Thought Flow

Tag: growth mindset

  • A Learning Plateau

    Ancient Atlantis
    Ancient Atlantis by European Space Agency (CC-BY-SA)

    Anyone can play guitar and they won’t be a nothing anymore Radiohead

    So you want to learn how to play guitar? Awesome!

    Step one, get yourself a guitar. Great, you took the first step!

    Step two, start playing any pop song ever. Great, now you know chords!

    Step three, check out some cool and/or classic guitar riffs. Great, now you can read tabs!

    Step four, learn a bit of music theory and realize that the pentatonic scale always sounds good. Great, now you can improvise!

    Congratulations, you can now play guitar. This is your progress so far in ASCII art:

          |
      |    /
      |   /
skill |  /
      | /
      |/
      +----------------------------
                 time

    Finally, we have step five: Practice and hone your skills. Oh shoot, the progress now feels like this:

          |     ___________________
      |    /
      |   /
skill |  /
      | /
      |/
      +----------------------------
                 time

    I call this the learning plateau, and it seems that when trying to learn new skills, arriving at the learning plateau is an inevitable part of the process.

    It goes like this: In the beginning, the learning curve is linearly increasing, but at some point, it starts feeling like the curve is flattening out and the improvements become smaller and smaller. While this is not inherently a bad thing, it gets frustrating when you know that you can improve, but there is no clear indication of progress.

    When it comes to playing the guitar, knowing all the scales, chords and music theory there is to know will not help with the speed of the guitar play, or the coolness of the guitar riff improvisations. Improving this particular subset of skills takes exponentially longer than learning a new chord. At this point, it is easy to start making excuses for practicing less or even giving up entirely. I kind of did that…

    Bend the curve

    So how does one deal with being “stuck” on the learning plateau for a particular skill? To be honest, I don’t really know, but here are some thoughts:

    Decide whether it is actually an important priority to improve the skill.

    For example, is it really important for me that I improve my guitar play? Will I see any long-term benefits from putting in that effort or am I content with the current skill-set that I have obtained?

    It seems silly to continue pushing forward if it does not feel “important” to do so. However, in my own experience, lost interest can sometimes be the consequence of facing big difficulties rather than an actual loss of interest and that is a bad excuse for quitting :-) This actually leads to:

    Realize that it is always possible to improve.

    Shake off that fixed mindset and start nurturing your growth mindset. For example, learn to play that guitar riff at 120 beats per minute rather than 110 — not a huge improvement, but it is an improvement. And playing the guitar just a bit faster sometimes opens up for playing different genres of music or making improvisation more interesting. Small improvements add up.

    Form productive habits.

    It is no secret that the people that get very good at their trade (whether it is art, business, entrepreneurship, etc.) put in a lot of deliberate practice, directly or indirectly. The overnight business success is a huge myth and even the most talented musician has to practice several hours per day. I recently stumbled upon an inspiring quote from Andrew Ng, a prolific and well-known figure in the Machine Learning field:

    When I talk to researchers, when I talk to people wanting to engage in entrepreneurship, I tell them that if you read research papers consistently, if you seriously study half a dozen papers a week and you do that for two years, after those two years you will have learned a lot. This is a fantastic investment in your own long term development.

    But that sort of investment, if you spend a whole Saturday studying rather than watching TV, there’s no one there to pat you on the back or tell you you did a good job. Chances are what you learned studying all Saturday won’t make you that much better at your job the following Monday. There are very few, almost no short-term rewards for these things. But it’s a fantastic long-term investment. This is really how you become a great researcher, you have to read a lot.

    People that count on willpower to do these things, it almost never works because willpower peters out. Instead I think people that are into creating habits — you know, studying every week, working hard every week — those are the most important. Those are the people most likely to succeed. Andrew Ng

    The question is: How the hell do successful people get motivated and how do they stay consistent? Andrew Ng seems to suggest that forming habits is important and this is a topic that I have only recently started researching in more detail. I read a blog post recently about forming identity-based habits and that was a good starting point for me at least.

    Take the first step.

    It sounds almost cliche, but taking the first, small steps towards a specific goal is important. It is also a good place to end this post. It is my first step into a hopefully more creative 2016. Happy New Year and thank you for reading :-)

  • Share your art

    Frisbjär stone... art?

    A few days ago, I talked to a guy that plays the piano. He uses YouTube tutorials to learn new songs and told me that he would like to record himself playing the piano. I asked him if he would put the recordings online somewhere, and his reply was one I have heard often before:

    “Yes, if they are good.”

    I believe in releasing as much art as possible, even if the artist does not think that their art is “good”. I have often heard people claim that there is “too much bad art” out there so it is difficult to find the “good” stuff. I strongly disagree with this point of view.

    Consider this: A toddler draws their first doodle and proclaims: “Look, it’s mommy and daddy!”. This example illustrates my two main points for this post:

    1. “Good” is highly subjective. To most people, the toddler drawing will probably look like randomly connected lines. To the parents, the drawing marks an important moment in the child’s development.
    2. “Good” is often a result of unnecessary self-imposed criticism. The toddler does not have this. They really do think that their drawing looks like mommy and daddy.

