The 1% Download

How to manage the emotional component of learning to motivate the work and minimize the quit

by Walter Oden

Introduction:

Coaching children is a blessing of my full-time job.  Coaching parents is also part of the job description.  Learning is more than a hobby of mine.  As a full-time professional coach, I must be obsessed with the process.  Over the years, I have discovered there is rarely an “always” in the process.  However, there are some patterns.

The Talent Code

The science of teaching the long-term process has been well chronicled in groundbreaking books like The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle.

Through Daniel’s research, we were blessed to learn about Myelin, Deep Practice, Highly Talented Pockets and Chunking. The details matter.  Yet, no matter how much valuable material a book like this contains, the public just can’t help themselves.  What do people remember the most? 10 years, 10,000 hours.

Daniel gave us the perspective of a reporter and researcher.  This article is from the perspective of a teacher and coach.  My goals are very different than just applying science. It’s one thing to go to work every day.  It’s another to go to work with a positive outlook on the process.

I do not want to reinvent science.  I want an easier to digest version to use with our students.  We also need to consider another equally important concept.  The “Emotional Component” of learning.

The Emotional Component

As coaches, nothing is more exciting than working with students with great attitudes.  Enter the other end of the continuum; A talented student with a bad attitude.  In reality, we can’t teach the love.  Our hope is to help students get to a skill level where a discipline is fun.

For instance, I teach tennis.  A talented tennis professional knows how to make tennis fun even in the early stages.  Ultimately, the sport of tennis becomes fun when a certain skill level is reached.

During the early days of tennis, skill development can vary greatly student to student.  Overall,  a student’s attitude towards learning these skills is directly related to many factors.  For instance, how do they feel about the subject matter? How familiar is the student with what is being taught?  This can matter when new topics or skills create stress due to lack of experiential reference points.

You also have external forces like parents and peers impacting the student.  Their familiarity, experience and attitude can vary greatly as well.

Finally, the expectation of results (from all parties) can impact the student’s attitude.  How does this student deal with error rate?

All these components wrap up into a category we will call the emotional component of learning.  This article homes in on how to support and coach the emotional component to maximize long period learning.

I have a case of Whiplash

A movie that seriously impacted me as a coach was the academy award nominated Whiplash.  If you haven’t seen the movie, do it.  Click the link to the left to get a sense of what this movie is all about.  Profanity warning! Whether it is music, sports, parenting, teaching, or management we have all seen this style of coaching.

J.K. Simmons plays a jazz teacher/conductor at a small college.  Miles Teller plays a young jazz drummer with aspirations of excelling like his idol Buddy Rich.  What transpires will hold you breathless.  In essence, there is a coaching style that seeks out “the one”.  If you are not “the one” you are emotionally expendable.

Most will agree this is not the best approach to coaching.

Error Rate

I  love writing about the concept of error rate.  How do your students deal with error rate when learning a “hard” or “long period” skill?  Some skills are by definition “long period” meaning that the sheer number of repetitions needed to gain familiarity will take years (not weeks).

 

Everyone is different.  Some people can handle the error rate, some can’t.  High level academic performers may have problems dealing with error rate in sports.  Why? They  are used to regular gratification through grades on tests. This problem is magnified when a student has done something a certain way for a long time.  Unlearning or changing a technique gets even harder when a student is competing regularly.  Let’s define “competing” as anything that has a score, a winner, a loser or grade attached to it.

Sell it

Therefore, “selling” the long-term process is part of the emotional equation.  Yes, part of our job as coaches is to sell the end game.  In fact, it is a major part of our work.  Students (and parents) can get hyper focused on performance results as a measure of success.  This type of student needs something they can grasp on to during the periods of high failure rate. High failure rates are a FACT during the early stages of long period skill development.  The goal is to help prevent their head from melting while making the necessary errors in the early learning process.

 Simplify 

I was presenting at a USPTA World Conference on Tennis and made a statement.  “My goal is to take complicated science and make it simple to apply”.  That presentation was about brain science.

Simplicity is essential if “science” is going to make an impact on students.  It better be simple, or you will lose them.  That means students (and parents) may not need all the scientific details.  Sometimes it is not the “idea” that matters, but how it makes the student “feel”.  How they feel will impact their practice mentality and their ability to stay focused on the future.  Academic principles don’t motivate all students.

