11 ms·

Believe you can change

294 points by bensw 14y ago

SoftwareMaven 14y ago
When I read about this research, it changed the way I raise my kids. Given our society's emphasis on intelligence (and the fact my kids are smart), it was natural to complement them on that. I now go to great efforts to make sure they know that smart alone isn't enough and, when they are putting good effort into something, I acknowledge the effort and not the results. Hopefully it is pushing them towards being "growthies".
deleted 14y ago
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Millennium 14y ago
The most important meme for success is agency: you can make a difference in your life. But this one -adaptability- is not far behind it. You can make a difference in yourself.
fatalerrorx3 14y ago
Awesome article. I started learning to program when I was in middle school and since that I've pretty much always messed around in the same programming language and it was always fun because I was always learning new and challenging things. Recently though I've found that I wasn't learning as many new things (as frequently) as I once used to and no longer had the same level of excitement that I used to have doing it, so I decided to make a change. I've always been somewhat afraid of learning new programming languages because it's "new" and "different" and "I might not understand or be able to get it the first time around" but what made me do it is remembering back to when I didn't know anything about computers and how without any books or any help I was able to learn some really cool stuff. I'm now taking that same approach to learn Ruby on Rails, Python, and iOS and plan to go back to school next year to get a degree in Computer Science. As the saying goes: "If you're not learning, you're dead"
espeed 14y ago
This is a great read, and I believe it's spot on. It's also a perfect example of what Alan Kay means when he says, "We see things not as they are but as we are"..."We can't learn to see until we admit we are blind"..."A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points." Humility is a key ingredient because it saves you from the mindset of "Success comes from proving how great you are. Effort is a bad thing — if you have to try hard and ask questions, you obviously can’t be very good."
thesash 14y ago
I wonder if the phenomenon of growth-mindset vs. fixed mindset is related to an ability to delay gratification, (another trait with a high correlation to succes in children [1]). That is, the "growth-minded" individuals are willing to slog through frustration and failure, because they know the payoff will be greater in the long run, while the "fixies" can't look past the immediate sense of frustration [1]http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_...
- rrmm 14y ago
  I think it's not just slogging through it, but associating the slogging through it with success. That is at the end to enjoy slogging through it, or at least embrace it as part of the process. That way you don't have to delay gratification completely, just change your attitude towards what is gratifying.
nqureshi 14y ago
An experience I had as a teenager really drove this lesson home for me, and is partly responsible for successes I’ve had since. My Dad had copy of ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain’ by Betty Edwards lying around. I’d always been really bad at drawing - never progressed beyond the kids-drawing phase, got bad feedback on drawing at school, so stopped. Anyway, Edwards’s theory is that ‘bad’ drawers don’t look at the thing itself and draw its shape, they translate reality into abstract concepts first and then draw what that concept visually looks like. So I’ll look at a face, then decide I’ll draw the ‘eye’ first, query my mind to see what an ‘eye’ looks like, then draw the generic 'eye' shape that everyone draws. Whereas a skilled artist looks at the eye in front of them - which looks nothing like the standard symbol for ‘eye’ - and draws THAT. Edwards has a bunch of exercises to prove this, and one of them triggered a massive epiphany for me. She had a Picasso sketch in the book which was printed upside down on the page. Her instructions were to copy the drawing, keeping it upside down, and never naming the limb/whatever you’re drawing, and never turning your drawing right-side-up until it’s complete. I was sceptical, but decided to test her theory. So I started copying this upside-down drawing, fully expecting it to turn out even worse than usual. When I finished, I couldn't believe it. The drawing was AMAZING. It looked like someone else had done it. The figure I’d drawn looked alive. I went on to learn to draw pretty well. So after that, my mind always looked back and thought - well, if I can learn to DRAW, and I was so BAD at drawing initially, I can pretty much learn to do anything.
- sown 14y ago
  ... well, if I can learn to DRAW, and I was so BAD at drawing initially, I can pretty much learn to do anything. I used to think like that. If I tried hard and applied myself I could do just about anything...until that sort of thing stopped working. It certainly helped but it won't take you to the stars. It just seemed that no matter how hard I tried, I never got better at what I had in mind. I think this kind of thinking is helpful but it has its ultimate limits, which seem to be set to 'low' for me.
