One Non-Technical Book That Accelerated My Career and Helped Me as a Dad
One Non-Technical Book That Accelerated My Career and Helped Me as a Dad
It’s Mindset by Carol Dweck.
I remember reading this book over a decade ago. Highlighting nearly every other page. It resonated so well with me I knew I had to remember the lessons for when I eventually became a dad too.
Simplifying her message, there are two different mindsets people have about themselves:
Fixed Mindset: you have limiting beliefs on what’s possible for you. Ie. “I’m not a math person”.
Growth Mindset: you believe you can do anything given enough practice. Ie. “This is a difficult problem but let’s give it a try.”
Having a Growth Mindset enables you to do hard things.
In my career, I’ve used a growth mindset constantly to continue climbing the ladder and take on challenging problems.
8 years ago I was working in finance with a very limited technical background. By applying a growth mindset I studied consistently for 2 years in the early morning before my day job to become a software engineer.
Looking back on the projects that have been instrumental in my promotions, the ones I learned the most on, always started as an ambiguous problem with no clear solution. A growth mindset enabled me to chip away at open questions one at a time.
Now as a Dad, I want my kids to have a belief in themselves that they too can figure it out.
It’s easy for kids to consciously or subconsciously internalize anything that any adult tells them. You need to defend them from what they internalize. If your uncle is accusing your kid of being shy at a party, tell them to STFU, your kid is not shy they just didn’t choose to say Hi yet.
No one is really born a genius. We can be born with aptitudes, interested, and potentials. But every “genius” the world has known also has put in a tremendous amount of effort in their field. Mozart’s dad was a music teacher and he had little Mozart playing music from the day he stopped wear diapers, or maybe sooner - I’m not sure exactly (source).
How to Instill a Growth Mindset
Don’t label. Labeling limits what you think is possible. Anyone can be a “math person” with enough practice. Anyone can be “creative” if they work on it. Sure, you likely won’t be world famous but most people are not world famous, so who cares.
Praise the effort, not the result. Telling someone they are genius, especially a kid, might make them afraid to fail in the future. Worried they won’t receive any praise, it could lead to cheating on tests rather than accepting a mistake and studying harder next time. Applaud the time spent studying, the hard work, the practice, etc.
Be naively optimistic. I think this piece as worked well for me over the years. If you don’t believe you can do it, you won’t bother to try. But if you accept the discomfort of struggling (often what learning feels like), you make progress. Once you make progress, you start to get closer to some goal.
Then all of a sudden, you look back 1, 3, 6 months and realize - wow, look what I just accomplished.