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A review by realadhdoug
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck
3.0
I read this book years ago and loved it. But as I’ve gotten older, developed chronic health issues, and become increasingly disillusioned with capitalism, the book hits a lot differently now. Reading it this time, it occurs to me how much the ideas here feed into perpetuating grind culture and conditioning people to believe that their value lies in their productivity. So, I don’t really think that’s super helpful.
But beyond my sort of ideological hang ups, I also thought there were way too many examples used to support her thesis that were not at all related to her research and were instead just popular figures and organizations that she assigned to “fixed-minded” or “growth-minded” after the fact. It’s like she perused the history, business and sports sections at the bookstore and sorted the biographies into good and bad piles—with the bad being “fixed-minded” and the good being “growth-minded.” It just didn’t make sense.
All of that being said, I still think there is value here. I still really like the idea of praising and correcting kids/students/team members/etc for their behavior rather than for their innate talent. I think there’s a lot of good in that simple takeaway.
But beyond my sort of ideological hang ups, I also thought there were way too many examples used to support her thesis that were not at all related to her research and were instead just popular figures and organizations that she assigned to “fixed-minded” or “growth-minded” after the fact. It’s like she perused the history, business and sports sections at the bookstore and sorted the biographies into good and bad piles—with the bad being “fixed-minded” and the good being “growth-minded.” It just didn’t make sense.
All of that being said, I still think there is value here. I still really like the idea of praising and correcting kids/students/team members/etc for their behavior rather than for their innate talent. I think there’s a lot of good in that simple takeaway.