  - tjr 14y ago
    I find that interesting. Would you mind sharing examples of some things that you tried to improve at, but couldn't?
Alex3917 14y ago
Of the dozens of articles on Carol Dweck that I've read, this is by far the best one. Awesome writeup Aaron.
fsniper 14y ago
Sometimes I believe, Hacker News should have more of this kind of "self hacking" articles. It may seem more like reddit, but it is surely not. I normally hate self respect, self development books. I feel they are mostly bullshit. HN main page is a great filter for bullshit so I really like these more. And thinking about change, I also had the introvert/extrovert change for myself. But this was not just me, my friends helped me a lot. If they were not telling me that I was not a problem, but my attitude is a problem. I would never have enough self confidence and would not ever change. Sometimes I get more introvert, but I know, this is just because I want to be. And whenever I want, I can change.
- gliese1337 14y ago
  I've also gone through the same process of being a strong introvert and learning to be more sociable. And I thought that was a really excellent application of the idea of the growth mindset for the article to point out. But I've gotta take issue with the idea that learning to be sociable is the same as learning to be an extrovert. It's just learning good social skills and learning to enjoy using them despite being an introvert. I'm pretty well convinced that introversion vs. extroversion is just a part of everyone's neural anatomy, as much as being right-handed or left-handed is. That is somewhat plastic, but it takes fantastic levels of effort to fundamentally change. In/extroversion is a matter of how you think and what drains or recharges your mental energy, not how good you are at interacting in social groups; those things happen to be correlated, but there are some really awkward extroverts as well as really sociable introverts.
  - fsniper 14y ago
    I believe you have pinpointed the issue here. I learned to be more sociable and I'm still introvert. Making the distinction is important. Thank you. But while having transitions, sometimes I really became extrovert. Mostly I like to hold my issues to myself. But sometimes - with the help of booze - letting go of my thoughts is easier.
- crusso 14y ago
  But this was not just me, my friends helped me a lot. The problem is that our neurons are wired to lead us to behave in a certain way. People with addictions and serious dysfunction are often trapped by their own programming and can't just "reason their way out of it". Friends serve as a "leap of faith" mechanism that help you to change the way you think. If you think you'll reason yourself into making different decisions than your current programming, you'll often be stuck making the same decisions as always. For the really big changes, you need to unplug your current decision-making software long enough to do things you wouldn't normally do. This is why 12-step programs always have some element of god/spirituality. When people open themselves up to "a higher power", they allow a sort of human meta-programming to rewrite their connections. This leap of faith reason is also why group therapy works so well. You can suspend your normal programming if the steps to get you to where the person next to you in the circle is are small ones.
deleted 14y ago
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mej10 14y ago
I actually just read this book due to you, aaronsw. Your post on LessWrong where you mentioned it caused me to go out and read it. I am now aware that ~90% of the people I associate with are very much in the "fixed mindset". It is kind of sad, honestly, because they are all bright people, but you can tell they have essentially stagnated because of their mindset. This includes myself, of course, but I have been slowly realizing the usefulness of the "growth mindset" over the last several years. Now I have a name for it. Thanks for this. I will be sending your write-up to several of them.
turner_erin 14y ago
Great summary and how to apply it to your own life. I find this particularly relevant for entrepreneurs where you must either love the challenge of learning/failure or you will be miserable.
sown 14y ago
I think this isn't a good demonstration of trying hard. These little puzzles only went on for a few hours so a person who is highly intelligent but perhaps not so diligent over a long time won't see bad results in this test. The comments here demonstrates survivor bias. Furthermore, it's easy to quote Alan Kay about perceiving reality, or non-verifiable comments about 80 IQ points, etc, but what about all the Alan Kay-s who failed that you never heard of, that tried harder or were smarter? What about them? What if no matter how hard you try, how long you try, you still fail? What about people with learning disabilities? What about people who might be mutants? I.e., in the same way our nearest primate relatives are a few percentage points of DNA different from humans, what if having a few hundredths of a percentage point difference in the right direction, away from me, makes the difference? A thousand years of chimp intellect won't produce an aircraft. A thousand hours of me contemplating won't be the same as someone else who is smarter and contemplates for just ten hours. That's just the way it is. I feel like I know this because I'm on the wrong side of that few-hundredths of a percentage points. Trying hard is important, and trying hard over many years is also important. But for someone like me, the window is permanently shut as far as what ever biology I have been born with compared to people who excel in ways I simply cannot. Not that I haven't tried. It's just that there are limits on all of us, and this method. Some people, fortunately, have less limits on what they can do.
