The Secret To Getting Stuff Done while Having Fun is Mindset

We can be our own worst enemies. We can also carry the burden of a bunch of bullshit from childhood with us, along with some strange, silly assumptions about our abilities. If you ever struggle with your work, be they creative projects you do for love or the 9-5 you do for money, changing your mindset might bring relief or success.

Things changed for me when I read Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, by Carol Dweck. It resonated with me how I’d had a fixed mindset all my life, believing that you are born with a set amount of talent and that was it. (You can read my review of it from 2017 here on my other blog.)

The silly thing was that I didn’t think I was limited, but that I was awesome, and thus didn’t need to work very hard to learn things. I entertained a delusion that it was only a matter of time before someone discovered me. When I played baseball as a kid, I thought a pro scout would (somehow) see me play and declare me to be great.

In high school, encouraged by my good grades, I thought college would be easy. Once there, I was taken down quite a few pegs, slowly realizing I had to learn how to learn.

I repeated this with my career and my writing, thinking that if I would show up, great things would occur. It didn’t help that I was a straight white guy in an era that favored straight white guys.

The thing I really cared about was writing, and that’s where I found the most frustration.

Writing became painful. My lack of success was embarrassing. I found no joy in the act of writing, which is a terrible way to write.

Luckily, I stuck with writing, as it now brings me great joy.

Finally, I read Mindset, and it changed my entire perspective. At long last, I began working hard to learn the techniques of writing, fiction, and storytelling. I read books, took classes, sought out mentors.

The painfully short version of a growth mindset is that the determining factor in your success at any particular endeavor is not the talent you’re born with; rather, the determining factor is how tenacious you are at improving your talent.

If you feel this is something that interests you, I urge you to read the book. The act of reading a book-length explanation of a concept can transform your thinking patterns. Summaries, articles, and paragraph-length proclamations can plant the seed, but they don’t give your brain a chance to work it out and decide.

Having a growth mindset is the cornerstone to success. Some people seem born with it, others are lucky to have parents or childhood teachers who help develop it.

For the rest of us, there’s Carol Dweck’s book.