Using “Strategic Mindset” — in pursuit of our goals
A study found that people with a strategic mindset tend to get better grades in school, achieve their goals and tackle new tasks more effectively.
When I was in school, one of the most recited stories was that of Thomas Edison and how he came up with the light bulb in his 100th try or the 3000th try. Other than establishing a special sentiment to the ffectiveness of milestones (I’ll get it right on the 3rd, 50th or 100th try, not 27th) this story was usually told to demonstrate that in order to achieve great things, you need to keep trying. be persistent. You can find many messages aligned on this belief of being persistent on one goal, increases your chances of getting there (here is one example of 50 such quotes).
I have been living away from home in another country for quite some time now (4 years), and having come from a family with very strong ties, I always have had a longing for home. The pandemic and the forced work from home unknowingly made it worse. I kept thinking about home and missing moments with my family and friends. I thought about every little thing I have been missing in my life, and so on and so forth. Having a strategic mindset really helped me get out of the personal world I had created and to see myself in the light of efforts, things I had or could do to test if I could tackle this feeling. Could I learn the language and make things easier for myself, maybe if I got out more often and did more things with friends.
The situation did get better, quickly. I started learning the language, making more efforts to meet my local friends and do things with them, also reconnecting with friends back home to take advantage of the online games that sprung up because of the pandemic as well. I soon realised that it's not the persistence of doing the same task that unlocks the success or increases your chance of getting a breakthrough, but by also learning with your persistence. Just by staying away I probably had a bad shot at getting over feeling home sick. I had to ask myself “what are the things I can do to help myself”, “how might I live my daily life differently to tackle this”.
Highly acclaimed researcher Carol Dweck and her team recently came up with an easy solution of how we can enable this “strategic mindset” in many spheres of our lives. In the recent study (A strategic mindset: An orientation toward strategic behavior during goal pursuit), the team set out to test a psychological construct — a “strategic mindset” — which involves asking oneself strategy-eliciting questions, such as “What can I do to help myself?” or “Is there a way to do this even better?” in the face of challenges or insufficient progress.
The researchers did various things to enable and test for strategic mindsets but one story that stuck with me was the egg yolk experiment.
The Egg Yolk Experiment (simplified)
People were led to a laboratory filled with a seemingly endless supply of eggs. Their task was the kind of thing that you might learn on the first day of a culinary school: to separate the whites from the yolks as cleanly and efficiently as possible. If any yolk entered the white bin, they were penalised.
The task was chosen precisely because of its surprise value. “We wanted a task that was relatively unfamiliar and challenging for most participants, which had clear performance metrics, and could be accomplished with different methods,” Chen (the lead researcher of the study) explained. There was no clear “right” answer — participants could strain the egg through your fingers or make a small hole in the shell and letting the white drip through, for example — and so they had to find the best technique that worked for them. “People were very creative when it came to figuring out different ways to do this task efficiently,” Chen says.
Before doing the experiment, half of the group had to read about strategic mindsets and the other group didn’t have to read anything.In essence, one group was barely now aware about strategic mindset through reading just 1 article vs people who might not have heard about the strategic mindset.
Sure enough, the participants who had read the article about the strategic mindset tackled the exercise in a more inquisitive and reflective — making more of the opportunity to explore the different possible methods and adapting their behaviour accordingly. As a result, they outperformed a control group by a significant margin.
A strategic mindset uniquely predicts how much people report actively using strategies and, in turn, how effective they are at pursuing goals across life domains.
As you approach whatever challenging goal you are pursuing, ask yourself, ‘What are things I can do to help myself (and others)? Is there a way to do this even better? “If something you have been working on isn’t going so well, can you step back and ask yourself, ‘How might I go about this differently? Is there another approach I can try to help this go better?’”
If nothing else, the research should be a useful reminder that our current approach to our challenges isn’t necessarily the best one; like Edison’s designs for the lightbulb, we need to be on the constant lookout for ways to improve. Genius may be one percent inspiration and 99% perspiration, but with some strategic thinking, we can save ourselves a lot of blood, sweat and tears.
Read more here:
- The mindset you need to succeed at every goal (BBC)
- A strategic mindset: An orientation toward strategic behavior during goal pursuit (research article)
