Ask HN: How to develop a growth mindset?

I used to think the same way until I tried learning to play guitar. Have been trying it for a year now and I seriously question if I will ever be able to do it with reasonable proficiency. (So far holding on though.)

They failed to do so with yours. It's easy to interpret what anyone says as if they mean it in an absolute way, it's 100% not helpful.

On another hand, sometimes I unconsciously do it too, it's something you need to practice (self-improvement? heh)

What is my secret?

I look up "how to" on the subject and learn about it until I'm comfortable with the amount of risk involved in trying it.

That means that if I want to tile my bathroom floor, I watch Youtube videos on tiling and find out how much the materials will cost and what it would cost to fix my mistake if it's so bad that I can't fix it myself.

The result of that was my first attempt at floor tiling going very, very well, but with a lot of hard work that probably could have been easier if I'd known more. But everyone says the tile looks amazing. I see the flaws, but they don't until I point them out.

The same goes with programming at work. I've almost never said "no", but I've often said, "I'll have to look into that" and it often results in creating a proof of concept for the hardest part before actually attempting the whole project. I usually end up doing it, and it almost always works out.

So my "growth mindset" is simply to look up tutorials before saying "no".

> "I know all kinds of people who've got this 'higher self' going, practicing their yoga - but they're just like ordinary people, sometimes a little worse. And they can fool themselves. They can say for example, 'Well, my point of view in religion is very liberal. I believe that all religions have divine revelation in them, but I don't understand the way you people fight about it. You fight and say that we Jehovah's Witnesses have the real religion, others say we Roman Catholics have it. And the Muslims say, no, it is in the Quran, and this is the right way.' And somebody else gets up, and he may be a rather highbrow Catholic who says, 'Well, God has given the spirit to all the traditions, but, ours is the most refined and mature.' And then somebody comes along and says, 'Well they're all equally revelations of the divine - and in seeing this, of course, I'm much more tolerant than you are.' Do you see how that game is going to work? Or, I could take this position - supposing you regard me as some sort of a guru. And you know how gurus hate each other. They're always putting each other down. And I could say, 'Well, I don't put other gurus down.' See, that outwits all of them! We're always doing that. We're always finding a way to be one-up, and by the most incredibly subtle means. So you see that, you see. And you say, 'I realize I'm always doing that. Tell me, how do I not do that?' I say, 'Why do you want to know?' You say, 'Well, I'd be better that way!' 'Yeah, but why do you want to be better?' You see - the reason why you want to be better is the reason why you aren't. Shall I put it like that? We aren't better because we want to be."

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Alan Watts is always entertaining. I think this has quite narrow applicability towards self-contradictory pursuits of virtue i.e. the motivation for self-perfection or trying to become more moral is likely to be riven with status anxiety not moral intention.

I don't think it applies to skill acquisition whose motivation may or may not be virtuous but it isn't self-contradictory. Overcoming procrastination is in part a skill to use tools like pre-commitments, habit entrainment, implementation intentions, reward and relaxation management as well as deeper tasks like resolving the sources of anxiety and it's triggers that cause avoidance.