- crusso 14y ago
  What about people with learning disabilities? What about people who might be mutants? Whatever built-in position you're starting from, having the attitude that you can't improve is a self-fulfilling prophecy. A good attitude for wanting and believing in change is healthy no matter how low your IQ is.
  - deleted 14y ago
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- espeed 14y ago
  Trying hard is important, and trying hard over many years is also important. But for someone like me, the window is permanently shut as far as what ever biology I have been born with compared to people who excel in ways I simply cannot. It's not just about trying -- it's about your emotional state while you're trying. If you approach hard problems with fear and dread, your mind will be full of the noise that comes with anxiety, and your cognitive functions will be reduced because your dopamine and serotonin levels will be lower than when you're doing something you love. Furthermore, if hard problems put you in a state of anxiety and fear, you'll probably be inclined to avoid them more than someone who gets excited at the thought of tackling them. But if you can get to a point where you love them, then the whole complexion of things changes. This has parallels in working out and exercising. One of the best ways to get back in shape is to get to a point where you love working out. When you first start out it's often a chore, but if you can get over that initial hump to the point where you can't wait to get to the gym, then you're golden. If you take two equally out-of-shape people and start them on an exercise program at the same time, and one reaches the point where they love working out and the other still dreads it, which one do you think is going to make the most progress? Alan Kay's comment about "a change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points" isn't meant to be precisely verified, it's meant to emphasize that mindset/perspective can be as important or more important than raw IQ horsepower. This study is one example of why that's true.
wmat 14y ago
"Mindset" by Carol Dweck is one of the greatest books I've ever read. Sadly though, I didn't discover it until the age of 41. Of equal value is "the War of Art" by Steven Pressfield. In my opinion, these are the only two "self help" styled books anyone needs.
- Apocryphon 14y ago
  What's the latter book about?
  - salemh 14y ago
    The creative process of writing, which trends to anything creative which needs "shipping." The difference between an "amateur" who dabbles at writing, and a professional, the power of pushing through and consistency to complete projects (ship). Additionally, a theory on why we try to hard to procrastinate away from the things we either know, or want, we would do. Very direct, a bit of "muse" hokiness which most readers I've given the book to can deal with or understand (it is a foil for the author, not a belief). He was a man who failed until his late 40's? or some such, and it is extremely motivating and direct in its instructions. from Amazon: "Drawing on his many years' experience as a writer, Pressfield (The Legend of Bagger Vance) presents his first nonfiction work, which aims to inspire other writers, artists, musicians, or anyone else attempting to channel his or her creative energies. The focus is on combating resistance and living the destiny that Pressfield believes is gifted to each person by an all-powerful deity. While certainly of great value to frustrated writers struggling with writer's block, Pressfield's highly personal philosophy, soundly rooted in his own significant life challenges, has merit for anyone frustrated in fulfilling his or her life purpose. Successful photographer Ulrich (photography chair, Art Inst. of Boston; coeditor, The Visualization Manual) explores the creative impulse and presents an approach to developing creativity that, like Pressfield's, will be relevant to artists and others. He identifies and explains seven distinct stages of the creative process: discovery and encounter, passion and commitment, crisis and creative frustration, retreat and withdrawal, epiphany and insight, discipline and completion, and responsibility and release. He also develops his view of the three principles of the creative impulse, which include creative courage, being in the right place at the right time, and deepening connections with others. Rooted in Eastern philosophy, Ulrich's fully developed treatise nicely updates the solid works of Brewster Ghiselin (The Creative Process), Rollo May (The Courage To Create), and Julia Cameron (The Artist's Way). It also supplements Pressfield's inspirational thoughts on overcoming resistance through introspective questions and practical exercises that further elaborate the creative process. Both books are recommended for public libraries needing additional works on creativity."
