Go to the roots of taking care of you in this weird new AI world. (Photo by Irina Krutova on Unsplash)

Good words: A word about growth mindset

One thing that seems to be a shared experience across roles all trying to accommodate AI: the learning curve is steep. Like Mount Everest steep.

To me this is the perfect motive to start working on self-directed learning as a skill area.

One term many people are familiar with when I say “self-directed learning” is growth mindset. So let’s start there.

First things first: unless you sat and read the original paper, whatever comes out of your mouth about growth mindset is probably wrong.

The hazards of reading someone else’s pop culture synthesis of a scientific concept is that you lose important nuances (nuances = subtle distinctions).

Carol Dweck’s theory around growth and fixed mindsets was first developed strictly regarding certain children at a certain point in time learning in a specific school district’s school classrooms, in certain conditions and settings.

She later had to point this out when adults started labelling themselves — or judging others. It’s a big leap, scientifically, to take a theory about certain children learning in one specific school district’s classrooms and apply it to yourselves and others as adults, generally, everywhere.

Dweck’s correction also pointed out a key detail people were missing (or ignoring): Growth and fixed mindsets are not personality traits. You can embody either depending on — surprise — varied conditions and settings.

There are volumes more we could talk about on Dweck, her theory, social science, and causality but we’ll leave it there for now.

The important thing today is just to observe yourself as you stand at the bottom of your Mount Everest.

⭐ Key action: Choose a really hard situation at work right now to explore what kind of mindset you seem to lean on in that situation only.

▶️ How to do it: As you reflect, inventory on paper or start typing in a doc the kinds of thoughts and questions you have about this situation.

💭 Think about it: Review what you wrote. Try reading it out loud to yourself and listen for tone, word choice. How do you feel in your body as you hear the things you’re reading? What kind of attitude would you assign to those feelings? (For example, “I feel tension in my chest, my stomach hurts, I feel sad,” might lead to “This reminds me of a nervous or unconfident attitude.”)