On why mindset is the most effortful part of a scientist’s repertoire.
This is the second post in a four-part series. In an older post I defined “mindset” as “caring enough to find out what you don’t know”. You can view that post here.
I was reminded of mindset while cleaning up my old archived files (a.k.a., my digital junk drawers) when I found an article in the Guardian that I read earlier this year (link below).
In the article, writer and professor of English and Environmental Humanities, Vybarr Cregan-Reid, argued that social challenges supported by inactivity, like obesity and joint problems, won’t be solved by gym exercise alone. We need to make our days more labor intensive.
However, as Cregan-Reid pointed out, as a society we have moved toward a mindset of making things less labor intensive. As a result we have engineered activity out of our day.
By draining the labor out of our day, think of the following examples:
Turning on your TV with voice control or remote instead of getting up to walk over to the TV set and turn it on and change the channels.
Using pre-programmed electronics that turn on by themselves at a set time (coffee pots, house lights, automatic sprinkler systems) and don’t require that we get up or physically go to the location to initiate the sequence ourselves.
Think talking to Alexa, Siri, Cortana, or Google instead of a walk to a car or bus and walking around a library, eventually handling the weight of an encyclopedia.
Now, I’m not advocating a return to the dark ages or old school methods. But Cregan-Reid has a marvelous point.
Total up the number of things we’ve made less labor intensive and you’ve got a fundamental deficit of motion that cannot be compensated by 30 mins to 1 hour a day in the gym. You’ve automated yourself into a sedentary corner.
The article caught me at a good time as I was just then going through a health and wellness reboot and this seemed like a radical mindset shift to me.
What if, in my routines, programs, and products, I tried to add a little labor intensiveness back in, rather than trying to strip, streamline, and fast track labor out?
Instead of auto-magical, what if I went labor-loaded?
If you’re reading this you’re probably thinking, “No way. I don’t have time, energy, money, enough working hours, enough quiet time, etc. to make that work.”
It strikes you as so radical (like it did me when I read the Guardian article) because it’s a mindset shift.
From a first principles perspective:
It’s hard to add mindsets to your repertoire because mindset can be invisible.
The idea of automating things and making them more efficient, faster, and less effortful is becoming so ubiquitous that it’s a good example of why, in principle, I think mindset is the hardest part of our repertoire to manipulate.
Mindset, and all the attitudes, values, beliefs, and narratives that go with it, tends to be invisible.
Mindset is ingrained, indoctrinated, assumed, and shared.
Without broad experience and exposure to many mindsets, you often don’t even realize you hold a particular mindset, or I should say that you subscribe to a particular mindset. It’s like a monthly mental cost you don’t even realize you’re paying. It just comes out, dare I say it, auto-magically.
And because often times everyone else in the groups we associate with (colleagues, citizens, family, friends, etc.) share the same mindset, everybody pays the cost and so nobody perceives it as costly. It’s just the done thing.
For example, in her book The Culture Map, Erin Meyer, who studies the intersection of culture and business, describes three different modes of persuasion that most countries in the world can be divided up into:
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Cultural Persuasion Mode 1 — “Principles-first: Individuals have been trained to first develop the theory or complex concept before presenting a fact, statement, or opinion.” [Meyer, Culture Map, p. 96, Fig. 3.1]
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Cultural Persuasion Mode 2 — “Applications-first: Individuals are trained to begin with a fact, statement, or opinion and later add concepts to back up or explain the conclusion as necessary.” [Meyer, Culture Map, p. 96, Fig. 3.1]
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Cultural Persuasion Mode 3 — Holistic: Individuals have been trained to “give more attention to [the background] and to the links between [the background] and the central figures” [p. 109] and consider the interdependencies, interconnectedness [p. 110], and surrounding impact [p. 112]. [Meyer, Culture Map]
Can you imagine the difference this will produce in a group of scientists debating whether or not a particular finding verifies a scientific discovery? Or even how it will affect convincing them to pursue a certain scientific problem? Or cause an over-reliance on one methodology, like theory, case studies, or confirmatory rather than exploratory research?
However, in order to make discoveries, you often have to shift your perspective to see new connections, perceive a missing assumption, adapt an assumption, or discard an idea.
These assumptions and perspectives lurk in the realm of mindset, and like all mindset pieces, they are, therefore, hard to notice. And as a result even harder to shift as necessary.
