minutes per year. Enough to learn basics of Python well, or begin to grasp physics or learn a new language.
"Reading is the ultimate meta-skill that can be traded for anything else." – Naval Ravikant
The research on this is striking: Keith Stanovich's seminal work on the "Matthew Effect" in reading shows how early advantages compound exponentially. Students at the 90th percentile read 4.5 million words annually versus just 50,000 words for 10th percentile students—a 90-fold difference. This creates vocabulary and comprehension advantages that persist throughout life.
Anders Ericsson's research on deliberate practice found that elite performers accumulated approximately 10,000 hours of deliberate practice by age 20. A meta-analysis across 88 studies found deliberate practice explained 26% of performance variance in games, 21% in music, and 18% in sports—showing that consistent, focused practice is what separates good from great.
3. Failure understanding
Kobe understood that on his way to basketball domination, he would fail many times. Failure for many people is scary, it's even scarier for children. But adding up failures is perfectly normal and will be a part of any process of a great individual. In many ways failure can make you much better than if you would have not failed at all. There is an illusion of a perfect path of zero to non failure—it does not exist. And I believe children should be learned that they can do things, learn, and fail and it will always be opportunities to learn—not a final verdict of ability. Countless great examples of this emerge, from Kobe to Steve Jobs to Jesus. There's always failure and pain involved in the process. For children, you tell them that it's ok to fail, it's good to fail, but only if you get up and keep walking.
Carol Dweck's groundbreaking research shows that praising children for intelligence actually decreases motivation after failure, while praising effort increases persistence and performance. The National Study of Learning Mindsets with 12,490 ninth-graders found that teaching growth mindset reduced poor performance rates from 46% to 41% and increased advanced mathematics enrollment.
Research on resilience in young athletes found that sports participation positively correlates with resilience development, with benefits maintained up to 6 months. The key is creating autonomy-supportive environments where children can experience and overcome controlled challenges—exactly what Kobe experienced when he scored zero points at age 11, then vowed to improve.
Why Kobe's spaced sessions matter
Kobe's insight about multiple daily training sessions aligns perfectly with what cognitive scientists call the "spacing effect." A meta-analysis of 839 assessments found that distributed practice (spaced learning) doubles the efficiency of massed practice (cramming).
For children, this means that three 20-minute study sessions spread across a week produce better learning than a single 60-minute session. The optimal spacing involves gaps of 10-30% of the desired retention interval—so if you want your child to remember something for 10 days, practice it every 1-3 days.
Building your child's day
Start with realistic timelines: Remember, habits take 66 days on average. Be patient and consistent.
Create environmental cues: Dedicate specific spaces for practice. Visual schedules (on the fridge for example) help children anticipate and prepare for their daily learning time.
Focus on process praise: Instead of "You're so smart!" try "I noticed how you kept trying different strategies until you solved that problem!" This builds the growth mindset that creates ability to learn and continue despite failure.
Implement spacing: Rather than weekend cramming, spread practice across the week. Research shows that children learning science concepts with spaced sessions showed superior retention and generalization.
Track effort, not just outcomes: Like Kobe tracking makes and misses in practice, help children monitor their effort metrics: books read, problems attempted, questions asked.
The Compound Effect example
When we look at Kobe's career through the lens of compound growth, the math becomes staggering. Starting at age 9 with an extra hour of practice daily:
By age 10: 1,460 extra hours (61 days)
By age 15: 3,285 extra hours (137 days)
By age 20: 5,110 extra hours (213 days)
For your child, starting with just 20 extra minutes of reading daily:
By age 10: 1,217 hours of additional reading
Exposure to millions more words than peers
Vocabulary growth that compounds into every subject
The gift of process
Kobe proved that sustained excellence comes from falling in love with the process, not the prizes. When we help our children find their version of basketball—that thing they'd gladly wake up early for—we've given them the ultimate gift: the ability to become the best version of themselves.
The research is clear: excellence in any domain—founding, artistic, or athletic—develops through the same fundamental processes of sustained, deliberate effort over time. Your child doesn't need to be the next Kobe Bryant. They need to discover their own passion and learn that with consistent daily practice, they can achieve extraordinary things.
As Kobe himself said: “The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.”
This article is part of Alma for Learning, a weekly newsletter helping parents nurture their children's curiosity and potential through research-backed strategies and tools. Subscribe for more evidence-based insights on raising resilient, passionate learners.