Why would anyone stick with something they stink at?

But several academics have warned that the growth mindset isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be (3). Brooke Macnamara, a psychology researcher at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, is one of them.

In two meta-analyses published in 2018—combining results from hundreds and dozens of previous studies, respectively—she and her coauthors found that:

1. the relationship between growth mindset and academic achievement is “very weak”—so Dweck’s claim that students’ mindset “has profound effects on their motivation, learning, and school achievement” doesn’t hold water.

2. interventions to foster a growth mindset don’t really improve academic achievement and “resources might be better allocated elsewhere”.

In fact, in another 2018 paper, Macnamara and colleagues extended the warning to other popular concepts—like grit, brain training, or deliberate practice—that play up the importance of hard work and the “malleability” of abilities.

“By overemphasizing the influence of environmental factors, we may unintentionally hold individuals accountable for conditions, events, or outcomes beyond their control, including learning disabilities and neurological disorders. […] Likewise, if deliberate practice is the overwhelming determinant of expertise, why should anyone who devotes thousands of hours of practice to a given sport not become an Olympic gold medalist?”

If you want to become, say, Serena Williams and you don’t have a lot of hand-eye coordination or you get injured easily, “maybe you’d be more fulfilled if you found some other endeavor that is a better match for you,” Macnamara suggests.

It all depends on what you value. Several people I spoke with mentioned wanting to get better, even if they never get really good. “We need hobbies and activities that give us enjoyment and fulfillment where we’re not putting undue pressure on ourselves. It shouldn’t be about your ultimate performance if that’s not what it’s about for you,” says Macnamara. (the emphasis is mine.)

For more practical inspiration, I can’t wait to read (It’s Great To) Suck at Something by Karen Rinaldi, a manifesto for “the power of practiced irrelevance” and “busting down the doors of perfectionism, workaholism, cool, and so many other false paeans to true success.”

Rinaldi’s thing is surfing, which she picked up in her 40s:

“I suck at it. But, no matter. I have organized the last twenty years of my life around something that is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, and something in which I will never, ever surpass mediocrity.”

This resonates with the testimonies of my friends about the meditative pleasure of being out in nature or at the skate park, of not taking themselves too seriously, of enjoying time with their friends and family with no self-consciousness.

Rinaldi’s rules include:

“The thing you suck at has to mean something to you.”

“Do what you love without expectation of gain or reward.”

“The pleasure you find is in your own sucking at something, not in the sucking of others.”

And some of her advice for parents:

“Start small. You don’t need to make a big commitment or investment.”

“The beauty of finding something you can suck at is the freedom from having set goals that can cause anxiety. Appreciating this outlook will help you ease pressure in your kids’ lives too.”

“‘Mama’s going surfing,’ always seemed an absurd thing to tell my kids, which was part of the fun. It always made me giggle—like I was getting away with something. But everything I did afterwards, I did with more generosity in my heart because I had bestowed that generosity on myself.”

I’ll end on this quote from my friend Christophe, whose goal is kite-buggying hundreds of kilometres across Norway with a group of friends next March:

“I suck at it. We’ve been training for a long time but it’s really hard. It’s really a sh*tty sport: we spend hours waiting for the wind, untangling knots and falling on our faces, but then when we do manage it, we feel like the kings of the world.”