this is me trying to figure out and classify something which I’ve noticed over the years, and which I’ve stumbled into myself (in the wrong way). still discovering what it is and how to change it — but here’s how I see it at present.
the clearest distinction seems to be:
- one having the overbearing intention of pleasing the “teacher” (or, any authority figure, or “result-giving-mechanism”), of guessing the teacher’s password, and going about it blindly, through gritted teeth, and tunnel vision.
- the other has a much more calmer and wider sense of awareness. it’s primary intention is to understand. it looks deeper below the surface of the problem, trying to see underlying cogs and gears at play.
here’s a few examples.
obligation mindset
it’s that girl in that back seat of the class who always has the best grades. the one who has impeccable handwriting, and carries a large box of highlighters
it is that clique standing in front of the classroom door four minutes before the exam trying to push the last few facts into their brain. “mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. gosh I’m going to fail this.”
it is that one boy who — after the exam is done — goes to complain to the teacher that the questions in the test were too different from the homework ones
it is that NGO, assembling a strategy for their organisation, debating over whether to use one synonym or another for their mission statement, missing the underlying meaning behind the word.
it is the team who thinks their strategy is complete when they have a mission-statement written in some Word-document which nobody has really read.
it is you, frantically trying to look nice for your new boss, doing the task your boss asked you to, but missing something obvious.
it is you, spending two hours finding as many papers as possible under the keywords “sustainable investing”, later realising none of them are usable, because the boss was looking for practical investment advice, and you found 50 articles on complex investment theory.
it is you, banging your head against the wall on why this “meditation” thing isn’t working although you practice every day.
it is you, quickly trying 10 different bug-fixes you copy-pasted from Stack Overflow, having no clue what any of it means.
it is they, who have never had an original idea. Never went above and beyond. Never reimagined anything. Never redefined expectations.
curiosity mindset
it is the girl who never studies to remember formulas, but still understands.
it is the girl, who — in a moment of forgetfulness during the exam— reinvents the Pythagorean theorem.
it is the boy who has a physical reaction of “this can’t be right” when someone suggests the wrong formula for a chemistry problem.
it is the boy who has built up a logical chain of steps, a theoretical model of elements and associations which holds up and builds upon itself, and through which he can derive formulas and extend them to apply them in novel situations.
it is the girl who asks “but why isn’t it this way?”
it is the boy who asks “but why is it so?”
it is the boy who, when listening, thinks about examples and counterexamples for the newfound definition. Who finds the edge of the definition and refine it until it is mapped out nicely.
iIt is the girl who is frustrated at getting the solution when an explanation isn’t given.
it is the girl, who may not have the best grades in all subjects, but excels in a few.
it is the boy, who looks at a novel chemistry problem, and has an intuition on what the right answer might be.
it is the boy who gets lower marks on his math exam because he skipped too many steps.
it is the girl who gets lower marks on her math test because she didn’t use the “right way” to get the result, even though her answer was correct.
it is the boy who seems to know more about a subject in a few weeks than someone involved in it for years.
it is they who will do something special.
