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How to Achieve Competence and Create Confidence

July 20, 2018 / Oskar Cymerman

The following is a Letter to All Teens and Their Parents.

“Competence Creates Confidence”

I heard that somewhere and it got me thinking...

What is Competence exactly? How do you get it?

Think about something you are good at, maybe really good at. Maybe it’s a sport like soccer or basketball. Maybe it’s painting, sculpture, or another art form. Maybe you’re good at fixing stuff or cooking or gaming or have some other skill you feel competent in. How do you feel when you do stuff that requires you to use this skill?

Chances are whatever your mind conjured was positive. You feel good to do stuff you’re good at because you experience success in it. This motivates you to keep going. You keep doing it and as a result you keep getting better at it. You keep getting better because once you feel competent you have the confidence to try new things. You try new ways; new techniques and strategies. Some don’t help much but some lead to small improvements. Over time, this series of small improvements adds up to a big improvement which you likely don’t even notice because you enjoy doing this thing you’re good at so much.

Imagine school being this way. You might already be a good student but how would you feel knowing that no matter what subject you have to take you can crush it? How would you feel to have the confidence that you can understand difficult concepts, learn them fast, and actually remember them months later when it’s final exam time?

You see, there are 2 types of people in this world - those who fear change and let their anxieties paralyze them to keep them stuck and those who fear change but decide to face their anxieties and grow as individuals. The first type stays comfortable but average (or less than) while the second type of people succeeds at school, work, and life. The good news is that everyone has the potential to be successful.

No matter how good or ugly your school competence is you can get much better at school. And don’t worry - you won’t have to drink the weird Kool Aid to get there. All you have to do is follow the same process that took you to the level of competence and confidence you have in the other skills you’re good at. Except this time it won’t be trial-and-error. You will have small, easy, and specific strategies at your disposal.

You already have the “school skill.” It’s far from perfect but it’s a skill and as such it can be improved. The only way to improve it is to change how you approach school - learn and apply new learning techniques and study strategies - things that help you do school smarter, faster, and better.

You see, after overcoming the initial anxiety of trying something new you will realize that it’s the new experiences and new learning that lead to an upward spiral of success. As you get more comfortable doing things outside of your comfort zone, you end up learning even more, being more competent, and feeling much more confident. This is a result of the “happy” brain chemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin your brain produces when you experience positive feelings such as joy, confidence, or feeling successful.

Once you accept and understand that fear-induced stress chemicals like cortisol and adrenaline are normal brain reactions to all things unknown, you will lessen their effect on your decision-making. They will no longer prevent you from venturing into the unknown. It will become easier to start making small changes to how you do school and other life things. Each small change will bring more competence and more confidence and reduce stress while increasing the happy chemicals. Keep at it and you will become more than a great student - you will turn into a learning machine - someone who learns and applies new things to make their life better every day.

So, you’ve reached a decision intersection. You can go straight, left, or turn right. Here’s what awaits you:

Straight: Do nothing. Keep complaining. Stay as you are. Complain some more.
Left: Try to change. Study more. Grind it out. Do somewhat better at school.
Right: Learn and apply skills that help you learn faster, study smarter, and remember more. Improve your learning skills in small, easy steps that make you a much better student and school much easier.

Decision Intersection: Which decision involves the most progress?

The Right decision involves Change, which involves Uncertainty, which involves Facing Your Fears. But, it helps you Achieve Competence which Creates Confidence.

But you already know that. It's time to choose who you want to be.

Good luck to you no matter what you decide.

And to Your Parents:

Being a dad I know how you feel about your children's success. If you're a bit like me you don't want to leave their success up to luck or school alone. This is why I wrote my new book Crush School Student Guide: Learn Faster, Study Smarter, Remember More, and Make School Easier, which is a workbook that contains a series of short, fun, and easy to follow lessons designed to incrementally turn a mediocre or good student into an advanced learner ready to crush the challenges of high school, college, and the world of work.

It is now 33% off regular price on Amazon. Just click here.

You have the power to change lives. Use it often so they can change the world.

Oskar

Hi! I'm Oskar.

I teach, write, speak, rant to make school better.

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categories / Learning
tags / focus, teaching teens, deeper learning, learning, teaching, smarter people, smart teams, lateral thinking

Want Smarter People and Organizations? Teach Lateral Thinking.

June 19, 2018 / Oskar Cymerman

“Formal education, in many cases, is so slow or out-of-date that venture capitalists pay bright people to skip school and start Internet companies.”

— Shane Snow, author of Smartcuts

What Lateral Thinking Is

You're driving in the rain. Someone must have turned on a giant hose up in the heavens because it is coming down! Suddenly, you notice 3 hitchhikers on the side of the road - a drenched and shaking old woman, a woman of your dreams, and a friend who's helped you out in the past. You stop and realize you have only one seat available. Whom do you help?

This is the story Shane Snow, a journalist, a successful entrepreneur, and the author of Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking uses to introduce his readers to the concept of lateral thinking. Snow gives the lateral thinking answer to the question of whom to help, which we will talk about later, but for now let's define lateral thinking as a creative, often counterintuitive approach to problem-solving that helps individuals and organizations achieve success using alternative, often faster or simpler ways.

This article describes how you can apply lateral thinking in teaching, learning, and creating more successful teams and organizations. While you read, you will discover how to apply the key concepts from the book Smartcuts to your life and line.

What Lateral Thinking Isn't

While learning how to leverage lateral thinking will shorten your path to success, it will not eliminate hard work. It will however help you simplify - to use what works and eliminate what doesn't. Rather than keeping your nose down and waiting your turn, the lateral approach shortens your path to the top by shunning the traditional "climb the ladder" method and creating an alternate, uncommon, and unexpected path to individual or industry success.