Albert

What do people remember Albert Einstein for most?  Was it for his General Theory of Relativity? Was it his hair?  His hatred of shoes and socks? Maybe. Most people remember E=MC²

Out of the clutter, find simplicity  – Albert Einstein

E = MC².  That simple formula created more buzz than the theory itself.  The common man may not understand the complexities of warped space-time or gravitational waves.  Yet, this formula changed the world.  Everyone knows it.  It may have also spawned a surge in young people pursuing careers in physics.  Students are starved for simple concepts.

The Concept

We have all been there.  Been notified of a new Windows 10 update?  Had a bad WiFi location and tried to download an app?  Maybe it is a YouTube upload and it’s a big file.  It is one of the most annoying tech realities.  You start a download and see the dreaded 1% complete.

Most of the time, we just put our phone down and walk away for a while.  Then, we check on it periodically to see how far its gotten.  We get motivated when 1% has moved to 3%.  As long as we see it moving, we don’t panic.  We know it’s working, even if it is slow.  In fact, we are more motivated to walk away and simply let it finish.

The Human Brain

This is exactly how the human brain learns.  It is a slow download.  Then again, everything can download if you are willing to wait.  The human brain is like unlimited cloud storage with a really slow WiFi connection.  It can be both annoying and stressful.  Sometimes, during slow sections of a download, we may question whether things are really downloading at all?

You ever get to a point in a major update (like the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update) where it stalls at a number like 47%?  You start to question whether something happened.  Did the progress stop because of a flaw in the connection?  Is there simply a problem with the install?  This is how students (young and old) may feel during the learning phase!  Parents are also subject to this “learning lag” phenomena.

This is where our job as a coach becomes so important.

Patience 

If we are not patient, we often sabotage the download by rebooting the device or exiting out of the process prematurely.  We can equate this to periods of “quit”.

Therein lies our secret to this concept.  Think of learning “hard things” like the 1 % download.  Tennis is a hard, long period skill.  Playing an instrument is in this realm as well.  Learning a sport and playing an instrument are “large downloads”.  Be patient.  It doesn’t have to happen all at once.  Accept progress that is small. In fact, you may not even notice the progress.  Yet, the download is happening.

Your brain is powerful, but it can’t bite off everything all at once.

The tub is filling, but is it draining?

Another good analogy to emphasize (and sell) this concept is a fast filling tub of water.  A full tub is a metaphor for a lot of information we are trying to put into our brain.  There is only so much water that can go down the drain.  The drain represents maximum input rate our brain can handle.  That is your brain processing hard data.  Be patient.  The tub will drain.  In fact, even a slow drain goes down eventually.  Be careful, overfilling a tub or glass of liquid only gets the floor wet.

How much water you add to the tub is directly related to how much it can hold.  This is where the concept of dosage becomes important.

Dosage

Would you ever get a prescription for a medication and ignore the directions?  I know, just open the bottle and take all the pills!

That’s why it is important to sometimes cutoff new skill drills with a time limit.  The emotional component is directly related to dosage! One example from tennis is  introducing young players to continental grip skills.  Once we get to a certain amount of time, we should stop.  It can be counter productive to keep coaching a skill to get a performance breakthrough in a single teaching session.  Again, dosage impacts the emotional component of skill development.

We can agree that some students can take higher dosages than others.  We will address that later in the article.

How to use dosage in teaching

Here is how I use dosage in a one hour lesson.  I predetermine the topics and approximate time I want to spend on a topic.  When the allotted time on a topic ends, simply tell the student “dosage”.  This message goes well with the 1% download concept.  You ever see a kid hit their phone screen repeatedly if it’s not loading?  You can only get so much data in.  Put it down and let it download.

Danger Will Robinson!

As was noted earlier, we all learn differently.  I am constantly reminded of an unintentional emotional story I heard once from the great American tennis player Eliot Teltscher.  There really isn’t a nicer guy in the world of tennis.  I was attending the National Competition Training Center Seminar in Key Biscayne.  Eliot was recently hired by the USTA to head up High Performance Coaching.  During a round table discussion on junior tennis, the panel was asked “what motivated you to excel?”.

We heard lots of stock answers until Eliot responded.  “My fear of my dad”.  He went on to say that “my fear of my dad probably forced me to practice harder and get to the level I became.  Unfortunately, it didn’t do much for my long-term relationship with my dad”.

