Concept
Process over talent
Process over talent is the rule from Dweck's praise studies: praising talent makes people fragile and avoidant, praising effort and strategy makes them persistent, and the same rule governs how you speak to yourself.
In the experiments, children praised for being smart chose easier puzzles, lied about their scores and lost interest when things got hard; children praised for working hard chose harder puzzles and enjoyed them. One sentence installed a mindset. Talent praise makes the talent the thing to protect; process praise makes the effort, the strategy and the persistence the things that matter, so difficulty becomes the place where they are used. Most adults were praised for talent as children and now do it to themselves, and the internal review after a bad day says 'I am hopeless at this' rather than 'I did not prepare the first two minutes'. The rule for self-talk is the rule for children: praise and criticise the process. What did I try, what worked, what would I change. The self was never the variable; the strategy was, and a review of the strategy is the only kind that makes trying again rational.
A real-life example
After a five-minute update goes badly, an engineer writes two lines: he started without saying what the update was for, and had not run through the slides. He fixes both, and the second update has a first sentence and slides in order.
How to use it
- 1After anything that goes badly, write two lines: what I tried, what I would change. No adjectives about yourself.
- 2Praise yourself for effort and strategy, never for talent.
- 3Do the same for the people you manage or raise; the sentence installs the mindset.