[danShumway]

Excellent post.

A lot of this rings true to my experiences as well, particularly being defensive about time and commitments. Really, most of the authors points had me kind of nodding along.

On the other hand, I somewhat feel what the author is getting at with optimism, but I'm not sure optimism is the right word for what makes me productive. It's difficult to put into words, but I do agree there is a kind of strange attitude adjustment that has to happen.

You need to reach a point where you decide you're going to do something, regardless of what problems come up, or how long it takes. There are problems in my own projects that I know I'll need to solve, and I don't currently know the solutions, but I know I'll come up with solutions for them, and whatever I need to do to pragmatically solve them will just need to happen. It's less about me feeling confident in myself, and more just saying, "well, I care about the outcome, and I don't care what I need to figure out in order to get there." I know I'll put in the time, or find the resources, or learn, or give up whatever I need to give up to make it happen.

I don't know if I'd call that optimism though. It almost feels a bit more like stubbornness, or defiance. It's not just an assumption that things are going to work out.

[Swizec]

I believe the word you’re looking for is “grit”. Gritiness has also been shown to be the greatest predictor of success.

> Grit in psychology is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual's perseverance of effort combined with the passion for a particular long-term goal or end state (a powerful motivation to achieve an objective). This perseverance of effort promotes the overcoming of obstacles or challenges that lie on the path to accomplishment and serves as a driving force in achievement realization.

[pure-awesome]

I know you're just quoting Wikipedia here, but any idea what does "non-cognitive" mean in this context? What are some examples of cognitive and non-cognitive traits and why does grit fall into the latter category?

[michannne]

My understanding: it's behavioral, you don't need to have a certain level of intelligence to have grit

[Swizec]

It’s a character trait, not a cognitive skill. Still learnable of course, but it’s more about managing emotions than thinking.

[w0utert]

In my own experience there is a very strong feedback-loop effect attached to the idea of staying optimistic about progress and not getting put off by all the problems you can see in the future.

I've realized on many occasions that I was being put off spending time on projects because of all the stuff I could think of that would take even more time, all the difficult problems I could already see or was sure to find along the way. It's paralyzing. But the effect of crossing off items on the eternal to-do list, the sense of progress, is strong enough to keep me going.

Maybe that's what the author describes as 'optimism': not getting paralyzed by bears down the road, so you can keep the positive feedback from progress going?