Short instructional podcast by Brian Johnson summarizing Carol Dweck’s self-theories (entity/fixed vs incremental/growth). It explains that an entity/fixed view makes people performance-focused (aim to look good) and vulnerable to helpless responses when challenged, whereas an incremental/growth view prioritizes learning and produces mastery-oriented responses. The episode ends with brief promotional remarks about Brian Johnson’s newsletter and membership offerings.
Chapters
You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another micro class. This one's on two frameworks plus two goals. It's inspired by self theories by Carol Dweck. Carol Dweck is one of the world's leading researchers on the science of personality, social psychology and motivation. She wrote the phenomenal book Mindset that we profile as well. This book is a collection of her essays that's kind of the bridge between her research, academic research papers and the mainstream mindset. Right? So it's a collection of essays which are awesome, densely packed with wisdom. Two frameworks, two goals. Now, most of us are familiar with the fixed versus growth mindset at this point, but when she wrote this book she called them the entity versus incremental theories. Entity is what she now calls fixed. Incremental is what she now calls the growth mindset. They're very different. The entity mindset is essentially the idea that your intelligence or ability in any area is an entity. It's fixed, can't get any better. Something within you that you were kind of born with. And that's just what it is. Entity, fixed mindset. Alternatively, some people have a view that intelligence can be improved incrementally. Any ability can be improved over time. It's not fixed, it's incremental. That's a growth mindset. How you choose to frame intelligence and achievement is one of the most important decisions you're ever going to make in your life and that you're going to help your children or colleagues or friends or whatever make, right? Because these two frameworks lead to two very different types of goals. If you have an entity framework, your primary goal is performance driven. Now that might sound good, but it's not. Basically, you want to look good all the time. Why is that? Because you think that your ability is fixed. Therefore you don't ever want to look bad because that would mean that something's inherently wrong with you. On the other hand, if you have an incremental mindset, your top goal is not to always look good and to perform, but it's to learn. You want to get better. That's all you care about, right? That's a huge difference. And what's interesting is that these two actually look rather similar. When everything's going great, if you're having a bunch of awesomeness going on in your life, then you're going to be alright. And actually you can deal with either one of these. But guess what? Life doesn't work that way. And the moment that you start seeing some negative stuff pop up in your life, all of a sudden we see a huge difference between entity and incrementalists. The entity theorists, the fixed mindset people demonstrate helpless responses to challenges. They're vulnerable. Not in a positive way, they're vulnerable and they demonstrate helpless responses. Whereas the incremental growth mindset people are hardy and they demonstrate a mastery oriented response. They lean into the challenges. Why? Because their focus is on getting better, not on looking good. Challenges freak the performance minded entity fixed mindset people out because it's a threat to looking good. Whereas challenges are actually awesome for incrementalists because it provides an opportunity to hit their number one goal, which is to learn. So so that's a quick look at the two frameworks and two goals from Self Theories by Carol Dweck. We're going to talk about a few other ways to dial that in in the next couple of micro classes and throughout our work. This is huge. Let's wrap our brains around it intellectually and most importantly, start practicing the tips that I have in the note and then we'll talk more about to bring the incremental learning mindset to life more and more in our lives. I hope you enjoyed look forward to sharing more. Have another awesome day. See you. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that micro class. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson. Me two basic things one our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome. And 2 our optimal living membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. 10 bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there philosopher's notes plus optimal living 101 classes. When you sign up, you'll get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes, which are basically six page PDFs and 20 minute MP3s where I capture my favorite big ideas from great books. The PNTV episodes are kind of a mini version of all that goodness. You'll also get instant access to all my Optimal Living classes. This is where I take all the ideas we cover in the Philosopher's Notes and boil it down to the most practical stuff you can apply today. 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