3. Growth mindset

You’ve probably heard people say “oh, that person is soooo talented” or “i could never do that, i don’t have the talent for it”. Maybe you’ve said those things yourself. Either way: THAT IS WRONG. 

What many people need to know is that your mindset is extremely important. If you believe that you can learn new things and thus grow, then you will. If you get told you’re intelligent, you’ll learn to fear mistakes.

No human has ever become great at anything without lots of hard work. That’s not all there is to it, of course. No matter how much hard work you put in, when you get stuck you need feedback on what alternate routes to take to conquer the stone wall you’re headbanging.

Conclusions

Simply put: humans are great at learning things. That also means we’re great at learning, and accepting as true, that some people are born to do maths/tennis/crime and some are not.

But don’t take my word for it, find some papers by Carol Dweck on Google Scholar:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Carol+Dweck&btnG=

Or, if you prefer a programmer’s view on the “growth mindset”, you can read this awesome blog post: http://akaptur.com/blog/2015/10/10/effective-learning-strategies-for-programmers/

Some good sources of information to grow as a problem solver

https://betterhumans.coach.me/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18

https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly-useful-936f1cc405d

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