Shanti’s Dispatches

{photo via chrissuderman}

In this excellent article, The Secret to Raising Smart Kids, Carol Dweck outlines some excellent learning tips that apply to people of all ages:

Hint: Don’t tell your kids that they are (smart). More than three decades of research shows that a focus on effort—not on intelligence or ability—is key to success in school and in life.

This particular passage outlines one of the keys to an ever-expanding set of cross-disciplinary skills:

In the growth mind-set classes, students read and discussed an article entitled “You Can Grow Your Brain.” They were taught that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use and that learning prompts neurons in the brain to grow new connections. From such instruction, many students began to see themselves as agents of their own brain development. Students who had been disruptive or bored sat still and took note. One particularly unruly boy looked up during the discussion and said, “You mean I don’t have to be dumb?”

I never strictly believed 100% in the “talent mindset” vs. “grow your brain mindset”, but around some areas I definitely had a mental block of sorts. For example, when you see a specialist in a field (not necessarily world class, but good at what he/she does), and you think “wow, I could *never* do that!”

The Grow Your Brain Mindset leads to the thinking “you know, if I was taught the fundamentals and then practiced my ass off, I just might be able to do that one day.” And sure, some things we have inherent abilities and in others we require much more training. (i.e. math always came easy for me, whereas I had to really study hard at english/writing skills)

{photo by barnabywasson}

Turning the Corner: a Few Examples

At one point I began making a concerted effort to step outside of a few comfort zones, but still around my particular area of expertise (programming / web dev). These are a few things that I would’ve probably never even attempted had I not adopted more of a grow your brain mindset:

* Developing a BitTorrent tracker in rails (more on that later)
* Server administration, including setting up dual-server setups (MySQL + Web/App) - one recently handled 130k pageviews in a day w/o breaking a sweat
* Building basic logos and tweaking design elements in Photoshop
* Building basic games in Flash

Limitations

I’m limited by what appears (on the surface) to be really painful (or could possibly be painful, i.e. rejection, etc).

For example — learning hard programming languages (C, C++ though I’ve dabbled before), pitching angel / venture capital investors for money, earning a Law Degree, playing guitar using more than just chords & power chords, etc.

Of course, applying the proper mindset you realize it’s just a matter of practice, though having this knowledge makes you no less nervous before you’ve made the first few attempts!

You can bookmark this, digg this or check the cosmos