Why Attitude Is More Important Than Intelligence

People with a growth mindset believe that they can improve with effort. They outperform those with a fixed mindset, even when they have a lower IQ, because they embrace challenges, treating them as opportunities to learn something new.  

Common sense would suggest that having ability, like being smart, inspires confidence. It does, but only while the going is easy. The deciding factor in life is how you handle setbacks and challenges. People with a growth mindset welcome setbacks with open arms.  

According to Dweck, success in life is all about how you deal with failure. She describes the approach to failure of people with the growth mindset this way,

Regardless of which side of the chart you fall on, you can make changes and develop a growth mindset. What follows are some strategies that will fine-tune your mindset and help you make certain it’s as growth oriented as possible. Empowered people pursue their passions relentlessly. There’s always going to be someone who’s more naturally talented than you are, but what you lack in talent, you can make up for in passion. Empowered people’s passion is what drives their unrelenting pursuit of excellence. Warren Buffet recommends finding your truest passions using, what he calls, the 5/25 technique: Write down the 25 things that you care about the most. Then, cross out the bottom 20. The remaining 5 are your true passions. Everything else is merely a distraction.

It’s not that people with a growth mindset are able to overcome their fears because they are braver than the rest of us; it’s just that they know fear and anxiety are paralyzing emotions and that the best way to overcome this paralysis is to take action. People with a growth mindset are empowered, and empowered people know that there’s no such thing as a truly perfect moment to move forward. So why wait for one? Taking action turns all your worry and concern about failure into positive, focused energy.

Everyone encounters unanticipated adversity. People with an empowered, growth-oriented mindset embrace adversity as a means for improvement, as opposed to something that holds them back. When an unexpected situation challenges an empowered person, they flex until they get results.

Is Multitasking help to get More Work Done?

There never seem to be enough hours in the day to get our work done. That's why many of us turn to multi-tasking, which represents our best, noble attempt to accomplish multiple tasks. But it turns out that multitasking may actually limit productivity and ultimately affect your level, and your health. According to athlete and international and TEDx speaker Katie Brauer, "Higher productivity happens when you limit multitasking and stay focused on completing a task at hand. Studies show that multitasking makes you 40 percent less productive and increases stress levels."

While acknowledging the difficulty of focusing, especially at work, Brauer suggested that implementing a few simple steps in your workday can help you focus and make a dramatic difference in your rate of work output.

"Do not check your phone or email when you first wake up," Dietz-LiVolsi said. "Wait at least 60 minutes, so you are not jumping right into a ‘reactive’ state of mind."

Next, start your morning by creating a list of five people you need to email or call in the day. Start your day by working on calling/emailing [those] five people. I reach my top five on my list by 10 a.m. It’s my most productive time of day.

If you ask yourself ‘who, what, when, where and how’ before you send, you will eliminate a lot of the back and forth.