We have heard this story from Andre Agassi as well in his book.  This emotional component is a very real pitfall applying science and research literally.  Let’s agree the math on being world-class (10 years, 10,000 hours) is a fact.  This math fails when we try to factor in things like mental health and relationships with people driving the work.

Dosage has to be different to different students.  One size does not fit all.  A 1% download at a slower pace may be the perfect pace for maximizing skill and positive long-term emotional development.  Others can take more push.

Progressive muscle overload 

We are likely all aware of the concept of in strength training.  In short, it is a method of training which puts muscles in a state that pushes them beyond their normal breaking point.  Some research shows this may increase performance gains over traditional training.  You must be careful not to injure the athlete, so there is a lot of skill that goes into this accelerated style of training.  If we think of the brain as a muscle (neuroplasticity) it might work as well.

Capacity Training

Dr. Jim Loehr wrote many books making reference to developing a capacity for stress.   His key to success included adding just enough stress to improve the student’s tolerance for stress.  The magic is in the dosage!  The point of this section is to point out that “overfilling the tub” at times is completely reasonable if it is part of a bigger plan.  Getting the athlete used to having “too much information” could be an argument for better dealing with stress.

However, this may not be the best approach when learning a NEW or LONG PERIOD skill.  Could it be better to control the dosage and calmly preach the 1% download?  The answer depends on the student.

Almost done?

Another strange premise is when you have almost reached 100% of the download, but don’t notice.  Imagine a long staircase where the last step is so high, you can’t see over the top to the finish line.  Students in this mode of thinking may quit right before they are there!

This is like the 87% complete with a lag.  The student is stuck at 87% and thinks they have failed and it will never finish (or get better).  Remember, I talked about certain parts of a download that take extra-long?  It is important as a coach to be aware of this process and make the student know “you are close”.

I often see a student that is very close to mastering a skill in a private lesson, but won’t work on it in a group clinic.  This just stalls the download.  It is these moments that are critical to “push through” the lag.  It is even worse when the students are competing.  They will almost never work on a new skill while trying to win (nor should they).

This is why the 1% download concept is so important.  You don’t need a fast download if the student understands the concept and the end game.  A student can move the needle 1% during the week, but doesn’t have to move it every day during the week.

Partial Download

Apps don’t work unless they are fully downloaded and installed.  This is not true with learning.  It is way more like a low resolution picture becomes higher resolution as the download becomes closer to 100%.  That means the skill is useable long before 100%

Slow download doesn’t mean no download 

Milestones are both useful and dangerous.  They can be a powerful motivation tool when you are exceeding accepted milestones.  They can choke confidence and belief systems when you lag behind the norm.  Enter parent’s fear of their child being “behind” and you have a recipe for Armageddon.

This is another huge advantage of the 1% download concept.  Do you really care how long it takes to get to 100%?  I am specifically talking about students that are lagging in specific areas of academics or sports.  The answer is maybe.  School forces these timelines, so we might not have a choice.  Young tennis players are forced into timelines called “junior tennis”.  Yet, in the grand scheme of life most students and parents would agree that getting to the finish line matters more than the timeline!

If you have a seemingly slow learner, who cares!  As long as the download is progressing, you are headed in the right direction.  Don’t be influenced by other people’s download speeds.  If it looks like the download is progressing, continue to support it towards the 100% goal.

Moments of Suspect (The Shanks)

All apps crash.  It doesn’t mean it’s a bad app.  It doesn’t mean the app doesn’t work.  It just crashed.

I invented the term “moments of suspect” to comedically describe how a well-developed skill goes awry. Remember the scene in Tin Cup where Kevin Costner gets “The Shanks”?

This is caused by lots of things.  I could be you think you are at a 100% download, but might be in the 90% range.  Getting to 90% in the download process is often a time when you FEEL like you have mastered something.  Yet, moments of suspect might be the tell-tale sign you are still not there.

Moments of suspect are in every sport.  We have all seen Lebron have a bad day.  That doesn’t change the fact that he is one of the greatest of all time.  There is a natural ebb and flow of a skill.  It is a lot like a fully charged battery that loses charge without it being plugged in.

Usually, moments of suspect will pass unless you try to fix them right there.  Trying to fix the “Shanks” leads to the scene in Tin Cup.  Sometimes, just walk away from the skill and allow your system to reboot is all it takes.  Usually, your download will pick-up right where it left off.

