Once You Realize Hard Work is Not Enough Use This Mindset
I always try to make it clear to my clients that although working your hardest is important, it’s not the most important thing. In other words, you are still doing the bare minimum when you are working your hardest. While that’s a sobering thought, it’s simply a fact.
As I wrote earlier this week, there comes a time when working hard stops working. It’s at this point when you must keep going with your hard work, but also invest in your mental skills. I’m sure you’ve heard the old cliché work smarter, not harder. Well, that cliché is bad advice. Instead, the best advice is to work smarter at working harder.
To do this you must use the strategic mindset. There was a recent study analyzing the strategic mindset released by a group of psychology professors. The research group was led by Patricia Chen, Ph.D., an assistant professor of social psychology at the National University of Singapore. Notably, the research group includes contributions from Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., who many regard as the preeminent expert on mindset.
The conclusion of this research is straightforward. Simply stated, Chen’s research finds that those who employ a strategic mindset make more progress towards their goals than those who don’t. The research concludes with the following summation:
Our three studies pointed toward the role of a strategic mindset. Across the three studies and 864 participants, this mindset predicted people’s tendency to generate and apply metacognitive strategies as they pursued challenging goals. Moreover, the more people reported employing such strategic behavior during goal pursuit, the more progress they actually made toward achieving their goals across different domains of life. These included students’ college grade point averages (Study 1), adults’ professional, educational, health, and fitness goals (Study 2), and performance on a novel task (Study 3). Thus, as we hypothesized, a strategic mindset indirectly predicted goal achievement.
In addition to this conclusion, I think it’s important to note the types of questions those with the strategic mindset ask themselves. The research specifically points to one’s ability to question themselves as a key indicator of having a strategic mindset. Furthermore, the research also suggest that people can be taught how to ask themselves questions and in turn learn to apply the strategic mindset.
Making Hard Work More Effective
Within the notes of the research study, there are seven specific types of questions those with the strategic mindset used to make their hard work more effective. These questions are not by any means comprehensive of the possibilities as they only represent a type of question. However, they are exactly what you need as a starting point once you realize working hard is not enough.
I suggest using this list below as a simple reference to keep in your back pocket. Having a primer list of questions to help you practically apply the idea of how to make your hard work more effective can be a game changer. Especially when stuck or when facing a decrease in progress.
- What can I do that’s within my control to improve faster?
- Is there a way to make a small change so I can do this even better?
- How else can I improve by taking a completely different approach?
- What can I do that’s within my control to help myself master the concepts giving me the most trouble?
- How can I be more effective in my preparation or execution?
- How can I keep track of how effective my approach is going forward?
- What can I do differently right now that will help me in the future?