Deliberating "deliberate practices"

   

 

Oh, to be enjoying a lovely glass of wine, some luscious cheese & my home-made crackers with BFFs-of-my-heart, Carol Dweck & Angela Lee Duckworth!

Okay, of my heart AND my imagination.  But someday...

Angela & Carol twin up as my mind-set mentors.  Although they do pose a perplexing chicken & egg question for me - are kids with grit more likely to develop a growth mind-set ~OR~ is a growth mind-set more conducive to kids developing grit?  Do we try harder when we are tenacious, determined & hard-working ~OR~ do we develop those traits through being willing to try harder?

My phrase du week - deliberate practice, a term both Carol & Angela use to describe an "effortful practice" for improving our skills.  I just love that term.  And I love the thought of how it can affect my older friends, who tend to think of their brains as atrophying due to age.  Imagine workshops for olders on what they might find an implausible (but true) scientific finding ~ while our bodies decline with age, the cognitive abilities of folks in a healthy old age don't necessarily face the same fate.  

 
No one needs grit & a healthy growth mind-set more than people facing the rigors of aging in America!  There are few fixed ideas stronger than ones stating  - incorrectly - that our brain cells shrink or grow rigid or disappear as we age.  Hogwash!  Recent studies not only show that the brain gets on growing, that totally controllable factors like curiosity/new knowledge, exercise & diet can help all stages of "aging" stay alert, aware & active.

This is purely my own conjecture, not a shred of research or data to back it up, but it seems to me that the older we get, the more even the most expansive growth mind-set can flip to fixed.  And that is NOT good!  Folks in every sort of elder care facility - from upscale full-service "senior lifestyle residences" to basic residences to older adult programs - need to be ballyhooing "deliberate practice" activities & exercises!

 True - at any age!

Too many older people get easily frustrated & give up.  As tough as it is for Carol & Angela to get kids teens young adults to get over the inclination to toss in the towel, imagine how much harder it is for people working with the elderly to convince them of giving something a flat-out, genuine best effort.

Here's the thing that I don't see changing, not if you're 4 or 14, 40 or 80+ - the impact on our psyches of doing our best, putting out our best effort, no matter what the results.  Forget making mistakes - the older we are, the more we know they're going to happen, at least if we are even remotely alive & kickin'. But what we get, inside, when we know we've taken our best shot, that we've given it our all.  That's real gold.

And that takes us to a problem that comes with working with older friends - their families too often focus on controlling, limiting, eliminating risk as much as possible.  Disaster!   

Annie Dillard says it so well - "If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business because we’d be too cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down."

Too many people succumb to the idea that the best way to help our older loved ones is to protect them from risk, when the inevitable result is that we shield them from life & full-throttle living.  When the fixed idea is safety above all other considerations, even a semblance of growth mind-set ~ so necessary for a happy, full life ~ goes down the drain.

 

In-my-dreams BFF Angela says:
In Carol's work, she shows kids scientific evidence of brain plasticity—the fact that peoples' brains change with experience. Although at first they might respond to frustration and failure by thinking, "I should just give up; I can't do this," Carol uses testimonials from other students to show kids that those feelings and beliefs, as strong as they are, can change.

We're using the same kind of format to try to communicate information to students about deliberate practice, which is very effortful practice on things you can't yet do. We're actually developing an intervention and testing it in middle schools right now. We tell kids that deliberate practice is not easy. You are going to be confused. You are going to be frustrated. When you're learning, you have to make mistakes. You need to do things over and over again, and that can be boring. In theory, this intervention can change students' grit levels by changing their beliefs. I say "in theory," because we haven't shown it yet.

Teachers have so many good intuitions about this. They work on this every day: How do I get my kids to try harder? How do I get them to be determined, to stick with things? I'm really excited about starting a conversation to bring more people's ideas into the dialogue because I am guessing that some terrific teachers, basketball coaches, and guidance counselors have their own theories that need to be tested. There are probably going to be more ideas coming out of educators than out of scientists on how to help students develop grit.

~ ~ ~

Am tweaking that share just a tad.  Hey, if I'm bold enough to imagine Carol Dweck & Angela Duckworth as wine-sipping, cheese nibbling BFFs of mine, I have NO hesitation toying with Angela's share!  Imagine it slightly flipped to say:

We show older people - any age over 60 - scientific evidence of brain plasticity—the fact that peoples' brains change with experience. Although at first they might respond to frustration and failure by thinking, "I should just give up; I can't do this," Deev uses testimonials from other olders to reassure the aging & elderly that those feelings and beliefs, as strong as they are, can change.

We're using the same kind of format to try to communicate information to olders elderly & ancients about deliberate practice, which is very effortful practice on things you haven't yet mastered.  We tell them up front that deliberate practice is not easy. You are going to be confused. You are going to be frustrated. When you're learning, you have to make mistakes. You need to do things over and over again, and that can be boring. In theory, this intervention can change the grit levels  of olders elderly & ancients by changing their beliefs. I say "in theory," because we haven't shown it yet.

People who work with "seniors" have so many good intuitions about this. They work on this every day: How do I get the people I work with to try harder? How do I get them to be determined, to stick with things? 

I'm really excited about starting a conversation to bring more people's ideas into the dialogue because I am guessing that some terrific families, senior residence staff, therapists, care partners, expansive living counselors & creative collaborators have their own theories that need to be tested. There are probably going to be more ideas coming out of them than out of scientists on how to help olders elders & ancient develop grit.