An experience I had as a teenager really drove this lesson home for me, and is partly responsible for successes I’ve had since.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Whereas a skilled artist looks at the eye in front of them - which looks nothing like the standard symbol for ‘eye’ - and draws THAT.<p>Edwards has a bunch of exercises to prove this, and one of them triggered a massive epiphany for me.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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?<p>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.<p>Trying hard <i>is</i> 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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Sometimes I get more introvert, but I know, this is just because I want to be. And whenever I want, I can change.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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<p>[1]<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_...</a>
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.<p>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.<p>Thanks for this. I will be sending your write-up to several of them.
"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.<p>Of equal value is "the War of Art" by Steven Pressfield.<p>In my opinion, these are the only two "self help" styled books anyone needs.
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".
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.
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.<p>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.
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."<p>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."
The most important meme for success is agency: you can make a difference in your life.<p>But this one -adaptability- is not far behind it. You can make a difference in yourself.
Awesome article.<p>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.<p>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.<p>As the saying goes: "If you're not learning, you're dead"
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.
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.
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.<p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/QUsvJ.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/QUsvJ.jpg</a>
<i>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><p>I never noticed that, except in greek tragedies.
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.