swanson 14y ago
Aside from the book recommended in the post, Learned Optimism by Seligmen is another dealing with "learned helplessness" and how to combat pessimism. It frames the struggle as optimist vs pessimist instead of growth vs fixed mindset.
scotch_drinker 14y ago
This reminds me a lot of what I learned from the book, Flow. That author talks about what makes people happy and the common thread is intrinsic motivation to continually learn and grow. This current article isn't saying that anything is possible if you work hard. I like to think we all have an achievement continuum given to us by our genes that is unfortunately then artificially restricted when we say "I can't" or "I never had a good rememory". If you set your personal goals somewhere outside your physically possible achievement continuum, no amount of work will ever result in success. But identifying your continuum and then being aware enough to approach roadblocks as growth opportunities will result in great success. I think the chance of ever reaching the end of your physically capable achievement continuum is far more rare than those of us who spend large amounts of time artificially restricting that continuum by not even trying.
datalus 14y ago
I don't know if anyone else has had this experience, but for awhile in my teens to early 20s, I strived really hard to be a good musician. Everytime I would notice a marked improvement, I would have this almost excruciating sense of being overwhelmed. It was like almost forcing me out of reality, because I couldn't simply believe it. Sure enough, though, the next day I'd work on music I would be at a different level of sorts and would be on to tackling the next challenge. Due to the fact that music doesn't really pay all that well, and I went for a comp. sci. degree, I've ended up as a software developer. What I'm starting to notice now, though, is that I haven't really had the same experience with developing my technical chops as a developer. I think I need to find more interesting projects outside of work to really scratch that creative itch.
- jerf 14y ago
  This is where the "learn a language in a different paradigm" advice comes in. And do a non-trivial project in it. It shouldn't be enormous, but it needs to be non-trivial.
  - datalus 14y ago
    Yep, I just started diving into Clojure. It's really been a shift for me, even though I took a class in Haskell. I still haven't totally internalized the functional paradigm. I'm really eager to see how it changes my understanding of the current crop of languages I use (C#, Java, Ruby).
jason3 14y ago
This article precisely explains what John Carmack was like as a kid.
ntide 14y ago
This article precisely explains what John Carmack was like as a kid.
prophetjohn 14y ago
I think it's important for a lot of people to realize that it's possible to be a growther in certain aspects of your life and a fixie in others. As I was reading the article, I thought about how I approached problems like learning new programming languages and solving logic puzzles and such and I thought to myself "cool, I'm totally a growther!" But as I read on and read about the authors social growth and realization that "introverted" is not a permanent state of being, I realized that in this area I'm a complete fixie. My next growth project should probably be to convince myself that a compiler error message is no less offensive than acting awkward in a group of people you don't know.
is74 14y ago
These findings should not be misinterpreted, since it is indeed impossible to reach any goals. A person in their late 20s is extremely unlikely to become an olympic swimmer or a squash player because of physical limitations. And some people will relentlessly try and never succeed. But believing that you can change is useful because it makes it easier to persist in my efforts to change. Because if I believed that change is impossible, I'd give up on the spot. I found that I simply cannot believe a statement like "I can get much smarter" or "I can get much better at X", but I found that I can easily (fully, honestly, without reservations) believe that "I can get a bit more smarter", or "my intelligence is sufficient for mastering this material, so I need to push harder", or "I can get at least a bit better socially." These beliefs motivate me and make it easy for me to do the work even when it looks like progress is nonexistent. This is the meaning of believing that you can change.
bitsoda 14y ago
I keep an image in my Pinboard that reminds me of this whenever I begin slipping into the fixed mindset. I think it succinctly summarizes Dweck's observations. http://i.imgur.com/QUsvJ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/QUsvJ.jpg
opminion 14y ago
Carol Dweck was obsessed with failure. [...] So she began watching kids [...] Scientists rarely proceed that way.
andrelaszlo 14y ago
You know how some people just seem to succeed at everything they do, while others seem helpless, doomed to a life of constant failure? I never noticed that, except in greek tragedies.

