A great summary published on my favourite Blog (Farnam Street, subscribe to their weekly newsletter and see your Sunday evening will radically change) of Carol Dweck’s Book on Mindset and how to improve yourself
The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.
Her Ted Talk
On Resilience
… [W]e can praise wisely, not praising intelligence or talent. That has failed. Don’t do that anymore. But praising the process that kids engage in: their effort, their strategies, their focus, their perseverance, their improvement. This process praise creates kids who are hardy and resilient.
On pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone
In one study, we taught them that every time they push out of their comfort zone to learn something new and difficult, the neurons in their brain can form new, stronger connections, and over time they can get smarter. … students who were not taught this growth mindset continued to show declining grades over this difficult school transition, but those who were taught this lesson showed a sharp rebound in their grades. We have shown this now, this kind of improvement, with thousands and thousands of kids, especially struggling students.
More on improving your performance
Here are some easy tips, which I elaborate on later, to improve your performance at almost anything.
- How you practice makes a big difference. You need to think about feedback loops, deliberate practice, and working in chunks.
- The mindset between top performers and amateurs is different.
- Sleep is incredibly important.
- There is a difference between hard and soft skills.
- Leverage tempo, focus, and routines to work for you not against you.
- Make sure you have time for rest.
- If you want to think, take a walk.
More on deliberate practice
Deliberate practice is characterized by several elements, each worth examining. It is activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher’s help; it can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is continuously available; it’s highly demanding mentally, whether the activity is purely intellectual, such as chess or business-related activities, or heavily physical, such as sports; and it isn’t much fun.