5 Myths About Growth Mindset That Are Sabotaging Your Goals
Shatter These Illusions or Stay Stuck Forever
Have you heard about the term "growth mindset"?
The key idea is that abilities aren't fixed, but can expand through dedication and hard work. It's an empowering mindset to adopt, especially when you are looking to become a professional developer.
After all, you want to believe you can go from a good developer to an experienced pro over time.
The Growth Mindset Challenges
There are many misconceptions about what a true growth mindset means in practice. And these misconceptions make it look like a Growth Mindset is only about the “I can grow” attitude.
The problem with these misconceptions is that they will work against you having consistent growth in your developer journey.
How it affects you
These misconceptions will make you believe that the Growth Mindset is just a fad.
This belief will prevent you from putting Growth Mindset into practice and thus it could prevent you from unlocking your true potential.
So brace yourself, because in this issue we're going to expose the 5 biggest growth mindset myths holding you back from the continual progress and mastery you crave.
5 Hidden Traps Stunting Your Growth
Myth 1: A growth mindset is just about positive thinking.
This is one of the biggest misconceptions I had.
It is not about glossing over failures to make things look rosy.
Having a growth mindset means, you need to acknowledge failure. It means to:
Accept disappointments
Learn from mistakes
Understand that light at the end of the tunnel may not be coming anytime soon.
Commitment to take action through consistent practice, trying new strategies and putting in the hard work
Myth 2: You have a growth mindset in all areas of life.
It is impossible to have a growth mindset in all areas of life. You can only focus on one thing at a time. Or maybe two. For example, when it comes to cooking - I know I have a fixed mindset about it. It is not my priority but I am ok with that.
What that does is, it frees me up to have a growth mindset in helping other software developers which is what I truly care about.
Know your priorities and act accordingly.
Myth 3: A growth mindset is just about effort - if you try hard enough you'll succeed.
Effort is important but needs to be combined with good strategies, feedback, and adjustment.
Pure effort without a smart approach won't lead to growth.
You need the feedback loop going.
Otherwise, you will keep doing what you have always been doing and get the same results.
Myth 4: Once you have a growth mindset, you have it for life.
A growth mindset is a practice that takes commitment to maintain over time.
You can still slip into fixed mindset thinking, so it requires continual reinforcement.
Life throws new challenges constantly and at some point, you might give in and say - I do not have time like other people and so cannot grow more than this.
Or what I know is enough to get a good paycheck. I need to take care of other responsibilities.
This can also be, that I can never be a backend developer as I do not know the algorithms.
You see, it is easy to slip back into a fixed mindset
Myth 5: A growth mindset means constantly feeling inadequate.
It's about feeling empowered that your abilities can be developed, not a constant state of insecurity.
It is about enjoying the process of failing and learning and getting better.
The joy comes from the journey of learning and expanding your capabilities.
Every barrier you break is a gateway to breaking the next bigger barrier. So have fun breaking those barriers.
Action Time
If you have read so far, I will invite you to journal on these questions.
When was the last time you celebrated or rewarded yourself for persevering through a difficult learning curve? Honouring that "struggle" is important.
Do you find yourself frequently comparing your skills to others? How does that impact your motivation to put in extra effort to improve?
Describe a time you received critical feedback on your code. Did you get defensive or did you seek to understand and apply the feedback? How can you develop a growth response?
Weekend Developer is back!
It's been 6 months since my last newsletter, but I'm thrilled to start again.
First off, thank you to all my loyal subscribers for sticking around and being patient with me during this break.
I took a hiatus to focus on building the Clean Code Community, which grew tremendously over those months.
Managing it as a weekly event was incredibly rewarding but also extremely time-consuming. I've now transitioned it to a more sustainable bi-weekly format.
This adjustment, along with an intentional effort to reserve more time for myself, has allowed me to recalibrate and reinvest energy into this newsletter that I care so deeply about.
My renewed motivation stems from a desire to expand my reach to even more developers like you.
Why? I'll be launching an exciting new course called "Code Like A Pro" which will equip junior programmers with pro techniques in clean coding and design patterns.
So what can you expect from me?
Weekly issues are jam-packed with productivity strategies, clean code principles, career advice and more.
I'll be adding new interactive elements, and featuring your insightful comments and wins.
To start, hit reply and let me know:
What's one coding challenge you're currently struggling with? I'll aim to tackle it in an upcoming issue.