A Real Secret To Success: Growth Mindset

When I was 18, I begged a professor to let me join her drawing class at the university. It was sophomore level and I didn’t have any prerequisites but she let me in.  The first day, I befriended a 20 year old arts major who was absolutely awesome.  He drew himself with a beautiful girl in a bikini laughing under a waterfall.  My paper looked like a charcoal smudge with some cartoon eyes on it. 

However, I listened to the teacher closely and thoughtfully and I tried to improve.  I sat next to this awesome artist every day and he even gave me some advice.  I drew at least 2 drawings per day every day over the quarter.  Meanwhile, my friend considered the class an easy A because he was already a badass.  He thought the exercises beneath him and was defensive to the criticism of the professor.  By the end of the quarter, I actually got really good at a variety of techniques.  His drawings were still totally amazing but they were all contour line drawings.  When we presented our final projects, he couldn’t believe that he had gotten a C.  I was reluctant to divulge my A because he was so much better and I legitimately felt bad.

I didn’t really know it at the time but what I had been doing over that quarter was practicing a process for growth and learning.  This process is way more important than any one subject that I have ever learned.  It has allowed me to jump around in my career and succeed in roles where smarter people with far more experience failed.  I now know that this process is called growth mindset.        

A Great 5 Minute Overview of Growth Mindset

If you are involved in education or competitive sports, you’ve definitely heard about “growth mindset.” It’s even hotter right now than Taylor Swift or tight fitting jeans with senseless holes cut in them.  Fear not, if you are out of the loop here is a short and worthwhile video overview:

A Stanford professor named Carol Dweck spent decades looking at why some people succeed while others of equal talent do not.  She has found that mindset plays a crucial role.  Everyone lies somewhere on a continuum between a fixed or a growth mindset:

While this may seem like motivational speaker talk to the skeptical, everyone from Microsoft to Lebron James, to the US Olympic team has embraced it powerfully.  The subtlety of the power of growth mindset is how one’s beliefs and focus interact with the actions and behaviors of learning to either encourage growth and validate effort with a growth mindset, or to discourage growth and invalidate effort repeatedly with a fixed mindset.  This is described brilliantly at around the 5:34 mark of the video above. 

Imagine how much harder it would be to learn if every effort, mistake, challenge, and piece of feedback was campaigning against you on an inner monologue.  Even over the course of your first practice session that may be a half dozen pieces of negative feedback derailing your growth before it has even sprouted.  When I have tried to describe this to people in the past, it often sounds like I am just saying “dude, stay positive.”  The rise of growth mindset gives a more clear voice to this message and its subtleties.

Everything Seems Daunting at First

Everything that I have ever learned in investing started out as a slog digging in the dirt for pennies until a money tree grew.  Having a growth mindset transforms this slog into an opportunity.  When I graduated from college, I wondered if I had what it took to be a professional engineer.  Over a dozen patents later, and now having run my own startup and worked in leadership I think, wow remember when I was just an engineer? Everything seems daunting at first.  When I decided to take up hockey for the first time ever last year, I was the worst guy on the team.  One could argue that I sucked (ok I sucked).  However, I guarantee that I learned the most of anyone on that team over the same time period.  Because I held a growth mindset, I had a blast.  

Incremental and Compound Growth

There is an apocryphal story about Picasso sitting in a cafe in Paris. A fan asked for a quick sketch and said she would pay whatever he thought was fair.  He doodled on a napkin and then asked for $10,000.  “But that only took you a couple minutes,” protested the woman.  “No it took me 40 years,” replied Picasso.  

Imagine, if Michelangelo had been grabbed by a time traveller at age 12 and then shown the Sistene Chapel and asked to simply copy it.  Impossible he may have said.  Part of the magic of learning is that the more you do something, the better you get at getting better at that thing. This is kind of like compounding. 

I’ve mentioned the miracle of compound interest many times on this site. It can get you financial independence, and it works for growth as well. I met a guy who speaks 10 languages fluently. He told me that the last 2 or 3 took almost no effort. His brain was already wired for it. Learning like money compounds. In addition, when you succeed, you believe in yourself more which begets more success. Over time, everyone wants to be around the guy that treats mistakes positively, is open to feedback, loves challenges, works hard and seems to succeed. This seems to bring more compounding success as well.

What do you think about Growth Mindset? How have you harnessed it? Please share or ask questions in the comments 🙂