After reading this post you will know:
- Why your mind can be trained
- How the mindset affects & effects you
- That quality beats quantity
Let’s be honest: No-one wants to be the dumb one. It feels unpleasant if you don’t know the answer to a question, and we may sometimes, but only occasionally (and especially during trivia night) envy that one person who seems to have an endless pool of knowledge.
Well I have good news: thanks to our brain, being smart and/or dumb is an archaic viewpoint. By this I mean that due to scientific advancement it was proven that the brain can be trained to excel at tasks and vice versa (who would not like to get rid of a bad habit? – Oh and: GO SCIENCE!)
This insight is so powerful because it finally allows humanity to go past an educational system which was created during the industrial revolution and hasn’t significantly changed since then. It basically means that education is nothing that inevitably is inherited. I will not go into a philosophical and/or political discussion, because I have to keep my blood pressure low. Therefore, we will have a look at six fundamental concepts that will allow you to become a limitless mind (yes, pun intended ;-))
Neuroplasticity
Every time we learn, our brains form, strengthen, or connect neural pathways.
Jo Boaler
Do you know the story about Albert Einstein’s brain? The short version: he donated it, the brain was studied, and no significant differences could be found. Except for significantly more white brain matter. But it’s not gray, so it could not possibly be of any importance.
The good thing about science: if you learn about new evidence, you may change your mind. Literally! It turned out that white matter is very significant (I promise I won’t use the word in this post any more) and that it can in- and decrease, depending on the usage of the neural pathways.
This explains why your foreign language skills peak during high school (I willfully leave out everyone who studies a foreign language, lives abroad, and/or has multilingual parents/relatives/relationships for the sake of simplifying my argument). You have to interact with the language and by constant repetition, you become more and more sophisticated. But once you no longer use the skills, the pathways become weaker until one day you may be at a loss of words, because you simply forgot them.
Embrace Difficulties
The times when we are struggling and making mistakes are the best times for brain growth.
Jo Boaler
“If I am not instantly good at it, I am simply not talented enough!” – Sounds familiar? It is another misconception. By believing that you are either good at something or not, you sell yourself short. It is about how much high quality time you spent learning a skill, method, concept, etc. Malcolm Gladwell wrote an entire book about it.
The thing with deliberate practice is that you start to embrace the struggle. You realize that sometimes it takes time and repetition to improve. This correlates with The Learning Pit by James Nottingham. This concept describes different phases one might experience during a phase of learning. Figure 1 is a graphical representation of the concept and should summarize it pretty well.
Mindset
When we change our beliefs, our bodies and our brains physically change as well.
Jo Boaler
Dilys Price is a fantastic woman. When she was 55 years old, she was sitting in her kitchen, believing that life was pretty much over for her. Children left the nest, the husband passed away, and her body started to ache. But that day she decided that she wasn’t done. There was still more for her to experience and she became the oldest female skydiver. I mean that is just simply amazing!
Dily did something which is described by Carol Dweck: having the right mindset. The theory is pretty simple and states that your personal mindset has a major influence on your achievements in life. This means if you feel overwhelmed with an assignment and think that is impossible, you will probably fail. On the other hand, if you think that it must be doable, you most likely will succeed.
Sounds too easy? Sometimes it really is.
Multimodality
Neural pathways and learning are optimized when considering ideas with a multidimensional approach.
Jo Boaler
Do you know why it is so difficult to apply a concept, which was learned in a certain context, to another one? It is because you usually do not look at a problem from different points of views. During Mathematics class you learn how to calculate a certain concept, a certain way. In History, you learn to remember dates and events. In Geography, you learn names of countries and where to find them on a map. You usually never have a look at only one event (e.g. tulip mania) and analyse it from different points of views (e.g.: Where did it happen? – Geography; How could it happen? – Economics; What is a tulip? – Biology; What was the aftermath? – Social Studies).
The interconnection of information allows you to learn more deeply about an event; Therefore, you start to see the bigger picture (Systems Thinking *cough*). This allows you to generalize/transfer knowledge (and you thought you knew about transfer learning).
Flexiblity
Speed of thinking is not a measure of aptitude. Learning is optimized when we approach ideas, and life, with creativity and flexibility.
Jo Boaler
The fourth industrial revolution is scary because machines are suddenly able to transfer styles onto different images, translate massive amounts of books, and even create new drugs. All activities which would take humans a tremendous amount of time, expertise and money. The downside: AI can only do this because there is enough (past) data to learn from.
Humans on the other hand excel at creative thinking, interpersonal relationships, and decision-making (if habits are already established). Each of these abilities cannot, at least for the foreseeable future, be executed by an AI at a level that is coming close to human standards.
What all these three abilities have in common (apart from other obvious factors which currently do not pop up in my mind) is that they are flexible. Creativity is a skill that dares to wander new roads (where are my Robert Frost fans?). Interpersonal relationships need the ability to find common ground for communication and if there is none to create one. Decision-making requires you to understand an individual situation, define the goal with the best outcome(s), and then determine steps to reach the(se) desired outcome(s).
Collaboration
Connecting with people and ideas enhances neural pathways and learning.
Jo Boaler
This article by Gallup sums it up pretty good, so I will keep this part very short: Humans are optimized to live in small groups. Working together allows to use the strengths of an individual and compensate the weakness of another. The same applies for motivation. You may be pushed by others and vice versa (worse case scenario: what would the neighbors think?!?)
Conclusion
Classical methods for learning (third industrial revolution *cough*) and the accompanying mindset lose their importance due to the fourth industrial revolution. Learning can become a (more) sustainable practice which allows to continuously improve oneself. The following list is a quick summary of the points which were discussed in this post.
- Neuroplasticity: Use it or lose it
- Embrace Difficulties: What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger
- Mindset: The will can move mountains
- Multimodality: The more, the merrier
- Flexibility: A mind like water
- Collaboration: Stronger together
The End 😉
If you liked this post, didn’t like it, and/or have a book recommendation, please leave a comment, subscribe to the blog, and share this post. I am always happy to learn new things and improve myself.
DISCLAIMER: In this post I heavily use materials from the book “Limitless mind” by Jo Boaler.
