Friday Mindset #132

Happy Friday!

First some quick business: we’ve posted lots of books out over the last three weeks or so - if you were a winner and you haven’t had yours yet, there’s either (i) an issue with your postie or (ii) an issue with your office staff. Go and follow up.

(Except for last week’s winner. Matt - sorry, it’s been a crazy week and we only posted 80,000 Hours to you this lunchtime. Apologies!)

OK, onwards. There’s something of a theme in this week’s stuff: strategies for effective intervention. We’ve got a self-management planning sheet for underperformers who might need to step-up. And we’ve got three resources for anxious perfectionists who might need to ease that foot off the gas.

Hope they’re useful. Let’s dive in…

Something to try...

This article studies the idea of student ‘self-management’. It’s long, statistically complex and, we have to admit, a difficult read. But we persevered because we’ve had a developing interest in self-management since researching and writing an activity called Red Flags and Rescue Plans for The VESPA Handbook.

In our activity, we suggested students define some ‘red flag’ behaviours - ones that were leading indicators of poor performance, like: “I realise I’ve let the first two lessons of the day pass, and I haven’t really concentrated or contributed.” As an indication of disengagement, the red flag works to trigger self-management or self-intervention - that’s the ‘rescue plan’ part of the process.

OK, back to the paper, which references research suggesting self-management is an 11 step process. Blimey. We’ve simplified it here to four:

1. The student selects and defines a behaviour they want to change

2. The student determines a performance goal - a new behaviour - really clearly, and a reward associated with achieving that new behaviour

3. The student plans a ‘reflection point’ - a self-prompt for assessing current behaviour, (“It’s morning break - how have I done so far today?”) and reflects on their target behaviours, informally recording their observations

4. The student self-appraises, administering rewards or further goals if necessary

And we’ve turned them into a handout for you, with space for students to make plans. If you’re coaching, or you’ve got a tricky tutor group, or you’re mentoring a student who wants to change, or you’re meeting with parents to discuss a kid’s behaviour, this could be a useful way forward:

Something we're reading...

Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter, The Imperfectionist, is often a good read. In this particular edition, he poses a really interesting question that we think will be useful when working with anxious perfectionists. It’s this: “What would it mean to be done for the day?”

Burkeman challenges us to give ourselves permission to say, ‘That’s it - I’m done. Time to rest.’

At the start of his piece, Burkeman references the work of Dr David Maloney, and puts us onto this video:

Maloney is a calming presence. He speaks slowly, with lots of thoughtful pauses, so playing this video at x1.25 is a good move. Using it with anxious perfectionists is a good move too - his advice about negotiating your minimum standards for action could make a big difference: how much do I need to do today to feel like I’ve made some decent, solid progress in any given area?

Once you’ve checked it out, here are two other resources to explore:

1. This recent blog post.

“Perfect is a place to hide.” Beautifully expressed. Perfectionists cheat their future selves by shutting off the learning that comes from making errors. The short-term gain - ‘I submitted a perfect piece of work and will win the admiration of my teacher’ - is off-set ten-times over by the long-term loss - ‘Mistakes are information and I have far fewer than everyone else to learn from.’

2. A fascinating University of Singapore study, about which you’ll find a powerpoint presentation below. Hope it’s useful!

Our latest offer...

Martin’s novel The Last Visitor (‘inventive’ ‘thrilling’ ‘glistens with menace’) is one of October’s Kindle Monthly Deals - 99p in ebook, a bargain of earth-shaking proportions given that it’s a book that took nearly eighteen months to write.

Let’s work out the hourly rate!

No. Let’s not. Let’s really not.

Hyperlink beneath the picture you beautiful people.

And that’s it for today.

Hope you’ve found something useful in this week’s material. If you’d like to help us out in just a small way, why not buy us a coffee every now and then? We’ll put the proceeds towards postage. If you’re digging this stuff, send a couple of quid our way using the tab below:

That way, we’ll be able to swerve the offers of sponsorship we currently have - mostly from companies selling CBD gummies. 🤣 Cheers folks! All the best to you and yours,

Steve, Martin and Tony