294 points by bensw 14y ago

When I read about this research, it changed the way I raise my kids. Given our society's emphasis on intelligence (and the fact my kids are smart), it was natural to complement them on that. I now go to great efforts to make sure they know that smart alone isn't enough and, when they are putting good effort into something, I acknowledge the effort and not the results. Hopefully it is pushing them towards being "growthies".

deleted 14y ago

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Millennium 14y ago

The most important meme for success is agency: you can make a difference in your life. But this one -adaptability- is not far behind it. You can make a difference in yourself.

fatalerrorx3 14y ago

Awesome article. I started learning to program when I was in middle school and since that I've pretty much always messed around in the same programming language and it was always fun because I was always learning new and challenging things. Recently though I've found that I wasn't learning as many new things (as frequently) as I once used to and no longer had the same level of excitement that I used to have doing it, so I decided to make a change. I've always been somewhat afraid of learning new programming languages because it's "new" and "different" and "I might not understand or be able to get it the first time around" but what made me do it is remembering back to when I didn't know anything about computers and how without any books or any help I was able to learn some really cool stuff. I'm now taking that same approach to learn Ruby on Rails, Python, and iOS and plan to go back to school next year to get a degree in Computer Science. As the saying goes: "If you're not learning, you're dead"

espeed 14y ago

This is a great read, and I believe it's spot on. It's also a perfect example of what Alan Kay means when he says, "We see things not as they are but as we are"..."We can't learn to see until we admit we are blind"..."A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points." Humility is a key ingredient because it saves you from the mindset of "Success comes from proving how great you are. Effort is a bad thing — if you have to try hard and ask questions, you obviously can’t be very good."

thesash 14y ago

I wonder if the phenomenon of growth-mindset vs. fixed mindset is related to an ability to delay gratification, (another trait with a high correlation to succes in children [1]). That is, the "growth-minded" individuals are willing to slog through frustration and failure, because they know the payoff will be greater in the long run, while the "fixies" can't look past the immediate sense of frustration [1]http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_...

rrmm 14y ago
I think it's not just slogging through it, but associating the slogging through it with success. That is at the end to enjoy slogging through it, or at least embrace it as part of the process. That way you don't have to delay gratification completely, just change your attitude towards what is gratifying.

nqureshi 14y ago

An experience I had as a teenager really drove this lesson home for me, and is partly responsible for successes I’ve had since. My Dad had copy of ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain’ by Betty Edwards lying around. I’d always been really bad at drawing - never progressed beyond the kids-drawing phase, got bad feedback on drawing at school, so stopped. Anyway, Edwards’s theory is that ‘bad’ drawers don’t look at the thing itself and draw its shape, they translate reality into abstract concepts first and then draw what that concept visually looks like. So I’ll look at a face, then decide I’ll draw the ‘eye’ first, query my mind to see what an ‘eye’ looks like, then draw the generic 'eye' shape that everyone draws. Whereas a skilled artist looks at the eye in front of them - which looks nothing like the standard symbol for ‘eye’ - and draws THAT. Edwards has a bunch of exercises to prove this, and one of them triggered a massive epiphany for me. She had a Picasso sketch in the book which was printed upside down on the page. Her instructions were to copy the drawing, keeping it upside down, and never naming the limb/whatever you’re drawing, and never turning your drawing right-side-up until it’s complete. I was sceptical, but decided to test her theory. So I started copying this upside-down drawing, fully expecting it to turn out even worse than usual. When I finished, I couldn't believe it. The drawing was AMAZING. It looked like someone else had done it. The figure I’d drawn looked alive. I went on to learn to draw pretty well. So after that, my mind always looked back and thought - well, if I can learn to DRAW, and I was so BAD at drawing initially, I can pretty much learn to do anything.

sown 14y ago
... well, if I can learn to DRAW, and I was so BAD at drawing initially, I can pretty much learn to do anything. I used to think like that. If I tried hard and applied myself I could do just about anything...until that sort of thing stopped working. It certainly helped but it won't take you to the stars. It just seemed that no matter how hard I tried, I never got better at what I had in mind. I think this kind of thinking is helpful but it has its ultimate limits, which seem to be set to 'low' for me.
- tjr 14y ago
  I find that interesting. Would you mind sharing examples of some things that you tried to improve at, but couldn't?