Some Conclusions

There are no easy answers to being a teacher.  In a perfect world, all students would show up motivated to try hard no matter how they are doing or feeling.  I am convinced that you must have a feel for neuroscience to really maximize the learning of any student.  All students learn at different rates.  All students have different motivation levels.  Finally, different students have different emotional components to manage.

As teachers, we should be careful not to sell performance expectations. Stick to selling  learning expectations.  Remember, that 1% download is a big file.  It takes a while, but what an app!

Copyright Walter Oden, November 2017, all rights reserved.  Please see Global Copyright Notice on Home Page Sidebar

 

 

 

 

 

Five P’s to your Career

The Interplay of Passion, Purpose, Payday, Perks & Prowess

By Walter Oden

Introduction:

Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life!  This may be true, but it leaves out the concept of bankruptcy, homelessness and hunger.  How we choose a career is complicated.  Why we stay in a career is equally complicated.  Choosing to leave one career for another may take a more detailed analysis.  This article proposes such an analysis.

Why the 5 P’s?

If you ever decided to consider another career, you know what happens.  As you are scanning the job sites, you intend to look at careers outside your current business.  Then it happens.  You find yourself getting scared and go right back to the search words in areas you have experience.  We all know why this happens.  Leaving your comfort zone is a little frightening.  Especially when you have a family to support.

Then it hit me.  What we need to do is take an organized look at our career. What if we could categorize each job or career in terms of 5 categories?

Work & Sleep

We have all heard that 1/3 of your life is spent sleeping.  That statistic is pretty important to the mattress industry.  Well, how about working?  Here is some quick math:

Years working:  Age 21-67 = 46 years

Percent of day working:  9/24 = 37.5% * 6/7 days = 32%

That means for about 46 years, your job will be at least a third of your life.  In fact, if you assume you are sleeping about 6 hours per night your job is 50% of your awake hours!  The lesson:  You better like your job.  Which brings me to what “like” means.

You better have the right balance of Passion, Purpose, Payday, Perks & use of Prowess

Passion (Love)

What is your passion?  I like beer and cheese.  Is that a passion?  Probably not.  Yet, ask the founder of Samuel Adams.  He probably considers great beer his passion.  I think a passion is something you choose to do obsessively for unknown reasons.

One of my lifetime passions has been tennis.  I hit my first tennis ball at age 11 against a wall.  I can’t fully explain why I had to do that every day.  I would ride my skateboard down to McKinley Elementary (later Lincoln Junior High) and hit against the wall for hours.  Once I learned to play the game on a tennis court that became hundreds of sets per year.

Passions can become careers.  I am a great example of that.  Is that always the right path?

Purpose (Responsibility)

Purpose is often confused with Passion.  Yet, they have nuanced differences.  For example, tennis may not be my purpose.  Often, we may not know our purpose at the time we are pursuing it.  Sometimes, you may never know your purpose.  Perhaps only outside observers know your purpose in the world.  In other cases, only history will be able to judge your purpose.

Some people might connect the concept of purpose with a higher power.  For instance, only GOD knows your real purpose in the world.  Purpose is the ultimate life secret.  “If I only knew my purpose, I would follow that path”.  On the other hand, purpose is sometimes external to career.  Most people would agree taking care of their family would be ranked high on the purpose list.  When that is the case, it impacts your career decisions.  In fact, we are often sacrificing our own passions based on purpose.

One final note.  Some of us make “purpose” the only goal.  Saint Mother Theresa comes to mind.  She might even call her commitment to alleviating the suffering of people her “passion”.  If you have found both your purpose and passion, nothing else may matter.

Payday (Coin)

It is too bad.  We live in society that defines success by one metric; How much money do you make.  In fact, we can’t help ourselves.  We look up to the rich.  We don’t even do it consciously.  I think we can all agree that we don’t want to judge people by their wealth.  Yet, we do treat people differently based on their economic stature.

Let’s assume you are at a cocktail party with the President of a Fortune 500 company and a Starbuck’s Barista.  You will have a very different initial conversation.  Once you get to know someone, the economics don’t matter in a relationship.

To some people, payday is how they keep score.  The higher the payday (or stack), the more you are winning.  Chasing the “payday” is a goal into its own.  I work with children for a living.  Sometimes I ask them what are your life goals?  Yes, I do goal setting with my students.  Life goals matter.  I am very concerned when I hear “I want to be rich”.  In fact, this is fairly common in my circles.  That means they have been sold the concept “You are only a success if you are rich”.

Yet, seeking the big payday is not always bad.  Why?  The alternative.  I have known people that grew up very poor.  The daily struggle to eat and have housing made chasing the payday a reasonable life goal.  Have you ever heard the story of Jim Carrey about being homeless with his family?

When you hear these stories you understand why people want to have money.  Also, there are famous people that made/make a huge impact in the world because they had money.  JD Rockefeller and Bill Gates are just a couple of examples.  That real impact to society (purpose) would not have been possible without them chasing their payday.

So, maybe the key to this discussion is why do you want a payday?  Is it to live the life of a celebrity?  I just loved the show Entourage.  The premise of the show was 4 kids growing up poor in Queens, New York.

Their goal was to become rich and famous and take each other along for the ride.  Every day was a party.  Yes, a big payday makes that life possible.

There is also a self-worth factor.  We liken respect with wealth.  I will be looked up to or respected if I am wealthy.  Some people equate happiness with “payday” or wealth.  Seeking the payday is not necessarily bad.  But, it does have its pitfalls.  We will discuss this later.

All these questions connected with “Payday” are nuanced and connected with our other P’s in the analysis.

Perks (Lifestyle)

Perks can certainly be the obvious extras of a job.  Healthcare, bonuses, company car are all perks of a career.  But that is not what I am talking about.  I am talking about the stuff that makes your life better.  It might be that you have people at your work that have lots of Indians and Cavs tickets they give away to you.  It might be you have a lot of flexible time.  In other words, your job allows you to come and go as you see fit.  That might let you to attend your kid’s baseball games in the afternoon.  Some jobs might be low in payday, but high in perks.  Maybe you get to work from home.  The opposite might be also be true.  A job could be really high in payday and low in perks.  The final analysis is rating all five P’s in these terms.

Prowess (Skill)

Prowess is our current skills sets.  It may be something we trained to do.  It could be our formal education.  This is a dangerous P.  If I spent 20 years in retail consulting, it is hard to look for a career outside that skill set.

The problem is that skill sets are used to determine employability.  In some cases, they can set you up for the job you really want.  A story that comes to mind is Harrison Ford.  In his early career, he was a self-taught carpenter.  He learned these skills as a young actor to pay his bills.  He took all sorts of jobs within entertainment as a carpenter.  He was even a stage hand for the Doors!  This eventually got him introduced him to George Lucas.  He was given a small role in American Graffiti.  Yet, he was still being hired as a carpenter.  In fact, even after American Graffiti, George Lucas hired Ford as a carpenter to expand his office.

He got additional small roles in some of George Lucas’ next films until that famous day.  Ford was finally hired by George to read lines opposite actors auditioning for Star Wars.  George finally noticed, “this guy could be my Han Solo.”

So, the key to this category is that we all have a variety of skills sets.  Sometimes, those skills are connected with our career.  Sometimes they are not.  Is your current career simply using your skills without having huge passion, purpose or perks?  Prowess matters, but use it wisely.  Harrison Ford successfully pivoted a skill into a passion and purpose.

The Paradox (The Hidden 6th P)

I have been lucky enough to live in two very different career worlds.  My initial career was a CPA in a large multinational firm.  My second career was pursuing my passion for tennis.  I am careful to refer to tennis as a “Passion”.  Tennis is not my “Purpose” in life.  That is yet to be determined.  I would also not consider it my “Payday”.  Yes, I get paid.  Although, each year varies with the economic wind.  Clearly, I chose the passion as the priority.

You might argue my job is high in perks.  Relationships are strong and familiar.  My friendships are pure and honest.  I teach children and adults to love something healthy.  I essentially have become a part of many families.  I consider this a tremendous perk.

On the other hand, there are times the economic pressure can make this career difficult to sustain.  There is not a year that I don’t consider chasing the “payday”.  In fact, I question the validity of prioritizing my “passion” in place of my “purpose”.  I believe my “purpose” is to be a good husband and father.  Therefore, taking care of my family must trump all other goals.  Being true to that “purpose” may require a bigger sustained “payday”.

For a final twist in the paradox, I would never have met my wife (or had my family) without following my “passion”.  I met my wife (of almost 15 years) on a tennis court!  So, my “purpose” was introduced to me because I chased my “passion”.

Some Graphs to Analyze your 5P’s

I am a graph guy.  I love them.  I created a couple of graphs to use these concepts.  The first uses 2 of the 5P’s.  I decided to use “Passion” and “Payday”.  In the graph below, you have 4 quadrants.  If you find a career that has is high “Passion” and high “Payday”, you hit the jackpot.  I labeled that area green for GO.  If you have a job that is low “Passion” and low “Payday”, I gave it an obvious red color.  The only reason you wouldn’t STOP right there would be the “Purpose” factor was off the charts.  The other two quadrants are yellow because you need caution.  What balance between Passion and Payday fits your current situation?

The next graph might be a little more useful.  It lists all the 5P’s in a bar graph.  The goal is to rank your current job with a percentage in each of the 5P’s.  Imagine getting a job that pays you over $1M per year for digging out roadside ditches.  Your graph would be 100% on payday, but nearly 0% in each of the other categories.  I included my current analysis of my career in tennis.  It might be important to set limits or floors in each category.  Maybe a warning sign would be if a single category falls below 50%.  It all depends on your personal situation.

Some Conclusions:

I think the most important point is that our graphs change with time.  Life events, age of our children, health of parents can all drastically change our analysis.

Since our graphs change over time,  a “P” may abruptly fall below a certain level.    For example, my job role was just changed.  Suddenly, Passion and Purpose have been forced below the 50% mark.  This can lead to increased stress, pressure and unhappiness.  The Payday and Perks better be high enough to compensate, or something will have to give.

Likewise, if I have been forced to take a pay cut,  you may find that no Passion, Purpose or Perks can justify staying in that job or career.  Honesty in this analysis is key.  If playing guitar is my passion (and job), but I can’t pay the mortgage it is time to get another job!

Thanks for taking the time to read this article. Your feedback is always welcome.

Copyright Walter Oden – October 21^st, 2016 – All Rights Reserved

Please review the global copyright notice on my homepage sidebar

Fixed versus Growth Mindset – Missing Something?

by Walter Oden

How work ethic improves all psychology

Background:

One of my favorite movies of all time is Forrest Gump  The first time I saw this movie, I was so drawn into “rooting” for Forrest.  It seemed that with every turn, good fortune followed Forrest.  The movie implies that a “feather” touched Forrest when he was young and that provided him with the “luck” he needed to overcome his cognitive challenges.

I have a completely different take on the movie.  I have seen the movie over 10 times.  I now see Forrest as a very talented human being.  Forrest has a higher “work ethic” than all people around him.  In fact, he was physically and mentally more capable of sticking to a process than other more cognitively capable peers.  The ongoing “joke” in the movie was that Forrest just kept working and trying “not know any better”.  His hard work and determination ALONE resulted in success in spite of what he knew or believed!

What is this all about?

During the fall of 2013, I attended a presentation at Laurel School of Shaker Heights, Ohio by Dr. Lisa Damour.  She is a high profile school psychologist and specializes in learning styles.  She is a colleague of Stanford psychologist Dr. Carol Dweck.

In the last year, the theory of Fixed versus Growth Mindsets has been published and touted as a positive approach to teaching students to be their best.  Dr. Damour’s presentation was nice enough to summarize the theory as follows:

Fixed Mindset:  How you are born is what you believe is your final place in the world.  You are threatened by feedback.  You are also threatened by others that are doing better than you.

Growth Mindset:  Wherever you are born is the starting point of your journey.  Your end game is after all the work has been done.  You see feedback as a positive piece in the puzzle.  You also look to others doing better than you as a model for your work pathway.

The link below goes directly to a site that summarizes the theory:

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/

A theory leap that “feels good”

The Growth Mindset Theory makes a Utopian leap in that it implies that by changing psychology from Fixed to Growth, a person will naturally be willing to work hard.  I think for some of the population this is potentially true.  Yet, that population was likely on the “bubble” as a hard worker.  I wish everyone was willing to work hard once they felt good about their prospects.  As we explore below, that situation may not fit the whole population.

