Friday Mindset #75

Welcome all and happy Friday!

Another week down - congrats for making it to the weekend. Put your feet up for ten, take a moment of calm, clear the cache, delete the download history. We've got some fun stuff for you this issue. Let's dive in...

Something to try...

We saw a terrific presentation this week. It was about the process of learning, and it finished with a quick but wonderful illustration of how learning builds on learning - each new learning experience is strengthened by its connections to what came before, so that it becomes more than just itself, but itself plus its foundation.

To illustrate this, the speaker used the 1p compound effect, and showed what would happen if we were given 1p on the 1st of the month, but then it doubled in value - like learning building on learning - for 31 days until the end of the month. (By the way, try estimating how much money you'd have if that doubling happened for that time period. We guarantee most of you will be wa-ay off. (Mathematicians excepted here!))

So we went away from the session and immediately built a powerpoint for our own students. It's here for you to use if you want. We particularly liked the way the presenter stopped after 14 days of doubling. 1p has become about £80 in the first fortnight. He made the point that compounded learning starts slowly - just as rewards accrete very modestly when we first decide to work hard in class. You might not be feeling that great after 14 days; but there are signs that it's getting interesting. Keep going... it's the second half of the month where the action really happens! Enjoy:

Something we're reading...

We're spending quite a bit of time - I bet you are too - with that group of students who've lost their way. This time of year is tough when you've only just been hanging on through term one, praying things will improve and then, guess what, January and February are even harder. It's what Paul Graham calls the trough of sorrow. He's referring to the period immediately after starting a company - but as you know, we see parallels with learning everywhere!

They're at that point (hell, maybe we are too) just before 'experimenting and pivoting', where they need a little help, some extra energy and sense of purpose. That's where this week's read comes in. It's a blog post by Leo Babauta (of Zen Habits), a website we revisit regularly for well-expressed and useful life advice.

It's a simple listicle that should make an interesting read with a group of students. (Whenever we find lists, we think about cutting them up, distributing them and asking students to summarise and present back - but also about ordering and prioritising with a diamond nine or diarising an experiment one-at-a-time. Old-school stuff but it still works well...)

This one's all about motivation - perfect for this time of year. Enjoy!

Portal Talk (with Tony the VESPA-online guru!)

Hi again, I'm back this week to discuss the VESPA Questionnaire and how to organise your cycles in the portal.

First some background: the VESPA Questionnaire was developed in 2016 with the support of the Psychology department at Manchester Metropolitan University. It's a psychometric tool for teachers to support the coaching process with individual students and to identify areas for development with large cohorts. The questionnaire underwent significant academically rigorous statistical tests to measure its validity and reliability (and the full history of the questionnaire and details of the academic scrutiny can be found in The GCSE Mindset.) 

If you haven't tried the questionnaire yet we are offering a free report for all subscribers to the Friday Mindset. Click on the link below to generate a full free VESPA profile and report. You may also wish to share this with a small group of student

And if you'd like to learn more about our accessing the VESPA psychometric for larger groups of students and our suite of staff and student resources, please contact [email protected] or book a free demo using the link below:

Schools and colleges who have subscribed to our VESPA Portal gain access to 3 cycles of the questionnaire per year. The administration of getting large groups of students to complete a questionnaire can be tricky - to try and mitigate this for schools we've created a simple method to organise the cycle dates for your questionnaire. There's a short video below to outline how we organise the questionnaire cycles, and how VESPA administrators can organise them to suit their own delivery dates, whilst ensuring the validity of the data is maintained. (I also explain how to unlock any students that become locked out of the questionnaire, if you have any questions let me know in the comments on the video. Cheers!)

Our latest offer...

Book giveaway this week!

We've got a copy of Scott Young's Ultralearning to post out to the first person to ask.

It's the usual drill; if it's the Friday you received this email and it's around 3:30-4:00pm, you're in with a shout - just email [email protected] and say 'me please!' and leave us a school address, we'll stick it in the post for you. (It's a copy we've read, thought about and digested, so cracked spine, well-thumbed, that sort of thing - don't expect a perfect, shelf-fresh specimen.) UK schools only, sorry!

And that's it for this week, folks.

Wheel-spin your Dacia Duster out of here and enjoy your weekend...

All the best to you and yours,

Martin, Steve and Tony

p.s. Martin's new novel The Second Stranger is out now and receiving some great reviews! Take a look here: