Note: At the end of this post, I invite you to join me for an incredibly audacious goal in 2028.

It all started with a post I saw on X.

It got me thinking about my children — am I being too complacent with Juniper (7) and Kimbal (5)?

Right now they’re on the same path that I took as a kid — 12 years to finish grade school, go to college, compete for a high paying job, and start a family in your 30’s.

But this is mediocre, and my children will not be mediocre. Instead, let’s flip the script and think about what audacious goals look like:

1. Finish grade school in 8 years

2. Skip college and build a multi million dollar business by 20

3. Get married in your early 20’s and start a family in your mid 20’s (we’ll tackle this one in a future post)

Now that’s more like it. These are some truly ambitious goals.

How to reduce 12 years of academic study to 8 years

Check out this post on X:

The claim is that in 6 weeks, a 6-year old can learn K-5 math. That’s 6 years of studying compressed into 6 weeks, or a reduction in time of 98%! 

Now check out this post:

A normal school day for Middle and High Schoolers starts at 8:00am and ends at 3:00pm. That’s 6 hours a day (I subtracted 1 hour for lunch) focused on academia.

The claim by Austin Scholar is that students can compress their academic day to 2 hours — a reduction in time of >65%!

Middle through High School is generally 7 years. Reducing 7 years by 65% = ~3 years.

If by homeschooling I can reduce Middle and High School to 3 years of academics, then my children would complete grade school in 8 years:

• 1st - 5th grade in school = 5 years

• 6th - 12th grade at home = 3 years

• Total = 8 years

I’m starting to put homeschooling to the test

To get ready to homeschool Juniper, Kimbal, and Linda when they’re in Middle School and High School, I’m starting small by “homeschooling” them on Saturdays.

My plan is simple: on Saturdays, we carve out 2 hours to learn together. Juniper and Kimbal work on their Kumon workbooks while I sit next to them and work on my laptop.

We set the timer to 25-minute intervals and take 5 minute breaks in between. Since I’m working right next to them, I’m there to help them as needed.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

1. It’s impossible to focus on my work

The kids (especially Kimbal at age 5) constantly need help with their work.

Just today, Kimbal needed help finding scissors and glue, which took me about 3 minutes to find and gather all the materials. Juniper needed special attention on math, which took me about 10 minutes of fully focused time to teach her. Those 13 minutes, coupled with context switching resulted in great learnings for Juniper and Kimbal, but no work done for me.

2. Deep-diving into a topic makes a huge difference

I was surprised that Juniper didn’t know 5000 - 1. She thought it was 4100. We spent at least a good 10 minutes, me completely focused on her, learning the thousands. This was a devoted kind of attention that I know she doesn’t get at school because she has to share a teacher with so many kids.

It made me realize that kids can easily fall between the cracks at school if they haven’t completely mastered a topic. At home, there’s no way to fall between the cracks because it’s 1:1 attention.

3. It’s easy and fun to homeschool (if you make the time)

If you have the desire, the time, the energy and focus, then homeschooling can be incredibly fun and rewarding. In these past few Saturdays, Juniper and Kimbal have learned a ton, we’ve spent quality time together, and I know we three feel incredibly accomplished.

However, it is incredibly tiring. Juniper and Kimbal are still at an age where they have to learn the foundations of Math and English, which takes a huge amount of patience.

This is why I plan for them to continue going to Montessori through 5th grade, to learn the basics of Math and English. Once they’ve mastered the basics, they’ll enter a period of hyper learning with me from Middle School through High School.

My homeschooling plan

My plan is for my children to complete their grade school education by 15 (instead of 18). This would give them a massive head start to start their own business in their teens and grow it to millions of dollars by 20.

However, there are of course many challenges with homeschooling:

1. What are the success metrics that my child should hit in Math and English?

2. How will my children make friends and build social connections without school?

3. What about extracurricular activities like sports or debate in High School?

4. How can we afford to homeschool (and who will lead it)?

1. What are the success metrics that my child should hit in Math and English?

The success metrics are pretty straight forward. By 15, my children need to be able to:

• Math: teach me Calculus (I already completely forgot it, haha)

• English: read, fully comprehend, and have an intelligent conversation with me about 1984 by George Orwell.

I plan to use a combination of Outschool, Preply, and Synthesis to aid in my homeschool efforts.

2. How will my children make friends and build social connections without school?

Just take a look at how happy Juniper is at school cheering on her friends.

I definitely don’t want to take these friendships away from my children, which is another reason why I want my children to continue going to school through 5th grade.

The key for my children to maintain their friendships is for Kim and I to continue putting in the effort. Right now, I feel that we do a great job at maintaining relationships with my children’s friends and their parents even when someone moves to a different school.

If my wife and I continue to put the effort (and we will), I’m confident that my children will have no problem maintaining friendships once they start homeschooling with me.

3. What about extracurricular activities like sports or debate in High School?

Basketball was a big part of my High School experience. I definitely don’t want my children to miss out on all of the extracurricular activities that a High School offers.

However, after doing a simple search in Google Maps, there are tons of sports teams, debate teams, chess teams, and whatever else you can think of in my local area.

I believe that a reduction in academics hours in the day (from 6 hours to 2 hours) will open up more time and energy for extracurricular activities, leading to even more social opportunities from a variety of kids in different classes.

4. How can we afford to homeschool (and who will lead it)?

This one is definitely the biggest challenge. Life is expensive and it keeps getting more expensive. How are we going to afford the big house, fancy cars, luxurious vacations, on a single-income household? It pretty much seems impossible.

Why single income? Well, someone needs to lead the homeschooling.

The topic of a single-income household is meaty, and I’ll save my full thoughts for a future post. For right now, what’s important to understand is that if you’re going to make the leap to homeschool, one of you needs to have the time, the energy, and the drive to lead it.

It all starts with an audacious goal of my own: to work part-time at home by mid-2028 (when Juniper completes 5th grade).

Join us in 2028

I recently learned about the Alpha School, a non traditional school where Middle and High Schoolers spend only 2 hours a day on self-lead academics, then spend the rest of the time together learning life skills: public speaking, coding, entrepreneurship, and outdoor education, to build grit, creativity, and adaptability.

I’m going to do this at home for my children, but I believe it would be even greater to do it together with a group of teenagers.

Imagine our teenagers sitting together, working on self-lead study for 2 hours in the morning, then transitioning in the afternoon to building a business. Imagine our teenagers not even needing to go to college because they’ve already built a multi-million dollar business of their own.

I believe this is possible if we’re audacious enough to believe it and to take action on it together.