Win Small, Gain Momentum, and Pivot

Big goals overwhelm. Seeing a long path ahead with little progress is demoralizing. In Smartcuts, the author brings up "psychology of small wins," which explains that focusing on small but significant tasks and succeeding at them "attracts allies" and "lowers resistance." This builds momentum toward accomplishing the big goal, because it motivates to keep going.

Whether you're a teacher, a coach, or a CEO, create conditions to help your proteges achieve frequent small but meaningful wins by first breaking down a big goal into many smaller more manageable tasks. Allow them to get good at it fast.

But don't stop there. Take advantage of the gained momentum and pivot to something bigger or better. Once you get rolling create a new challenge. Find a way to use the new skills and learning in something else. This will spur creativity and engender new approaches to old and new problems.

Mentorship (It's Not What You Think)

Getting an industry titan to mentor you can be a huge advantage if the process occurs organically and you know the mentor before he or she mentors you. This is not the case in most situations.

For example, it's unlikely that Barack Obama handlers will encourage the former president to become your mentor even if you're an aspiring, idealistic future politician with big dreams. It is however easy - and smart if you want to channel Obama - to read Obama's own publications, biography books that describe his methods, and watch YouTube videos paying attention to how he carried himself in public and in challenging situations.

Shane Snow cites research in Smartcuts that formal mentoring is often ineffective. He suggests it's often better to track individuals successful in your domain and analyze how they achieved their success to speed up yours. Finding the right book or TedTalk or a Masterclass by the right individual can supercharge your progress.

Rapid Negative Feedback

Negative feedback does not have to be negative. On the contrary, if given the right way rapid negative feedback is more effective than "atta boy" or "atta girl." For negative feedback to work, it is important to make sure that it is situational and specific but not personal.

For example, you can approach an employee and say: "Your client presentations are wrong," or you can say "I see you give a lot of eye contact to the right side of the room and not enough to the people on the left. Did you notice some might be more engaged than others?" The second way of approaching the problem takes longer, but is depersonalized and specific.

A teacher might say to a student: "You are not helping your team be successful because you're on your phone all the time" and she might comply but will feel "called out" and judged as worthless. Alternatively, if you say: " I noticed you're staring at your phone a lot and I'm concerned you're not contributing to your team enough," you state your observation based on the situation while allowing the student to save face and correct the behavior without unnecessary angst.

And as for the rapid part, the idea is to give and receive feedback quickly to iterate your approach and keep pushing existing boundaries. Interestingly, admitting failure as opposed to blaming external factors leads to better results. According to Smartcuts, owning your failure will lead to deeper personal reflection and learning as a result. Blaming someone or something else prevents introspection.

Platforms: Teach Skills & How to Think/Learn

It often seems that formal education is a world of wheel reinvention. We claim our students must learn how certain theories and facts came to be before they can use shortcut tools that allow them to skip steps and be successful faster. In his book, Snow uses the phrase "effort for the sake of effort" to describe the "foolish tradition of paying dues" we have in education. Our students call this "busy work" and they're onto something.

You might have heard about Finland outscoring every other nation on tests, but did you know that Finland has more researchers per capita than any other nation and is ranked at the top in technology innovation by several studies? The book gives three main reasons for Finland's educational system prominence: (1) Highly qualified teachers (Master's degree or higher), (2) Teaching skills and existing platforms, and (3) Focus on depth not amount of knowledge. Let's discuss the last two.

Finns don't care about their kids becoming Jacks of All Trades as much as the U.S. Education, Inc. does. They gut curricula and allow students to learn to think and problem solve in the areas they care about. Instead of teaching everybody everything about math, Finnish schools teach students platforms such as knowing how to learn effectively, gain skills efficiently, and use problem solving tools creatively to work on solving problems in their passion domains. Rather than being hung up on teaching long division, students are encouraged (and mentored by highly qualified teachers) to dive deep and leverage the existing platforms such as computers, calculators, algorithms etc. and learned platforms such as critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity to discover meaning and create with it.

The lesson for the U.S. (and maybe other) CEOs is this: The bigger your company, the more of your employees learned how to memorize facts and follow rules. So if you want original thought and creativity, teach them to use the platforms you have, and give them freedom to try and fail. Or hire only Finns.

And if you want smarter proteges and organization gift them a copy of Smartcuts.

The Lesson for Everybody

To achieve success faster, find small wins, gain momentum, and pivot to bigger or better.

Learn from live mentors if you can but learn from those who came before you and knew their trade - it's all well-documented in books, videos, and other media.

Try often, fail often, own your failures, collect and reflect on feedback, learn from it, and iterate.

Don't reinvent the wheel - use platforms others have build for you and add on top of them.

Master the platforms you need - everything else is a waste of time.

You turn your hazards on as you see all three running toward your car. Who do you choose? It's a humane thing to do to help the old woman but you don't meet the woman of your dreams every day. And, you owe your friend...

I highly recommend you read the book Smartcuts to find out what the best lateral thinking answer is or Sign Up for my Free Newsletter here and I will tell you. Whichever you choose, I promise it will be worth your time. Thanks for reading and let's talk soon!

Oskar

Hi! I'm Oskar.

I teach, write, speak, rant to make the world better.

BOOKS & TOOLS

Buy on Amazon

CONTACT ME

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categories / Learning
tags / focus, teaching teens, deeper learning, learning, teaching, smarter people, smart teams, lateral thinking