Effective learning strategies for programmers. Part 2

We continue the translation of the article on the use of the installation on growth for training a programmer (the first part is here ).

Programmers need a setup for growth! Key skills for programmers, such as reaction to confusion, recovery after a hitch, the desire to take on new difficulties, are much easier to implement with a flexible mind, and much more difficult - with a fixed one.

Does anyone believe in a fixed mind?

Today, when people hear about a fixed consciousness, they consider it almost a figment. Indeed, does anyone in the technical field believe this? I believe that a fully fixed consciousness is a widespread opinion. Here are some examples.

10x engineers

Let's start with the idea of ​​10-fold engineers. The idea is that some engineers are an order of magnitude more efficient than others, according to some definitions of efficiency. This idea has many critics, but for the time being we will reject them. If you believe in the idea of ​​a 10-time engineer, do you think that person was born a super-efficient engineer? Or did he become one at a time?
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I think that in the popular formulation of this phenomenon a 10-fold engineer is put on a pedestal as someone other people cannot be. And quite often this is achieved in terms of fixed consciousness.

Hero cult

Another case in which we see signs of a fixed consciousness is the cult of the hero. Julie Pagano delivered an excellent lecture at PyCon 2014 on the impostor syndrome, and one of her proposals for combating this syndrome was “kill your heroes”. Do not put other programmers on a pedestal, do not say that "this person is not at all like me." Also, the formulation of a fixed / flexible consciousness is very useful for this. If you have your heroes in programming, do you think that they are not at all like you? Would you be more like the person you admire? If you do not think so - this is proof of the existence of a fixed consciousness.

Therefore, I affirm that yes, fixed consciousness often prevails in the technical sphere.

Can you change the fixed consciousness? Of course yes

I hope that by this moment you have already seen that flexible consciousness is better for you than fixed. Now another question arises: is it possible to change it? Is it possible to take a fixed consciousness and turn it into a flexible one? And the answer is, of course, yes, you can change the fixed consciousness to a flexible one.

In fact, in most studies, Douk experimentally prompted a fixed or flexible consciousness, and often in a rather ingenious way. A study of praise is one example: one sentence of praise completely changes a student's behavior. In other studies, students were given an article about the success of a famous person, at the end of which it was said “because he worked very hard” or “because it was embedded in his DNA”. Consciousness is quite possible to change.

So how to change the fixed consciousness? Sometimes a fixed consciousness is best revealed in difficulties, and as soon as you say to yourself, “I will never learn physics,” it immediately becomes obvious that this is most likely not true. But sometimes it is more difficult to eradicate a fixed consciousness. Therefore, here are a few indicators that will help you identify and eradicate fixed installations.

How to identify a fixed consciousness?

"I ..."
“Some people just ...”

If you are looking for places in which your mind can be fixed, listen to the sentences that begin in this way. For phrases like "I never understood CSS," or "I'm not a social person," or "Some programmers are just faster than others." Everything that begins with “I ...” is already a challenger. Especially if the word “simple” is often present in them.

It is clear that you can pronounce sentences on the "I ...", which will not be indicators of a fixed consciousness. Instead, you need to treat such suggestions as a yellow flag for yourself, to notice and revise your mind in more detail.

How to change the fixed consciousness?

Well, now that you have identified a fixed consciousness, how can you change it? Here are four strategies.

Rethink praise and success

The first is to rethink praise and success. By rethinking praise, I mean the situation where you get the wrong compliments and turn them into compliments with a growth attitude. If someone tells you “wow, you did a great job on this project, you are very smart,” take it as “yes, it turned out great, I really did a good job on this project.” You don't have to say it out loud! But such a rethinking reinforces the idea that you have achieved mastery through the search for difficulties and the effort involved.

The same technique can be used in relation to success and achievement. When something turns out well, do not think, "Of course, everything worked out because I'm good." Think instead “In this project, I used an effective strategy. We must do it more often. ”

Rethink failures

Of course, the reverse side of this dynamic is also quite effective. The core of your fixed or growing consciousness is how you react to failure. What internal dialogue do you have when you encounter a hitch or do not get what you want? If you say to yourself, “Perhaps I’m just not meant for this job,” treat this as a wake-up call. Instead, ask yourself what you learned from your unsuccessful attempt or what strategies you could apply at another time. This may sound silly, but it works.

