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Breaking Through Learning Obstacles: Dismiss Your Learning Myths, with Barbara Oakley, Professor of Engineering, Oakland University, and Author, Mindshift
Imposter Syndrome
When you’re learning something new your tendency is to think I’m an imposter. I’m just kind of a fake. I’m not nearly as good as all these other people who are very far ahead of me in working on whatever your trying to get started working on. And this is one of the best, best traits you could have. Embrace your inner imposter. Because what the imposter syndrome does, that feeling that you’re a fake and you’re not as good as everyone else is it allows you to open your beginner’s mind so you start looking at things with a more open and receptive way. Because, well, part of it is you’re really unsure of yourself and so you’re really paying attention and really listening. People who approach a new discipline with, you know, I’m just really confident I can do this which is often the message we hear from society – you should be confident about yourself and your skills and so forth. It can close you off to sort of correcting your mistakes and being humble and approaching things almost from a lower perspective than you might think you have to start at just because if you start rally low, really humble you really get the background that you need in order to excel and achieve at whatever you want to excel and achieve at.
Slow Thinker
When it comes to learning something it almost seems like there’s two types of learners. One of them is what I might term a racecar learner. They’ve got these racecar brains. They get there really fast. And the other is more like a hiker. A hiker gets to the finish line but much, much more slowly. Think about it this way. You know it’s depressing if you’re a slow thinker to look at these fast thinkers, racecar brains, and realize they can get anywhere much more quickly than you. But think about what a hiker experiences as opposed to the racecar driver. The racecar driver moves really fast, gets to the finish line. Everything’s a blur. The hiker can reach out, they can touch the leaves on the trees. They can see the little rabbit trails. They can smell the air, hear the birds. Completely different experience and in some ways far richer and deeper. So it can help you sometimes if you’re a slow thinker and you think oh, there’s nothing in it for me. I’m not as fast as these other people. You can sometimes see things that those really, really fast thinkers miss just because you’re looking more deeply.