[aym62SAE49CZ684]

PG's distinction between persistent and obstinate is pretty much captured by the ideas of growth mindset and fixed mindset in psychology.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/growth-mindset

My question is always, how do you get someone with a more fixed mindset attitude to adopt a growth mindset way of relating to the world? It's so hard, but it makes such a difference.

[Willish42]

I became aware of this quite recently (on this site too IIRC), but it's worth noting that the "growth mindset" findings of the last several decades haven't quite panned out or been replicable upon further review: https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/24418/are-...

I agree the Persistent / Obstinate paradigm seems quite similar, and if anything for those reasons I'm inclined to be (obstinately :P) skeptical.

Less relevant to engineering etc., but I personally find a lot of "successful people do X, unsuccessful people do Y" findings, especially when presented as "innate" or "personality" features, are pretty similar to IQ, the marshmallow test, and other things where it's a frequent victim of selection bias for how scarce resources were in one's upbringing or cognitive development.

[riehwvfbk]

Not sure if this is such a great goal after all. Investors like PG treat people like racehorses: they have thousands to pick from when placing their bets. But you and I have just the one "horse" to work with - ourselves - quirks, inefficiencies and all. And perhaps we should just play to our strength rather than contorting ourselves to fit a gambler's ideal. Peter Drucker seems to agree.

Growth mindset is hard because it's basically selling a lie. There is no amount of effort that'll turn the average HN reader into one of YC's star founders.