The "Growth" Mindset

Chapter 9-10 of The Peak Performing Professor talks about aligning my work with my goals, which I am using effectively now...  I think... to select writing projects that advance my goals and to detach myself from service obligations.  It also talks about simple feng sui and efficiency-based redesign of my workspaces.  I'm still moving toward those.  (For example, my offices are catastrophe storage spaces, not workspaces.  So I need this.  On the other hand space spent on filing systems are useless because I file nothing.)

Chapter 11 opens with an exhortation to "do more of what you are good at and already works" and to "do less of what doesn't."  It seems simple, and if it's boring to do only what you are good at, "reach down further into things you are good at," using (for example) the strengths assessments we completed earlier.

The chapter makes a digression, here, to make sure that we aren't setting up a recipe for stagnation.

Robison introduces the idea of a "growth mindset," a concept cribbed from Carol Dweck.  Dweck defines the concept on her website:

In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong. 

In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities.  (from http://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/)

The growth mindset primes one for success and satisfaction.  The fixed mindset results in paralysis in the face of overwhelming challenges.

This echoes something I read a long time ago, that we don't praise our children for "being smart" or for "winning the prize," but for working hard.  We should especially recognize our children's efforts to push themselves and work hard to achieve a goal," says Donahue, author of Parenting Without Fear: Letting Go of Worry and Focusing on What Really Matters. "One thing to remember is that it's the process not the end product that matters."  If we praise the effort, I think, we are creating the Growth Mindset, because the child will always put the effort in, rather than quitting when overwhelmed.

I'm pretty sure I have the "growth mindset," generally speaking.  (I am overweight, and I tend to imagine that some portion of that is genetically determined instead of a result of behaviors I could change.  Both are true.  So I am at least partially "fixed" in that.)  But I have immense faith in the plasticity of the brain, in our ability to learn new things.

That said, I need to recognize that it's not just about what the brain is capable of.  That would ignore culture, ideology, and material conditions.  I pause here to recognize that having immense faith in the plasticity of brains, in their ability to grow and develop across the lifespan, depends on a number of factors that are outside our control.  Whether we have access to the teachers and environments that make that growth possible.  Whether we have the support mechanisms allow us to focus on our own development.  Whether we exist in a cutural context that even believed we can grow that way.  And, in a more limited sense, whether our biology allows it (e.g. severely autistic individuals).  If I do not acknowledge these things, I am participating in some Horatio Alger psychology.

A professor withour the growth mindset would puzzle me, except that I think I have worked with several already.