    While the first point is commonly stated as “people have different tastes”, we do not talk enough about the second point although it is highly endemic in our society.

    As we age, self-criticism often increases. This is not inherently a bad thing. After all, it is important to improve our skills and a healthy amount of self-criticism and feedback might help with that. However, it becomes a problem when we start giving up completely. I think there are several reasons why this happens and it is often a social issue. For example, we institutionalize criticism at an early age in our schools, we glorify high-performing individuals to the point that if you cannot perform at the same level, then it is not worth doing it at all in the first place. And finally, there are always a horde of “critics” that will gladly tell you if they do not like something.

    When it comes to art, the focus is often on the end result, not the journey and the story behind the art. I am not saying that we should release everything we create, but too much self-imposed criticism is not doing any good for anyone, especially not ourselves. For example, creating a full piano cover of a song is a major achievement, and although it might not get a million likes on YouTube, it is still worth sharing, even if just one other person listens to it.

    This is a wonderful time to share art, especially digital art. Having a blog is great for writing, SoundCloud is great for sharing music, Flickr is an excellent photo-sharing app, etc. So get your stuff out there. If you enjoyed creating it, other people might enjoy it too.

  • The Growth Mindset

    The Knight Library tree

    Have you ever experienced a mental obstacle at some point in your life, something so challenging that you said to yourself: I just don’t understand this and I never will. Have you ever encountered the same roadblock later in life, only to find that what previously seemed like an impenetrable wall was now only a speed bump? How did this happen? How did you suddenly become wiser than before? Well, your mind probably “grew” a little. But for many people, the mind grows less than it could.

    The elusive talent

    The concept of talent is interesting and debatable. Talent (if it exists) is often explained as a genetic or innate trait of some humans that enables them to excel in various disciplines, from math to sports. The research about talent is ambiguous and a simple Google search yields quite a few anecdotes that speak for and against talent. Some people say that talent is overrated and that anyone can become good at anything with enough persistence and training. One popular, yet simplified, example of this view is the ten thousand hour rule — the claim that any ability can be learned with about ten thousand hours of practice. 1

    Whether “talent” exists or not, a lack of talent, aptitude, ability or what ever serves us well as an excuse for not understanding complicated issues. For example: “I don’t understand math because I don’t have a talent for it” or simply “I don’t understand math, period”. Thinking this way is severely inhibiting if it prevents us from ever trying to really understand math, but in some cases it can also be liberating to think that we simply have natural limits to our own intellect. Whatever we may think, scientific evidence suggests that we should not excuse ourselves with a lack of talent. But it is probably not our own fault, if we do it anyway… it is what we have been taught.

    Unlocking the growth

    Believing in the idea that some intellectual concept or accomplishment is outside of our reach is the embodiment of a fixed mindset. A person with a fixed mindset thinks that there are clearly defined limits to our intellectual ability. The opposite to this view is called the growth mindset. A person with a growth mindset acknowledges that we do not have fixed capabilities but rather that we can actively develop our skills and intellect over time.

    The research about fixed and growth mindsets is fairly new. The two terms were introduced by psychology professor Carol Dweck and her seminal work is the book Mindset: The new psychology of success. 2 On the surface, the concepts might sound like something you would hear from a self-help-feel-good type of person but the research is pretty legit. 3

    Learning about the growth mindset was one of those rare eye-opening experiences for me, and it has slowly started changing my life and how I perceive myself and others. I first heard about the concept in a Hanselminutes podcast featuring Linda Rising 4 and I have explored the topic a bit more since. When I started thinking deeply about it, I realized that I mostly have a fixed mindset and this realization has shattered my self-image. For example, I realized that I tend to stay away from problems and domains I do not understand, and I do the same type of work over and over because it feels nice to do something that I am already good at. I also realized how a life of good luck and high praise has probably helped me develop a fixed mindset, including all the stereotypes I hold about many people and the discomforting feeling I get when I encounter individuals that are much smarter than myself (which happens often).

    Because I have been thoroughly entrenched in the fixed mindset, it has often been difficult for me to believe that I can ever become like [insert-hero-here]. Having a growth mindset leads to the realization that we do indeed have limitless potential and we can improve on basically everything in our lives throughout our entire existence. It does not mean that we will become the next Einstein but it is an important and strong message. And even better, the research shows that it works and individual performance is better with a growth mindset.

    Changing the future

    Since the idea of talent is highly debatable, I think we should stop talking about it completely. Let us instead focus on advocating for the growth mindset and start learning. In the beginning of this post, I asked if you have ever had a kind of aha moment. Maybe it is about time we try to have some more. Because the good news is that it is possible to change and start growing a growth mindset. The first step is to become aware and learn the basic concepts. Then we can start changing the way we approach our education and development, both in institutions and as individuals.

    Finally, here is a nice video from Khan Academy featuring Carol Dweck. It is a good starting point for further investigation into the subject of growth mindsets. You can learn anything.