The unpopular truth:

No one feels comfortable having the “Nurture versus Nature” discussion.  Yet, there are certain realities to genetics and traits.  Although no one has successfully isolated the “work gene”, I would argue it exists.  It doesn’t take a scientist to observe society and notice the difference between WORKERS and NON-WORKERS.  This trait is generally unrelated to socioeconomic conditions.  In fact, human resource studies have consistently shown that what a person is paid is unrelated to how good or bad an employee they are.  Yes, a good environment and solid upbringing helps.  Yet, we can all cite examples of people that are just darn “lazy” even if they are from solid families.  Therefore, we have to realistically rate people by their inclination to DO WORK.  This could be called a WORK INCLINATION CONTINUUM or WORK ETHIC INDEX.

I challenge you as a reader to rank your co-workers based on WORK ETHIC only.  How about the students we teach?

How to score WORK ETHIC

There are two ways of looking at this continuum.  First, how do you rate yourself?  Clearly, few people will rate themselves as LAZY.  On the other hand, you might rate yourself as a procrastinator.  Procrastination does not always equate with LOW WORK ETHIC.  It simply implies TIMING of WORK.  Yet, perpetual procrastinators will be addressed in our analysis later.

The most important observations would be how am I perceived by others?  Perception of others is an important aspect of reality.

The Work Ethic Index

A real work ethic index would be some combination a SELF rating and PERCEPTION of the PUBLIC rating.  The highest index would be someone with a LOW SELF RATING and HIGH RATING from OTHERS.  This person is always looking to work HARDER because they don’t believe they are working hard enough.

The worst rating would be where I rate myself as a HARD WORKER and others see me as a LAZY BUM!

Impact on Fixed versus Growth Mindset Theory

The “Mindset Theory” is a good one, but it may need to account for a WORK ETHIC INDEX to address certain realities.  In an effort to include it, I have created a matrix that may attempt to merge the theories.  The reason this matters is that addressing WORK ETHIC may be more important than addressing mindset!

You will note in my matrix below, you are much better off having a FIXED MINDSET and HIGH WORK ETHIC INDEX than both of the LOW WORK ETHIC INDEX quadrants.  Since I am a full time tennis professional, I make some professional tennis player references.

The Oden Mindset Matrix

Fixed Mindset/High Work Ethic Index (Upper Left Quadrant – RED)

These people just work hard.  They overcome any limitations created by their lack of belief.  Often, this person is very error averse and hates mistakes.  Yet, because of their HIGH WORK ETHIC marker, they address their belief limitations by simply “going to work every day”.  The results simply come as a result of work.

Tennis Athletes:  Chris Evert and Steffi Graf.  Steffi was well known for her love practice much more than competition!

Fixed Mindset/Low Work Ethic Index (Lower Left Quadrant – BLUE)

This person says “I can’t because of” a lot.  This person also claims to “try hard” with very little evidence of this reality.  It is generally “someone else’s fault” for their plight.

This person simply sees their situation as stuck and there is no use in trying.  Improvement is futile.  Pushing this person into the GROWTH mindset might help.  On the other hand, this plan will likely fail due to a lack of WORK ETHIC.

Growth Mindset/High Work Ethic Index (Upper Right Quadrant – GREEN)

This person is very END GAME oriented.  They see the “what if” and are willing to “get to work” to achieve this vision.  These people take mistakes in stride and see them as all a part of the “bigger picture”.  They will likely take losses and immediately get back to work!

Tennis Athletes:  Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova.  Listen to their post match interviews.  You will immediately hear their approach.  They are “learning” from their losses and have BIGGER goals to achieve!

Growth Mindset/Low Work Ethic Index (Lower Right Quadrant – YELLOW)

I like to call this quadrant the DREAMER.  They like to talk about all their big plans, with little evidence of action.  This person can have some great ideas and may appear to have a GOOD ATTITUDE.  On the other hand, without an injection of good old fashioned WORK, there will never be any movement.  This person is commonly called a PROCRASTINATOR!

Conclusions:

The Growth Mindset Theory is a really POSITIVE theory for learning.  I am very drawn and committed to positive coaching as a philosophy.  On the other hand, I have strong opinions on utilizing certain realities to improve results.  Sometimes the “truth” is more powerful than a “theory”.  As a final note, writing this article is an attempt to move myself out of the GROWTH MINDSET/LOW WORK ETHIC INDEX quadrant!  At least, that is how I rate myself. Thank your so much for your time and energy reading this!

Copyright Walter Oden and “I Have and Idea”, August 2013, All Rights Reserved.  Please see global copyright information on sidebar of this blog.