Rejoice at difficulties

The third way to change your fixed consciousness is to rejoice at difficulties. How do you react to situations when you have to fight? Try literally to rejoice. This is what I kept saying when I worked at the Recurse Center. If someone sitting next to me said, “It seems I have some kind of strange bug in Python,” I said, “Great, I love strange bugs!”. First of all, this is true - if you have a strange bug, let's discuss it. But more importantly, it underlines for the participant that finding something in a fight is an achievement, it is done intentionally, and this is a great option for this day’s class.

As I have already mentioned, there are no deadlines and instructions in the Recurse Center, so this approach can be used absolutely freely. I would say "You can spend the whole day looking for this weird bug in Flask, cool!". Now, in Dropbox, where we have a product that we need to deliver, and deadlines, and users, I am not always equally happy with the day spent searching for a strange bug. Therefore, I understand the realities of the world in which there are deadlines. However, if I need to fix some bug, I have to fix it, but grumbling about the existence of this bug will not help me fix it faster. I believe that even in a world in which deadlines come on the heels, you can still use this approach.

Ask about the processes

The last strategy for changing the fixed consciousness is to ask about the processes. Like most of you, I work with great engineers. Sometimes I try to fix a dodgy bug, but I can't, and one of them easily copes with it. In such situations, I try to be as rational as possible and ask how they did it. In particular, when I was new to Dropbox, the answers sometimes really shed light. Sometimes information came from such sources, the existence of which I did not know. Now that I have been working there for some time, I realized that basically the problem lies in the difference in technology or strategy, or in the details, because of which my strategy did not bring success.

Such a strategy is much more useful in the long term than the phrase "Of course, he found a bug because he is a wizard."

Confidence and Impostor Syndrome

The Douke study is really interesting in the context of the discussion of the impostor syndrome. Impostor Syndrome is the feeling that you are secretly an unqualified cheater who can be exposed at any time. Raise your hand if you have experienced an impostor syndrome at least once in your career? (80% raised their hands). Yes, there are many of you, and I am among you. And it is disgusting! This is pretty annoying and really bad for a career, because you are less likely to take risks or look for new growth opportunities if you are worried that you will be fired from your job.

A possible solution for the impostor syndrome is mainly aimed at confidence. Like "If you feel not qualified enough for the work that you already have, you should behave more confidently, and everything will be fine." Sometimes it sounds a lot easier, like “Don't feel so”, that the advice doesn’t look very effective. But even in a more detailed version, the focus here is on confidence and past achievements.

Confidence does not help to respond to difficulties.

But here's the trick. The Douke study shows that confidence does not really predict your success in responding to new difficulties or recovering from a hitch.

Henderson and Douk conducted a study of students moving from the lower grades to the middle in the United States. They asked students to evaluate their confidence when they were still in elementary grades, and then they checked whether these children have a fixed or flexible consciousness. After that, they tracked the performance of students in middle classes.

They found that self-confident students with a fixed consciousness had decreased performance, regardless of whether their level of confidence was high or low. As it turned out, confidence in general is not an indicator of success.
To date, another study has been conducted demonstrating the relationship of confidence and success. Duek argues that confidence is an excellent predictor of how well you can do what you are already doing, but she cannot predict how you will react to new difficulties, and how you will perceive failures.

Therefore, past successes do not predict your reaction to new problems and failures, and your level of confidence also does not predict your reaction to failures. The bottom line is that only a flexible mind can predict your resilience when confronted with failures.

Destroy the frame

For me, this is very fascinating, and I believe that when discussing the impostor syndrome, this idea does not appear very often. This gives us a new and more useful framework to combat the imposter syndrome. Basically, if you have a fixed mind, every time you have to fight, you will really feel stress and fear. We are programmers, and our work consists mainly of struggle, isn't it? This is a struggle all the time. With a flexible mind you can fight with pleasure and work with pleasure on something really difficult.

And you know what? When your self-awareness is not threatened by one particular bug, it is much easier to focus on this very bug. You are not worried that you will be fired or called a deceiver, so you can free up your cognitive resources and focus on the task at hand.

Therefore: if you think, for example, that “some people are simply not meant to be programmed,” you can spend a lot of time and energy looking for evidence and confirmation of this, as well as convincing yourself that you are not the right person to deal with it. Instead, destroy this framework. Give up the idea of ​​fixed levels of talent and accept the idea that everyone can improve their skills by making efforts.

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