Prepping Your Mind for Growth
Upgrading Your Technical Skills with Deliberate Practice
Going through the motions of day-to-day work and accomplishing the task in front of you will not lead to growth as a programmer or developer. Deliberate practice is necessary to maintain continuous learning and improvement.
The key ideas are that deliberate practice:
- Pushes you just outside your comfort zone
- Is repeated often
- Feedback on results is continuously available
- Is highly demanding mentally
- Is difficult
- Requires good goals
Deliberate practice involves going out in search of challenges, and finding challenges that take you out of your comfort zone. Find a task that seems really difficult, and learn how to solve it.
On the Growth Mindset
The contrast between a growth mindset and fixed mindset is something I have to remind myself of often. Carol’s example involving children given a task beyond their abilities was interesting. Some children viewed it as a chance to learn something new, while others viewed it as something they were doomed to fail at.
Rewarding or finding joy in the process of tacking a problem as opposed to the solution seems to be key to successful learning and cultivation of a willingness to learn new things.
On Grit
Source: Angela Lee Duckworth on TED
Grit is passion and perseverance for long term goals. When everything is said and done, it seems that grit is the determining factor in potential for success.
A growth mindset goes hand-in-hand with developing grit. Failure is inevitable, but to grow and learn we must realize that failure is transient rather than a fixed state. Grit allows a person to “roll with the punches” of failure and adapt until success can be achieved.
On Redefining Success
Source: Alain de Botton on TED
Snobbery, as Alain defines it, is judging a person entirely based on a small amount of information. The most common form is “job snobbery”, or judging a person based upon their career.
Modern society is permeated by the idea that everyone has equal opportunity. The “you could be like Bill Gates” if you work hard enough mantra. The problem is that while it might be true, the chances are slim. In the case that it is true, we may find ourselves measuring our success relative to a billionaire and feel bad about our lives and accomplishments.
Alain redefines success in an interesting way. Every instance of success will inevitably be coupled with loss in some way. You can’t be successful at everything. Alain states that we should focus in on our own idea of success, and pursue that.
Emotional Intelligence Assessment
Results: Per the survey I should try to improve my self-awareness.
Biases Assessment
I think acting with courage in the face of biases is something I’ve never considered. I’ve always viewed bias as something tackled through internal action and change, but should probably view it as something that requires physical action, as well, such as being directly involved with allyship or an advocacy program.