The term "growth mindset" and "fixed mindset" came from the researches done by Carol Dweck: Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

• The Effective Enginner - Adopt a Growth Mindset

  • How we view our own effectiveness impacts how much effort we invest in improving it
  • Two mindsets

    Fixed mindset

    human qualities are carved in stone

    Growth mindset

    human can cultivate and grieve their intelligence and skills through effort

A growth mindset means that through effort, we can improve and become a better version of ourselves.

The definition of "improve": make or become better. This means we need to be inconsistent with our past selves.

• The Art of Learning

  • Be willing to lose to win
  • Don't be locked in a need to be correct

• Want to be successful? Be inconsistent

  • Entrepreneurs make fast decisions and move forward knowing that at best 70% of their decisions are going to be right.
  • Embrace being inconsistent
    • be open to making adjustments as you learn more.

• Some advice from Jeff Bezos – Signal v. Noise

  • People who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds.
  • The smartest people are
    • constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved.
    • open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.
  • This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a well formed point of view, but it means you should consider your point of view as temporary.
  • What trait signified someone who was wrong a lot of the time?
    • Someone obsessed with details that only support one point of view.
    • If someone can’t climb out of the details, and see the bigger picture from multiple angles, they’re often wrong most of the time.

If you think it's definitely possible to change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, then you are already thinking in a growth mindset.

To do that, we just need to recognize when we are thinking in a fixed mindset, and rephrase the situation with a growth mindset.

• Effective Learning Strategies for Programmers - Allison Kaptur

  • Does anyone believe in a fixed mindset?
    • 10x engineers
    • Hero worship
  • Can you change a fixed mindset? Heck yes
  • How do you identify a fixed mindset?
    • “I am ..”
    • “Some people are just …”
  • How do you change a fixed mindset?
    • Reframe praise & success
      • when you get the wrong kind of compliments, turn them into growth-​mindset compliments.
      • “wow, great job on that project, you’re so smart,” translate it to “yeah, it was great, I worked really hard on that project
      • “Of course that went well because I’m awesome.” Instead think, “I used an effective strategy on that project! I should do that more often”
    • Reframe failure
      • If you’re saying, “Maybe I’m not cut out for this job after all,” treat that as a red flag.
      • Instead, ask what you learned from your unsuccessful attempt or what strategies you could have used instead
    • Celebrate challenges
    • Ask about processes
      • Sometimes, I’ll try to fix a tricky bug and won’t be able to, and then one of them will be able to fix it right away.
      • In these situations I’ve tried to be really disciplined about asking how they did it.
      • This is a much more useful strategy in the long term than saying “Oh, of course, that person got the bug because they are a wizard.