maxverse
9 hours ago
This takes me back to the weirdness of my post-college years: so much pressure to show that I know what I'm doing but no actual work or life experience to draw from. The transition thinking success is good grade to realizing that real success is figuring out what the questions are and how much effort I should put into answering them.
I definitely relate to the crux of the article though:
> I realized getting to a point where you reap the benefits from what you’re hoping to learn requires you to do it yourself and fail. A lot.
I also had to work hard to shift from the fixed mindset: "I'm smart therefore I need to be good at this. If I'm not good at this, then I'm dumb" to "I'm going to put the effort it and give myself the grace that learning takes a long time". Almost nobody is smart enough to get it right away, and truly, nobody starts out knowing everything.
I learned this most clearly from running, where I had no expectations to live up to, no "I should". I put in the work for years, and ran faster and further than I ever thought I would. I'm never ashamed to say "today was a crappy run" or "I didn't do very well, better sleep it off". Then why was I afraid to say "I don't get this complex idea yet, I better spend some time reading it 12 more times until it starts making sense"?
BigHatLogan
2 hours ago
I'm working through something similar right now. I like your thought about shifting away from the fixed mindset. I'm also realizing a lot of this, maybe all of this, comes down to identity and ego.
I'm taking an evening class right now in computer science at a local university. Without mincing words, I am getting my ass kicked by it. Absolutely handed to me. It's proofs-based, and I don't have much of a background in this (even during my time in college back in the day, I didn't take these types of courses).
I'm getting stuck all the time, finding it hard to understand the lectures, and then avoiding studying altogether because it's not "clicking" for me. But if I'm being honest, what I'm doing above all is avoiding studying because of how painful it feels, and how much of my own identity as a "smart" person comes into question. I've never really had trouble with coursework, and would even say a lot of it came naturally to me, so from that I built up a little castle wall of an identity wherein I'm a "smart person who learns things easily."
Yet here I am unable to learn this easily at all. I'm discovering that I need to tweak my mindset and keep my identity smaller. Why do I have to be a smart person? Why can't I just be a person who wants to learn something that he's finding challenging? Is it helping me to belittle myself by telling myself that I "should" understand this quickly? Or is it just leading me to running away from the whole thing altogether, thereby worsening the situation?
Sorry for the rant / writeup. I'm processing all of this in real-time myself, and trying to get myself back to studying...
pvab3
9 hours ago
>"I'm smart therefore I need to be good at this. If I'm not good at this, then I'm dumb"
This reminds me of the meme "If I can't get this barbell off my chest, I'm gay and my whole family dies"
Which got me more gains than any other time in my life
exceptione
8 hours ago
You are over-complicating things; you can be gay without a barbell on your chest.
mulderc
7 hours ago
I honestly don’t understand how that specific thought was motivating for you but I guess whatever works…
gloryjulio
8 hours ago
So stay hungry, stay foolish?
UltraSane
7 hours ago
The sense of having lots of knowledge but no real confidence in my abilities caused me much anxiety after graduating college.