This Scientific American article hits really close to home because lately I feel like a lazy kid with more learned helpless than intrinsically motivated behaviors. When I read the article, I was waking up from a two-hour afternoon power nap. Instead of arising from the couch with the dream-inspired plot for my next novel, I arose with a need to surf the internet. Luckily the StumbleUpon gods had a life lesson in store for me. I think I have been putting too much stock in being innately talented or innately not talented and not enough stock in trying to be better. I mean yes, I’m a genius, but even geniuses have to stay awake for more than three hours at a stretch in order to accomplish anything.
The Scientific American website summarizes the article’s key concepts so I don’t have to:
Many people assume that superior intelligence or ability is a key to success. But more than three decades of research shows that an overemphasis on intellect or talent—and the implication that such traits are innate and fixed—leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unmotivated to learn.
Teaching people to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on effort rather than on intelligence or talent, produces high achievers in school and in life.
Parents and teachers can engender a growth mind-set in children by praising them for their effort or persistence (rather than for their intelligence), by telling success stories that emphasize hard work and love of learning, and by teaching them about the brain as a learning machine.
From now on I will try to focus on effort rather than on being a terrible writer or a good writer. I will also stop telling little kids that they were born stupid and/or they should just give up, and focus instead on complimenting their determination to finish three-piece puzzles.