We were only one week into her first year at Imperial Academy, and disaster had struck: My precious kindergartner would not color. That evening after dinner, I sat her down on the couch:

“Megan,” I began, “do you know what it means to do something with your might?”

“With all my might!” she squealed, throwing her hands into the air. Clearly, someone had beaten me to it. She already knew the phrase, albeit slightly modified from what I would have said—the scripture doesn’t include the word “all.” And still, she wasn’t doing the work!

“That’s right—with your might. So sweetheart,” I continued, “how do we do things when we want to do them—when it’s really fun?”

“With our might!” All good so far. Of course, the real question was coming.

“How do we do things we don’t like to do?”

“Oh. Then we don’t. Then it’s like…”—and she contorted her 5-year old face into an expression I would normally reserve for running a marathon in leaded boots.

I pulled the Bible out and read the first half of the actual scripture with her:

“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10). And there it is: Whatever we do, God wants us to do with our might, whether it’s dining with the royal family or cleaning up spilled sewage. Whether or not the task is appealing is not the issue—our character is.

How you do those unpleasant things will build the basis for your reputation:

“Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men” (Proverbs 22:29). No one can build a business doing only the fun things. The pianist you hear in a concert has put in thousands of hours of hard training by themselves, repeating things over and over—building in a skill through laborious repetition of small phrases with a metronome ticking in the background. The professional basketball player you see on tv has likely put in his entire childhood on the court, not simply playing games, but running basic fundamental skills over and over. Rather than simply counting untold piles of cash, the restaurant owner down the corner put in untold hours learning about his business and then executing it night after night to make it succeed.

School is a fantastic place for you to do that now (build your skills, not count cash—the cash comes later). You all look forward to college, your future career, and building a family; recognize that you are determining how rewarding those experiences will be by your actions today. Sometimes doing it with your might means starting early—even years early.

If you make a concentrated effort to build the skills—vocabulary, reading, math, science, etc.—to take the act as a 12- or 13-year-old, it presents no challenge when you take it as a 17-year-old. If you wait until the week before the exam to discover your industrious nature, a week of your most intense effort still won’t do the job. This works on a smaller scale too—diligent effort on a paper a week before it is due yields far more produce than diligent effort the night before when it is simply too late to do a credible job. Diligence in school means working ahead.

Outside of school, you have an amazing opportunity that presents itself to every teenager—but that few ever claim. You can develop any skill you want. Do you want to be a great chef? Do it with your might starting today, and in several years, you will be able to roll out that five-star, four-course meal. Do you want to learn to program? Do it with your might—we’ve cited the number 10,000 hours for these sorts of skills—and you will not just learn to program, but learn a high level of skill that makes you indispensable to employers.

My daughter loves to color now. As we continue to diligently carry out those tasks that we find unpleasant, they become routine—a godly habit that we have built in. And over time, you might even find that what was once a mundane task has become something you love to do.

As a young person, your mind is the most flexible and retentive that it will ever be. You have the time to develop skills now that will be far less available to you later in life. Seize the time. When faced with that daily choice between building a more productive future through solid effort or filling your entertainment void while consuming a snack, choose the harder thing—and do it with your might.