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> The old way of doing things was to tell kids they are "smart" or "gifted," which resulted in many of those students simply giving up when they failed because smart and gifted are static qualities. So when a smart or gifted child fails, they simply weren't smart or gifted enough. I know many "gifted" students who never amounted to anything because they failed to work at life and simply expected their "gift" to bring them everything.

I was one of these "gifted" children, although the end results weren't exactly the same: when you're told "you're gifted", and things seem easy, you get used to coasting. I was a mediocre college student who didn't even have to try, and made it through college without really studying, but a low GPA. I never had to take a class twice to pass, even the ones that everyone else had to. It used to be, when I would find things challenging, I would get frustrated and give up. I honestly can't remember working hard towards long term goals, and therefore didn't feel very accomplished at much of anything. Most of my motivation was from the pure pleasure of doing things, another area that is oft neglected, to our detriment.

Now, I try to not to get frustrated, to try working things out, especially things I'm not good at, even if I'm not enjoying it at the moment. This is one reason it's important to get outside your comfort zone and push yourself. The focus on not just praising effort, but praising correct effort and offering corrective actions to improve when failure occurs feels very much to me like parts of the deliberate practice method, another area that fascinates me and helps me to try and break complacency.

Thanks for your openness.

I assume you've already done so based on a few of your word choices, but if you haven't already, I recommend checking out Peak [0], the latest (2015) work by Anders Ericsson. He's the researcher who came up with the "10,000 Hours Rule" as popularized by Gladwell. I thought the book had useful suggestions such as how to make sure you're achieving deliberate practice, how to get better when you don't have a coach, or what do for yourself (or as a parent for a child) when considering quitting an endeavor. Ericsson also shares reflections on what folks mistake about his research (i.e. 10K hours was merely the mean for one of his studies.), while clarifying the approach you SHOULD take as supported by his research.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise/dp...

That's really interesting, thank you. Did you find his techniques to be effective in practice?

Yes. In particular, I feel like I gained an improved set of questions to ask myself when learning and others when coaching that have led to better results.

So what college degree did you get? Just asking because I never would have been able to coast through Electrical Engineering courses. It was not necessarily that they were hard, but rather that some professors and books seemed to get a thrill out of obfuscating knowledge to make themselves feel smart, even if not intentionally. It didn't matter that I was willing to do the work, they just made it difficult to learn.

I had the bad luck of taking my first Electronics course with a really bad professor and really bad book. Normally I rely just on the book if the professor is bad but this time the book was also bad. I dropped the class and tried with a different professor. He was a god send. He was a good teacher and the book he picked was so good that the professor was not needed. I was able to learn just by doing the example problems. I got an A in his class.

This is waaay too common. Hence (shameless plug): studyswami.com

> If a student fails, they should be motivated to work harder.

Or rather, especially assuming they already work hard, they should be motivated to try different approaches (i.e. new techniques for studying or approaching exercises), and ask for help or guidance if they're stuck. Just working harder does not magically solve anything, in fact it may just mean you double down on a wrong/harmful method.

(edit: this also means teaching people they should not fear asking questions)

> Or rather, especially assuming they already work hard, they should be motivated to try different approaches (i.e. new techniques for studying or approaching exercises), and ask for help or guidance if they're stuck. Just working harder does not magically solve anything, in fact it may just mean you double down on a wrong/harmful method.

Deliberate practice: it's not just the 10000 hours that make a master, it's the quality of those hours.

> they should be motivated to try different approaches (i.e. new techniques for studying or approaching exercises)

Thank you. This is what my sister comment was trying to convey.

Thank you both. I think the reason myself and others had a hard time with Dweck's explanations is that meaningful effort is a much more complex concept than just being "smart." You not only have to try, but also evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts. Both of your comments are insightful on this point.

>Just because you put effort into something doesn't mean you will succeed, and we must be careful not to, as Dweck provides as example, praise a student who failed a test on their "effort."

Is is safe to say that a good way to instill and convey the growth mindset would be to respond with something like: "Billy, I know you put in a lot of effort in an attempt to learn this material and subject. Putting in effort in an attempt to achieve positive results is a good thing. However, unfortunately the effort doesn't appear to have worked out this time. What might we be able to change or do differently with our effort(s) to achieve our goal of passing this test?"

That last bit of the above response is attempting to instill that effort alone isn't enough and rather than working harder find a way to work smarter; growing in our ability to think about the problems and challenges we face.

Thoughts?

Absolutely. We have to constantly evaluate our efforts for their effectiveness. When we coach our children, we should coach them to be mindful of how they spend their time on their effort and not just the effort itself.

So, "10,000 hours" as the be all and end all of success?

Yeah, I can see the BS in that.