Ask HN: How to develop a growth mindset?

Maybe there are a few secrets to learning stuff. Has anybody taken the "Learning how to Learn" coursera course? https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn?ranMID=...

Growth mindset is there is always enough.

Scarcity is there is never enough.

Both is a mind-set.

So to change, you need to change your mindset.

The best way to do that, has for me been through the Arbinger mindset change tools, start with their books, i can recommend “The outward mindset” and take it from there.

I'm not sure when I did it, but at some point I managed to adopt the idea that "everything is learnable" as a core belief. It's really valuable.

A few examples:

I took up a management role. Management is hard! It's a whole new package of challenges that have little to do with being a great software engineer. The difference between humans and computers is that humans don't automatically tell you the exact truth, and don't do exactly what you ask them to do.

But... it's learnable. Books like The Managers Path. Courses. Coaching. Thinking hard about what makes good management. Talking to peers.

Very good manager started as a barely-adequate manager. Talking to other managers about their journeys to actually being good at it was really useful.

I've tried and failed to learn languages before. I'd let myself believe that if you're older then twenty you have a big disadvantage in language learning.

Then my dad learned a new language in his sixties and I realized my excuses were rubbish. So I started a Duolingo streak to learn Spanish. And 578 days later I'm still going. I have a weekly Spanish lesson with a teacher now. I recently switched my phone to Spanish to more fully immerse myself.

I'm no-where near a fluent Spanish speaker but I can feel myself getting a little bit better every day.

Languages are fantastic for helping you get better at learning, because there's no magic shortcut: it doesn't matter how smart or quick you are at learning, it's going to take you a LOT of work to master a language. Its humbling. And yet almost everyone does it once and hundreds of millions of people have learned multiple languages.

I just finished a year at Stanford on a fellowship program. I very deliberately took classes that were WAY out of my comfort level: things like classical guitar, improv, and screenwriting.

Watching fresh faced undergrads (I am not a fresh faced undergrad) go from incompetent at something to actually pretty good in just a few weeks - and watching myself do the same - was a healthy reminder that everything is learnable if you put the effort in. And often that effort is ten weeks of intense exposure, showing up and putting in the work.

I also realized that in many skilled professions the entry-level workers have only had 2-3 years of training and experience in order to get good enough to be paid to do their thing. And a lifetime has many multiples of 2-3 years in it.

I don't need to be an expert at everything - but racking up a few disciplines in which I'm as good as an entry-level professional over the course of a lifetime now seems achievable and worth considering.

Kind of agree and also kind of disagree. For some things there actually are recipes. For instance, I greatly benefited from learning GTD (getting things done) at some point. Not having any sort of overview of all the things going on in my life was causing me quite a bit of distress.

Furthermore, I think it is good to have experienced multiple mindsets so one is not married to any single one of them. The self-improvement mindset can be one of the mindsets that one has experienced.

People get tied up with people problems, the great big universe doesn't give a sh*t about people problems - galaxies and suns will spin around no matter what you do. We have millions of years of evolution coded in our every actions - eating, sleeping, waking, screwing - how do you escape this? To me that is how you get a growth mindset, though even that feels a poor name.

A better thing to my mind is escape your programming, learn all there is to know about disparate fields, don't get tied down in other peoples dilemmas, dream incredibly big, find others who want to do the same, people will come and go in your life, enjoy them, shun people who want to drag you down. Every day do wonderful things, even if you have to do every day things, you'll still have time to find a tiny bit of wonderful somewhere, eventually it will grow. Learn a lot about humanities and science, not because you have to but because you want to know.

We have so many reactions that are hard and soft coded into our thoughts and bodies, from our DNA, our upbringing, our schooling, society, work - watch them, when you react to something, figure out why, and if necessary deprogram yourself. You will start to see the universe outside the people sphere, and you can bring some of it back, and share it, and make the people world a better place perhaps, and have your growth mindset.