Growth Mindset & Mastery Goals

            After watching Carol Dweck talk about growth mindset and the power of yet, I’ve started to rethink how I and the people around me think and learn. For me, I believe I’m somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of a fixed mindset and a growth mindset, but maybe leaning more toward the fixed side depending on the circumstances. However, with this newfound information about the benefits of a growth mindset, I might attempt to push myself into taking failure as an opportunity and learn regardless of the outcomes. Last semester, I learned about an interesting concept similar to fixed/growth mindset – mastery and performance goals. Mastery goals, like having a growth mindset, are based on the desire to learn and take in information to “master” something. Performance goals, like having a fixed mindset, focus on temporarily achieving or “performing” something without the desire to fully learn. For instance, if you want to take a class in order to learn the material and use it in the future, you may have mastery goals; if you want to take a class simply because it is a requirement and you need to pass it, you may have performance goals. A person can have both mentalities for different occasions, but one may be more predominantly used than the other. Since learning those goals, I have been aiming to become more involved in mastering material, and now I have a new aim to look for challenges and grow from them.

Growth vs. Fixed Mindset

Time Strategies & "How to Beat Procrastination"

            Learning time management skills and strategies are so important to have in our daily lives, especially when necessary things need to be accomplished. After reading Caroline Webb’s “How to Beat Procrastination,” I found some helpful hints to beat that pesky procrastination habit. Webb suggest that in order to beat it, we must trick our brains into thinking that certain tasks are low cost, high benefit. That way, we would be more likely to at least start on completing our daunting to-do lists. In her article, I believe her best advice is to “Remove the hidden blockage” and ask ourselves why we are procrastinating and delaying doing things. If we do this, we might be able to reason ourselves into accomplishing what needs to be done. I don’t think many people ever second guess the reason they aren’t doing something – I know I don’t. I, along with many students, have a hard time with… well time. There are only 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, and we have so much to do in that timespan. What I like to do is make to-do lists and split them into different categories: work, school, social obligations. I’ll prioritize tasks based on what needs to be done immediately and what can be pushed back. More often then not the priority level from greatest to least will be school, work, then social obligations. Every so often, I’ll try to have a super productive day and get everything done for the next week to take a break, which is so important in my opinion. Sometimes we all live busy and fast lives, but we forget to take a breather every once in a while. My tip on time management is: Schedule your week to be as effective and efficient as possible, but remember to schedule a rest day to rejuvenate yourself.

Time Management