Gotten from a friend's public facebook page: Why Writers are the Worst Procrastinators. It does lose touch with the title statement in the last third or so, but hits on a concept that explains what I've seen some people do.
In particular, I've noticed (pre-K-12) that Philippine Science High School graduates entering college will coast their freshman year but often will get low grades in the second year. My theory was that topics in the first year are often repeats of topics in PSHS, so they do well without trying - however, they don't notice that the pace of college classes is at least twice that of high-school, so when the second year starts, and new topics are to be learned, they stumble because (a) they haven't adjusted to the pace and (b) they spent a year with a significantly slowed pace of study (if they studied at all). My suggestion was to handle (b) by giving these fresh graduates something to do (e.g., internship at a lab) to supplement or replace the first year courses (like in advanced placement, crediting tested courses) - of course, this set-up would require bureaucratic agreement between PSHS and the college/university/Commission on Higher Education.
The article mentions something similar: students that do well with early schoolwork, and how they approach evaluation (testing, real work). Two mindsets are noted: those that use evaluation to measure absolute skill level (fixed mind-set, where skill is based on talent, which you have or don't have); and those that use evaluation to measure current skill level (growth mind-set, where skill can be achieved through effort). I thought that I adhered to the fixed mind-set just before I wrote that out, but I realize that I adhere to the growth mind-set. Here's an aside: the perspective that is different for me is in how much additional effort must be given in preparation for evaluation - I believe that no additional effort should be added, so that the evaluation is more accurate in determining your actual skill, instead of inflated by additional work. Then again, that may be because I don't believe in turning up the notch for things that don't encourage me to do so - everyone puts in more effort where and when they want. Guess I was lucky to get by on things that weren't as interesting to me during the time I couldn't choose my classes.
To go back to the title of the linked article, people that show talent early often, through the mechanism of schooling and its evaluations, get fixed mind-sets that make it difficult to work in less rigidly-structured environments, and tend to self-handicap to pre-suppose failure or enhance success. Thus, a writer will procrastinate until the fear of producing something below a threshhold level gives way to the fear of not producing anything.
If anything, that self-handicap can be reworked positively (says Mark Rosewater, "restrictions breed creativity"), it can incentivise ("gamification"?) the procrastinator to perform.
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