Alex3917 14y ago

Of the dozens of articles on Carol Dweck that I've read, this is by far the best one. Awesome writeup Aaron.

fsniper 14y ago

Sometimes I believe, Hacker News should have more of this kind of "self hacking" articles. It may seem more like reddit, but it is surely not. I normally hate self respect, self development books. I feel they are mostly bullshit. HN main page is a great filter for bullshit so I really like these more. And thinking about change, I also had the introvert/extrovert change for myself. But this was not just me, my friends helped me a lot. If they were not telling me that I was not a problem, but my attitude is a problem. I would never have enough self confidence and would not ever change. Sometimes I get more introvert, but I know, this is just because I want to be. And whenever I want, I can change.

gliese1337 14y ago
I've also gone through the same process of being a strong introvert and learning to be more sociable. And I thought that was a really excellent application of the idea of the growth mindset for the article to point out. But I've gotta take issue with the idea that learning to be sociable is the same as learning to be an extrovert. It's just learning good social skills and learning to enjoy using them despite being an introvert. I'm pretty well convinced that introversion vs. extroversion is just a part of everyone's neural anatomy, as much as being right-handed or left-handed is. That is somewhat plastic, but it takes fantastic levels of effort to fundamentally change. In/extroversion is a matter of how you think and what drains or recharges your mental energy, not how good you are at interacting in social groups; those things happen to be correlated, but there are some really awkward extroverts as well as really sociable introverts.
- fsniper 14y ago
  I believe you have pinpointed the issue here. I learned to be more sociable and I'm still introvert. Making the distinction is important. Thank you. But while having transitions, sometimes I really became extrovert. Mostly I like to hold my issues to myself. But sometimes - with the help of booze - letting go of my thoughts is easier.
crusso 14y ago
But this was not just me, my friends helped me a lot. The problem is that our neurons are wired to lead us to behave in a certain way. People with addictions and serious dysfunction are often trapped by their own programming and can't just "reason their way out of it". Friends serve as a "leap of faith" mechanism that help you to change the way you think. If you think you'll reason yourself into making different decisions than your current programming, you'll often be stuck making the same decisions as always. For the really big changes, you need to unplug your current decision-making software long enough to do things you wouldn't normally do. This is why 12-step programs always have some element of god/spirituality. When people open themselves up to "a higher power", they allow a sort of human meta-programming to rewrite their connections. This leap of faith reason is also why group therapy works so well. You can suspend your normal programming if the steps to get you to where the person next to you in the circle is are small ones.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

mej10 14y ago

I actually just read this book due to you, aaronsw. Your post on LessWrong where you mentioned it caused me to go out and read it. I am now aware that ~90% of the people I associate with are very much in the "fixed mindset". It is kind of sad, honestly, because they are all bright people, but you can tell they have essentially stagnated because of their mindset. This includes myself, of course, but I have been slowly realizing the usefulness of the "growth mindset" over the last several years. Now I have a name for it. Thanks for this. I will be sending your write-up to several of them.

turner_erin 14y ago

Great summary and how to apply it to your own life. I find this particularly relevant for entrepreneurs where you must either love the challenge of learning/failure or you will be miserable.

sown 14y ago

I think this isn't a good demonstration of trying hard. These little puzzles only went on for a few hours so a person who is highly intelligent but perhaps not so diligent over a long time won't see bad results in this test. The comments here demonstrates survivor bias. Furthermore, it's easy to quote Alan Kay about perceiving reality, or non-verifiable comments about 80 IQ points, etc, but what about all the Alan Kay-s who failed that you never heard of, that tried harder or were smarter? What about them? What if no matter how hard you try, how long you try, you still fail? What about people with learning disabilities? What about people who might be mutants? I.e., in the same way our nearest primate relatives are a few percentage points of DNA different from humans, what if having a few hundredths of a percentage point difference in the right direction, away from me, makes the difference? A thousand years of chimp intellect won't produce an aircraft. A thousand hours of me contemplating won't be the same as someone else who is smarter and contemplates for just ten hours. That's just the way it is. I feel like I know this because I'm on the wrong side of that few-hundredths of a percentage points. Trying hard is important, and trying hard over many years is also important. But for someone like me, the window is permanently shut as far as what ever biology I have been born with compared to people who excel in ways I simply cannot. Not that I haven't tried. It's just that there are limits on all of us, and this method. Some people, fortunately, have less limits on what they can do.

