Reading-Notes

Prep: The Growth Mindset

Read Upgrade Your Technical Skills with Deliberate Practice. (10 minutes)

This article has a lot of good points, many of which I think we’ve all been putting into practice already. I do like the idea of practicing specific technical skills over and over again, like someone who plays an instrument, doing it chunk by chunk as oppossed to playing the whole piece over and over again. It’s important to practice the stuff that makes you uncomfortable until it no longer does. I have saved the referenced challenges.

Watch Carol Dweck on the Growth Mindset. (10 minutes)

I really like “the power of yet”! It’s a matter of “maybe I’m not there yet, but the journey isn’t over!” It really does come down to a mindset.

Watch Angela Lee Duckworth on Grit. (6 minutes)

Full disclosure, I am already a HUGE fan of Angela Lee Duckworth. I was also already familiar with her learning philosophy of GRIT, and I completely agree. It’s having an open mindset, it’s about practicing perseverance, it’s about being able to be successful by the power of stick-to-it-iveness.

Also, she’s just as adorable as she sounds :)

Watch Alain de Botton on Redefining Success. (17 minutes)

Redifining what is means to be successful, and how to get there. The tabloid headlines of ancient tragedies was pretty funny, but also poignant. He has a really good point of creating what our own personal story of success is, and leaning into that.

Assess your emotional intelligence. If you have done it in the past, now you can identify the areas you have grown in recently.

My scores for the emotional awareness self assessments are as follows:

While it does specify that anything below an 18 should be considered room for improvement, I am always trying to better myself and I do recognize that self awareness is an area I could work on.

Assess your biases. If you have done it in the past, now you can identify the areas you have grown in recently.

My total score for the bias assessment was 107/120, so that wasn’t that bad. My areas of improvement were “four ways to act,” and I also personally think I could do better at “effective courage.”