A matter of effort

One of the biggest things I learned in graduate school is that, for all but the most trivial of projects, there is a positive correlation between results and efforts.  It seems rather simple, yes, I know.  The more effort you put into something, the better the results are likely to be.

But in all my years of education up until graduate school, this wasn't what I learned from experience.  Maybe the assignments and projects were too easy.  Or I just enjoyed the work so much that I didn't notice that I was putting a lot of effort in to get the results I got.

By the time I got to graduate school, I had made an art of putting the minimum amount of effort into something to get the maximum result.  I saw it as a matter of efficiency. Since efficiency is output over input, reducing the amount of input required to produce a given output increases the efficiency. So, if the grading scheme is such that an A+ is anything between 85%-100%, I would aim for 85% and no more.  I would actually submit assignments, knowing that some of the answers were wrong, calculating that the amount of effort it would take me to get those right wasn't going to impact my letter grade. 

I cringe now, remembering this.

Anyways, unfortunately (or fortunately, when you think of the bigger lesson I learned), this strategy didn't work when it came to research in graduate school.  Unlike school assignments, where you can't get more than an A+, there's no ceiling on the positive result of a research project.  Every week, the brilliant people all around me who were putting their full effort into their research and presenting their results were putting the results of my efficiency strategy in stark relief.  It became clear that holding back on the effort was a flawed strategy.

It took me some time to accept this, though.  Replacing a habit acquired through nearly two decades of life experience isn't going to be instantaneous.  In addition to that, this habit was grounded in a pervasive belief in my schools growing up that if you're really smart, you don't need to try that hard.  Dr. Carol Dweck calls this the fixed mindset.  And it's not helpful.  I needed to acquire the growth mindset, that says that you can effectively make yourself smarter by trying harder.  Or that effort leads to result.

Anyways, inspired by Seth Godin's blog post, I'm going to apply this hard earned lesson and start writing regularly and publicly in my effort to become a better writer.