crusso 14y ago
What about people with learning disabilities? What about people who might be mutants? Whatever built-in position you're starting from, having the attitude that you can't improve is a self-fulfilling prophecy. A good attitude for wanting and believing in change is healthy no matter how low your IQ is.
- deleted 14y ago
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espeed 14y ago
Trying hard is important, and trying hard over many years is also important. But for someone like me, the window is permanently shut as far as what ever biology I have been born with compared to people who excel in ways I simply cannot. It's not just about trying -- it's about your emotional state while you're trying. If you approach hard problems with fear and dread, your mind will be full of the noise that comes with anxiety, and your cognitive functions will be reduced because your dopamine and serotonin levels will be lower than when you're doing something you love. Furthermore, if hard problems put you in a state of anxiety and fear, you'll probably be inclined to avoid them more than someone who gets excited at the thought of tackling them. But if you can get to a point where you love them, then the whole complexion of things changes. This has parallels in working out and exercising. One of the best ways to get back in shape is to get to a point where you love working out. When you first start out it's often a chore, but if you can get over that initial hump to the point where you can't wait to get to the gym, then you're golden. If you take two equally out-of-shape people and start them on an exercise program at the same time, and one reaches the point where they love working out and the other still dreads it, which one do you think is going to make the most progress? Alan Kay's comment about "a change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points" isn't meant to be precisely verified, it's meant to emphasize that mindset/perspective can be as important or more important than raw IQ horsepower. This study is one example of why that's true.

wmat 14y ago

"Mindset" by Carol Dweck is one of the greatest books I've ever read. Sadly though, I didn't discover it until the age of 41. Of equal value is "the War of Art" by Steven Pressfield. In my opinion, these are the only two "self help" styled books anyone needs.

Apocryphon 14y ago
What's the latter book about?
- salemh 14y ago
  The creative process of writing, which trends to anything creative which needs "shipping." The difference between an "amateur" who dabbles at writing, and a professional, the power of pushing through and consistency to complete projects (ship). Additionally, a theory on why we try to hard to procrastinate away from the things we either know, or want, we would do. Very direct, a bit of "muse" hokiness which most readers I've given the book to can deal with or understand (it is a foil for the author, not a belief). He was a man who failed until his late 40's? or some such, and it is extremely motivating and direct in its instructions. from Amazon: "Drawing on his many years' experience as a writer, Pressfield (The Legend of Bagger Vance) presents his first nonfiction work, which aims to inspire other writers, artists, musicians, or anyone else attempting to channel his or her creative energies. The focus is on combating resistance and living the destiny that Pressfield believes is gifted to each person by an all-powerful deity. While certainly of great value to frustrated writers struggling with writer's block, Pressfield's highly personal philosophy, soundly rooted in his own significant life challenges, has merit for anyone frustrated in fulfilling his or her life purpose. Successful photographer Ulrich (photography chair, Art Inst. of Boston; coeditor, The Visualization Manual) explores the creative impulse and presents an approach to developing creativity that, like Pressfield's, will be relevant to artists and others. He identifies and explains seven distinct stages of the creative process: discovery and encounter, passion and commitment, crisis and creative frustration, retreat and withdrawal, epiphany and insight, discipline and completion, and responsibility and release. He also develops his view of the three principles of the creative impulse, which include creative courage, being in the right place at the right time, and deepening connections with others. Rooted in Eastern philosophy, Ulrich's fully developed treatise nicely updates the solid works of Brewster Ghiselin (The Creative Process), Rollo May (The Courage To Create), and Julia Cameron (The Artist's Way). It also supplements Pressfield's inspirational thoughts on overcoming resistance through introspective questions and practical exercises that further elaborate the creative process. Both books are recommended for public libraries needing additional works on creativity."

