In This Episode…
The last few weeks have been really useful in developing my productivity muscles. I have identified a few challenges and managed to overcome them. I have understood a couple of the core constraints behind what appeared to be a lack of progress.
Having sorted out the problem of not being clear enough on my goals, it is now time to turn my attention to dealing with a fixed mindset. In this episode I share my thoughts on this and explain what I will be doing over the coming episodes.
Episode Show Notes
00:24 – A review of key recent episodes.
00:57 – How I used a current reality tree to analyse the constraints holding me back
00:18 – The first constraint I identified was the lack of clear goals.
01:54 – The second constraint was having a fixed mindset.
02:11 – Why I think having a growth mindset is vital.
03:07 – The next steps in my journey to improved levels of productivity is to understand how to develop a growth mindset.
03:50 – I will start with Carol Dweck’s book “Mindset”.
04:09 – There are other references I’ll use as well and will share those over the coming episodes.
Edited Transcript
Hi, it’s Michael Tipper and welcome to today’s episode of the Profit Productivity Podcast.
Now what I want to do in this episode is explain to you the next steps I’m going to be taking in my journey to improve the levels of my productivity. I’ll also capture the information, guidance, techniques and approaches that will help you develop your productivity too.
Let me just do a quick review of a couple of important episodes.
In episode 029, that was my weekly summary of what happened the previous week, I’d spotted that things weren’t going well. I was letting things slip and there was a fundamental flaw in what I was doing.
In the following episode, episode 030, I looked at how I was going to understand what that was. I talked about the current reality tree, a process from the theory of constraints, which analyses the constraints in a system.
Now I used it for a behavioural analysis of my circumstances. In the next episode, episode 031, having looked at all the symptoms of what was going on and doing a cause and effect analysis using the current reality tree, it fundamentally came down to two main challenges.
The first challenge was I wasn’t clear on my goals.
The second challenge was that I had a fixed mindset.
I then addressed the problem of not having clear goals and I now have those, I’m reviewing them regularly.
That then led into another challenge where I discovered I wasn’t journaling as effectively as I used to. I fixed that with the IF-THEN planning approach.
So now I’ve got my goals sorted, now that I’m journaling regularly and now that I’m moving forward in those areas, it is time to address the next problem – my fixed mindset.
So my new focus over the next few episodes at least is going to be on understanding where the fixed mindset comes from and developing a growth mindset.
Why is that important?
Well over the years I’ve been working in human development and over the years that I’ve been trying to develop myself as a human being I’ve realised success or failure isn’t necessarily one of motivation. It isn’t necessarily one of techniques or strategy either.
The underlying, core principle behind people who develop themselves is having a growth mindset. It’s about developing their abilities and facing the challenges that are inevitably going to come when you start stepping out of your comfort zone and doing things you’ve not done before.
I’ve seen the importance of that in my own life. I’ve seen the importance of that in the work I’ve been doing in the leadership space over the last few years.
So that’s my next hurdle.
The next part of my journey will be looking at what a growth mindset is. I’ll be looking at the impact of both the fixed mindset and a growth mindset. I will look at how we can identify exactly what our mindset is.
I’ll explore It’s relevant to us in our personal and professional lives and how we can develop a growth mindset if we have a fixed mindset.
I’m particularly interested in that because unfortunately I realised I have a fixed mindset approach in a lot of quite important areas of my life.
I’ll share my experiences and also my experiments in the development of a growth mindset.
Where’s my starting points?
Well, the concept of the growth mindset was first introduced to the world by a psychologist from Harvard called Carol Dweck in her book “Mindset”.
And that’s where I’m going to start.
I’m going to have a look at that book again. I’ve read it once or twice already, but now I’m going to go deeper.
There are other references I will be looking at as well.
There’s some really excellent people in the development space who are running with growth mindset as a core operating principle to their success. I will look at those. There are a few other books I will look at as well and a couple of websites that I know are focusing on this really well.
So I’m going to curate all that and then share my findings with you on this podcast.
So that’s today and I look forward to sharing with you more about the growth mindset and how to develop it tomorrow.
Until then.
