How the Impulsive vs. Strategic Mindset Impacts Your Ability to Improve
Whether you have an impulsive or strategic mindset is arguably the #1 factor that will decide if you continuously improve or stay the same. Research from mindset psychologist Patricia Chen, Ph.D., describes the strategic mindset as the ability to ask…
…oneself strategy-eliciting questions, such as “What can I do to help myself?” or “Is there a way to do this even better?” in the face of challenges or insufficient progress.
Chen’s research finds that those who employ a strategic mindset make more progress towards their goals than those who don’t. If you are in this group of “those who don’t” employ a strategic mindset, it doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t improve, it just means you won’t improve as efficiently.
On the other hand, there are people who not only improve less efficiently as those with the strategic mindset, they generally don’t improve at all. These are people with an impulsive mindset. The impulsive mindset is one that can’t resist the temptation to select the first behavior that comes to mind. What’s more, an impulsive mindset will cause one to choose past behaviors even when better new behaviors are available.
It’s rare that an impulsive mindset is better than the strategic mindset. Typically, these rare moments occur in fight or flight situations and in situations that require instinctive reactions. Other than these cases, one must train themselves to practice metacognition. Metacognition is when you think about how you think and then use what you learn to improve your thinking.
Without using metacognition to train your mind to be less impulsive and more strategic, it’s very unlikely you will be able to improve at anything you do.