Depending on the culture you were raised in, now live in, or admire, it can be even harder to recognize that your mindset was partly acquired through acculturation (socialization via exposure to a given culture) and not evaluation (consciously and actively selecting a fruitful alternative).
From an applied perspective:
There is a mental burden when you vary the repertoire mindset applied to a problem.
So how would you put in the necessary effort, in practice, to expand the range of available mindsets in your scientist’s repertoire?
Well, mindset is basically about the fundamental perspective, point of view, or thinking framework you apply to a particular science problem or exploration you are engaged in.
To expand your repertoire you have to get better at looking at the same thing many different ways.
So as far as I can tell, all the research and my experience seem to point to three steps: (1) become aware of the mindset you have, (2) become aware of alternative mindsets you could have, (3) practice shifting your mindset.
Repetition and practice are key. It helps if you have someone to give you external feedback. It also helps if you can use cues and triggers to remind you when you are slipping into or out of a particular mindset.
And expect it to feel hard (e.g., fatiguing) and uncomfortable (e.g., hard to remember). Changing out of your default mindset will take more attention and focus than you usually need.
The goal is not to shift your mindset permanently from one focus to another. The goal is to acquire the ability to shift your mindset repeatedly, as the need arises.
The need will often strike when you are confronted with novel data, anomalous or insufficient evidence, and/or are working in a team that holds very different beliefs about what constitute valid arguments, reasons, and evidence, than you do. You encounter the last situation when you work in a group where everyone is from the same topical field, but different countries, or on a team where people from different fields work together.
From a holistic perspective:
Finding a balanced mindset repertoire for yourself or a group takes time.
This brings me to a last point about why mindset is so tough to manage in the scientist’s repertoire.
It’s called working in groups.
Homogeneous groups tend to share the same mindset. So, it can be difficult to perceive alternate mindsets when everyone is telling you the same thing.
Also, if you do choose to leverage a different mindset in order to achieve some specific discovery goal, you are likely to get more pushback. It’s as if groups tend toward physical equilibrium just like physical systems do. If there is a high degree of difference across the system, it wants to smear itself out until there’s little difference here or there.
On the flip side, if you are working in a heterogeneous group, responding to all the different mindsets can be hard to manage!
The trick is to understand and respect the role that each mindset plays in moving your project forward. And then have a strong core vision that keeps it all together toward a shared purpose (and here on InSci that purpose is always scientific discovery).
As a bonus, seeing a new mindset gives you an opportunity to add it to your repertoire, and having a team member with that mindset gives you an automatic source for feedback.
By analogy:
Acquiring and using a mindset is like an online subscription.
Now back to the analogy I used earlier, about mindset being like a monthly fee.
When you select a mindset to follow, let’s say in looking at a science problem, it incurs a cost as well as confers some value. You’ll be better able to see some things, but you’ll lose sight of others.
A particular discovery mindset should never be subscribed to as all or nothing. It should be assessed at regular intervals, just like any subscription service. When the cost it incurs outweighs the benefit or service it brings to you or your community, then it’s time to set it aside and pick up something better suited.
Knowing the range of available mindsets is part of the challenge. And deftly switching between mindsets is even tougher.
But the advantage gained from shutting off the autopilot and building your “embrace the effort” mindset is worth every coin you put into subscribing to it.
Why wait for history to provide the right person, with the right mindset, at the right time to make a discovery, when you can jump in and seek out the mindset that will get the job done, by you, right now?
Interesting Stuff Related to This Post
- Cregan-Reid, Vybarr. “Why Exercise Alone Won’t Save Us.” The Guardian, January 3, 2019. News. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/03/why-exercise-alone-wont-save-us.
- Meyer, Erin. The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business. PublicAffairs, 2014.
- Shah, Rawn. “’The Culture Map’ Shows Us The Differences In How We Work WorldWide.” Forbes. October 6, 2014. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rawnshah/2014/10/06/the-culture-map-shows-us-how-we-work-worldwide/.
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How to cite this post in a reference list:
Bernadette K. Cogswell, “Elements of a Scientist’s Repertoire, Part 2 of 4: Mindset – On why mindset is the most effortful part of a scientist’s repertoire”, The Insightful Scientist Blog, December 13, 2019, https://insightfulscientist.com/blog/2019/elements-of-the-scientists-repertoire-part-2-of-4-mindset.
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