The day we stop developing is the day we stop living. I believe that every day we are making a choice, whether we are aware of it or not, to choose to work on ourselves or to accept our own limitations. The future becomes far more exciting when we think about how we can use time to our benefit to compound learning and slowly but surely acquire new skills. This concept is explained in the book by Carol Dweck “Mindset”. People with a fixed mindset believe their current skillset and limitations are set and that it’s out of reach to improve. In contrast, people with a growth mindset understand that limitations are self-imposed and find ways to get better at something or acquire skills. In reality, no one has a pure fixed or pure growth mindset, we usually are a combination of both mindsets. Often we believe that we can’t improve in certain areas of life (for example perhaps giving presentations or socialising), whereas other areas seem more adept for improvement (perhaps something you enjoy doing, like playing games or cooking).
The beauty of living, is that we are presented with time in order to learn anything we want to. The difficulty of living though, is that we can’t learn everything at the same time, neither can we learn difficult skills immediately. Fortunately, if we consistently show up and put in the work, we can eventually compound skills. This all sounds very wishy washy, but this concept has been beautifully explained in the book “Atomic habits” by James Clear. If we aim to merely improve 1% every day, our growth becomes exponential and over a long period of time this can result in world-class performance.
Check out some nice blog posts for further reading:
- The Lazy Person’s Guide To Becoming More Productive
- 8 Useful Tips to Gain the Power of Building Consistency
- Atomic Habits by James Clear Book Review
Featured image credits: Photo by Mikel Parera on Unsplash
Science, Cancer and Medicine 