swanson 14y ago

Aside from the book recommended in the post, Learned Optimism by Seligmen is another dealing with "learned helplessness" and how to combat pessimism. It frames the struggle as optimist vs pessimist instead of growth vs fixed mindset.

scotch_drinker 14y ago

This reminds me a lot of what I learned from the book, Flow. That author talks about what makes people happy and the common thread is intrinsic motivation to continually learn and grow. This current article isn't saying that anything is possible if you work hard. I like to think we all have an achievement continuum given to us by our genes that is unfortunately then artificially restricted when we say "I can't" or "I never had a good rememory". If you set your personal goals somewhere outside your physically possible achievement continuum, no amount of work will ever result in success. But identifying your continuum and then being aware enough to approach roadblocks as growth opportunities will result in great success. I think the chance of ever reaching the end of your physically capable achievement continuum is far more rare than those of us who spend large amounts of time artificially restricting that continuum by not even trying.

datalus 14y ago

I don't know if anyone else has had this experience, but for awhile in my teens to early 20s, I strived really hard to be a good musician. Everytime I would notice a marked improvement, I would have this almost excruciating sense of being overwhelmed. It was like almost forcing me out of reality, because I couldn't simply believe it. Sure enough, though, the next day I'd work on music I would be at a different level of sorts and would be on to tackling the next challenge. Due to the fact that music doesn't really pay all that well, and I went for a comp. sci. degree, I've ended up as a software developer. What I'm starting to notice now, though, is that I haven't really had the same experience with developing my technical chops as a developer. I think I need to find more interesting projects outside of work to really scratch that creative itch.

jerf 14y ago
This is where the "learn a language in a different paradigm" advice comes in. And do a non-trivial project in it. It shouldn't be enormous, but it needs to be non-trivial.
- datalus 14y ago
  Yep, I just started diving into Clojure. It's really been a shift for me, even though I took a class in Haskell. I still haven't totally internalized the functional paradigm. I'm really eager to see how it changes my understanding of the current crop of languages I use (C#, Java, Ruby).

jason3 14y ago

This article precisely explains what John Carmack was like as a kid.

ntide 14y ago

This article precisely explains what John Carmack was like as a kid.

prophetjohn 14y ago

I think it's important for a lot of people to realize that it's possible to be a growther in certain aspects of your life and a fixie in others. As I was reading the article, I thought about how I approached problems like learning new programming languages and solving logic puzzles and such and I thought to myself "cool, I'm totally a growther!" But as I read on and read about the authors social growth and realization that "introverted" is not a permanent state of being, I realized that in this area I'm a complete fixie. My next growth project should probably be to convince myself that a compiler error message is no less offensive than acting awkward in a group of people you don't know.

is74 14y ago

These findings should not be misinterpreted, since it is indeed impossible to reach any goals. A person in their late 20s is extremely unlikely to become an olympic swimmer or a squash player because of physical limitations. And some people will relentlessly try and never succeed. But believing that you can change is useful because it makes it easier to persist in my efforts to change. Because if I believed that change is impossible, I'd give up on the spot. I found that I simply cannot believe a statement like "I can get much smarter" or "I can get much better at X", but I found that I can easily (fully, honestly, without reservations) believe that "I can get a bit more smarter", or "my intelligence is sufficient for mastering this material, so I need to push harder", or "I can get at least a bit better socially." These beliefs motivate me and make it easy for me to do the work even when it looks like progress is nonexistent. This is the meaning of believing that you can change.

bitsoda 14y ago

I keep an image in my Pinboard that reminds me of this whenever I begin slipping into the fixed mindset. I think it succinctly summarizes Dweck's observations. http://i.imgur.com/QUsvJ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/QUsvJ.jpg

opminion 14y ago

Carol Dweck was obsessed with failure. [...] So she began watching kids [...] Scientists rarely proceed that way.

andrelaszlo 14y ago

You know how some people just seem to succeed at everything they do, while others seem helpless, doomed to a life of constant failure? I never noticed that, except in greek tragedies.