08 Jun 2024

Fixed Growth

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.” - Oogway, Kung Pu Panda

fixed v growth

Tap. Tap. Tap.. Is this thing on?

Yikes. Time sure does fly - you go heads down on life for a bit, and the next thing you know, it's been a month since I've posted. I've been focusing on fewer things lately and can't say I've gotten the balance right. As always, I am a work in progress. 🤔

I was able to catch up with one of my friends who is on my personal board of directors, and we talked a bit about the ebbs and flows of work. He mentioned that when asked to describe his job, he often replies with: "I solve people problems masquerading as technology problems."

Huh.

That comment stuck with me; often, I'm trying to figure out how to solve a problem (work, life, self, etc.), and I started to form this idea about how most problems are just symptoms of something that is far more upstream and hidden, than what appears on the surface.

"The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Do you understand?" - Jack Sparrow

We all have various frustrations in our lives in one form or another, and I think one of the things I am getting more attuned to as I get older (er, wiser?) is how often forward progress is tempered by you, your environment, and your mindset. It's even compounded more when an environment rewards particular negative and fixed mindsets.

In his (freaking fantastic) new talk, "How To Murder Your Mediocrity", Guy Kawasaki talks about the positive effects of shifting your thinking towards a growth mindset, which I enjoyed. (Side note: watch the whole thing!)

Having a growth mindset means that YOU ARE NOT STATIC.
you can learn new skills
you can become a better person

the fixed mindset means you think you are what you are and you cannot be any better
it also means many people think they are what they are and they cannot get any worse

arguably that's more dangerous :)

Digest that for a moment. "You are not static."

I find myself often trying to focus towards "the power of 'yet'." Too frequently, we are strangled by the "tyranny of now."

It's a basic idea that

You're not yet there. But you will be, you can be; just keep going

It just takes perseverance.

You have to realize, that you can't force another to change a fixed mindset. There's little things you can do like leading by example, providing an environment that fosters continuous learning and sharing, or showing the power of small wins. You can even go out of your way to teach what good (or different) can look like.

But most of the time, it's going to result in frustration. Fixed mindsets are often fueled by fear of failure, self imposed thinking or other past experiences that keep them rooted in the once-was, not what can be.

Remember, the dichotomy of control: You can only control what you can control.

If you choose to play the game outside of that space, you often end up in what James Clear calls "the valley of disappointment" (per The Plateau of Latent Potential).

Maybe in life/creativity/thinking, if you're seemingly stuck, you need to think about what game you want to play. As David Hieatt says, "ideas need to be patient, play the long game."

I cannot understate, though, how important it is when making any change, 'finding your tribe' is going to be a superpower. You want to search for those rare gems, the pirates (allies in the fleet!), who believe in learning and improvement and will help create safe harbors. They will turn out not only to be allies, but they will ultimately challenge your thinking with new possibilities and help you think differently about things you hold as fixed truths.

Wrapping up this rambling, I wanted to plant a seed that I came across from author Neil Gaiman a few weeks back. In an interview, he was asked 'where do you get your ideas?'. His response, which I also think is a great place to start shifting mindset (and, perhaps a new t-shirt idea):

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.

You get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions. The most important of the questions is just, What if...?

Maybe asking the simple question of "what if" can help you or someone else escape someplace static and imagine something new.

✌️

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Exploration 🧭

A longer watch, but as always, Ryan Holiday delivers the goods.

A few nuggets that I used throughout the week from this chat.

On [The Freedom of Low Expectations]:

The freedom of low expectations is a really important thing.

That's why I try not to have goals. If you have goals that are outside your control, like, you need to sell this, or your company needs to make, you're just like, it's just an arbitrary target. And you're better off just like seeing where it goes. And you're better off just like seeing where it goes. And the funny thing is, if I had had any kind of goal remotely close to what it ultimately done, it would've been because I was a delusional entitled asshole.

So the freedom of low expectations is a big part of it. But I think the reason it resonated is the reason that stoicism has always resonated. And it's not fair to say it's an obscure school of age of philosophy, really, because all schools of philosophy are obscure, right?

On Weaponized Incompetence:

Its just like, if you're a genius theoretical physicist, just in the way of you're a all-star point guard. They're just like, Ryan shouldn't be booking his own travel. Like Ryan, you know, like, how do we make things as easy as possible for this star, you know? And so you just get used to not caring about things that are not that. And I... I don't know. I just decided to care more about that stuff.

Playlist 📺

Quotables 📚

For one summer only (1997), Orcas started to randomly wear dead salmon as a hat.

In the Puget Sound area of the northeast Pacific, one female orca from k-pod began carrying a dead salmon around on her nose. Over the next 5-6 weeks, the behavior spread, and by the end of it, orcas from her own and two other pods were wearing dead salmon hats. Then all of a sudden, the fad was over. Bar a few times the following summer – latecomers, like humans just now deciding to wear Uggs – the trend has never been seen again.

🤷‍♂️

Articles Worth Reading / Link Rot 🧠

Here are a few random findings that I thought would be interesting to share. It really is just a dump of things sitting in my "thats interesting" pile, that I threw some categories on for you to pick out what tickles your fancy.

Thinking 🤪

Huh. 👽

Games 🎱