Good morning John.
So I haven't been super secretive about the fact that I've been writing a book, a novel-like
book.
But I haven't really broadcasted it either.
I was starting it the NaNoWriMo times of November; I started writing it.
During the month of November I got to 15,000 words; and now, as of June 26th, I can confirm
that I have hit the 50,000 word NaNoWriMo mark and I am not at all disappointed in my
slowness.
Whoa.
I hit the tripod with my knee.
The problem is that the book is not anywhere close to being done.
It turns out a lot of books are much longer than 50,000 words; in fact some of my favorites
are like 4/500,000 words.
So if I do this and you include revisions I'll probably be still writing this book at
least a year from now, which is terrifying.
I have no reason to believe that I will be able to do this.
It's nothing like anything I've ever done before, and it's difficult, and it's massive
in scale; and most of all, although this could also be considered an asset, I have this brother
who is not only a very successful writer, he's a very good writer, which is intimidating.
So stop being so talented.
But I was in the shower this morning and I was thinking about what we mean when we say
that someone is good at something; like a good mathematician, or a good writer, or a
good computer programmer.
There are two ways to imagine that.
One is that the person and their skill is a snapshot that somehow stretches both forward
and backward in time infinitely, which makes no sense but happens to be the way that I
usually think about people who are really skilled at stuff.
The easiest and most common way to imagine skill is to imagine that you're just born
with it.
The other way to imagine skill and talent is that while there may be some innate traits
that make the acquisition of those skills and talents more easy, really it's a continuum
and everybody starts out bad and can work toward getting good.
Psychologist Carol Dweck has been studying the differences between these two mindsets
for over 30 years.
She calls the mindset that skills and talents are innate the "Fixed Mindset" and the alternative,
that skills and talents are acquired, the "Growth Mindset".
Now there are two main advantages to the growth mindset.
One is that it is the correct one, it is much truer reflection of reality than the fixed
mindset.
No one is born good at math.
No one is born a good writer.
We aren't even born capable of abstract thought or communication.
The fact that I can have a thought inside of my head, and then makes these tiny little
carefully constructed subtle sounds with my mouth, and then you can hear those sounds
and then understand what I'm talking about.
That is a skill that took us both lots of time to master and I honestly feel like I'm
still getting better at that skill.
As a guy who talks a lot I'm better at it now than I used to be before I started to
be a professional speaker at camera.
The other advantage to the growth mindset is that people who have it show a measurable
increase in their ability to acquire new skills because it turns out that if you get stuck
with the idea that all skill is innate and that people are good at stuff because they're
good at stuff and bad at stuff because they're bad at stuff then you never get good at stuff
because everybody starts out bad.
As far as I can tell this is the main trick to getting good at stuff.
The ultimate first step is to just realise that skill and talent are not innate; that
all of these things come from hard work and that they are composed of a multitude of different
things like self control, and empathy, and like just building and re-enforcing neural
pathways over and over again; and those are all things that psychology has proven are
malleable.
We can build those skills, we can change those things about ourselves and the only way to
write a good book is to write a bad one and look at it and think of all the reasons why
it's bad and then make it good.
So I've got to do that, it's gonna take a long time but I'm gonna do the thing.
You guys have gotta do the thing.
John, stop writing so I can catch up and I'll see you on Tuesday.
Don't stop writing.
Bye.