written by: Trevor Ragan Learning is the Wild Card It’s game night. Snacks out, friends sitting around the table, cards shuffled. The deal begins. You peek at the first card – 5♦. Not much to work with. The next – 7♣. Then 4♠. Then 8♥. So far this hand is a dud – low cards, no pairs. Then comes the...
written by: Trevor Ragan Every morning after my workout class, I hit the Starbucks drive-thru. And every single time, I order a grande nitro cold brew. They’re so good – especially for the first couple of minutes after they’re poured. The nitro bubbles swirl around creating the smoothest texture in all of the land. It’s perfect. An absolute 10/10. After...
written by: Trevor Ragan You arrive at a lab and take part in something called a Behavioral Approach Test (BAT). Lucky for you, it has nothing to do with bats – but it does involve spiders. Fear of Spiders Pre-test The test is simple. Enter a room. In the back of the room there’s a large spider in a glass...
My fiancée is thinking about getting a 4Runner. For the last week we’ve been doing our research – scrolling reddit, learning about the different options and trims, arguing about what color looks the best. During this time something weird has happened. Every time we leave the house the streets are filled with 4Runners. These things are everywhere. One of two...
Ali Crum and her research team round up over 80 hotel workers. They divide them into two groups: The intervention group, who is told that the work they do (cleaning hotel rooms) is good exercise and satisfies the Surgeon General’s recommendations for an active lifestyle. They are given specific examples of how their daily activities, such as vacuuming, changing linens,...
Let’s discuss some new and exciting growth mindset research You walk into a lab to take part in an experiment. Someone comes up to you and says: “In a few minutes you’re going to give a five minute speech to a panel of judges.” Then they leave you alone to prepare (and freak out a bit). You plan your speech,...
Spring training 2023. Tampa, FL. I’m watching five players doing the most boring drill in baseball. The coach is hitting them grounders, they’re fielding and throwing to first base. Normally, during a drill like this, I’d immediately start swiping on my phone. But this time I couldn’t stop watching. One of the players was visibly more locked in than the...
A deep-dive into toxic positivity: what it is, why it matters, how to avoid it What is Toxic Positivity? Positivity can be great. But when it’s used to force a positive spin on difficult emotions, it becomes toxic. Toxic positivity is everywhere, and a bigger problem than we realize, especially if we’re talking about learning. Whitney Goodman, author of Toxic...
We’re a little over a month into our New Year’s resolutions. How’s yours going? Same. Don’t worry though, we’re not alone. About 68% of people have never completed a resolution. Rather than running it back in 2023 with the same strategy and falling short again, let’s adapt, adjust, and approach this differently. And let’s do it ASAP. GOALS & SKILLS...
To change a behavior it’s usually best to focus on our mindsets and environment, rather than just the behavior. Eat more vegetables = behavior Vegetables are bland and boring → Vegetables can be satisfying and delicious = mindset shift Making fresh, well-prepared, veggies readily available = environment Get more sleep = behavior Sleep is a waste of time → Sleep...
If our goal is to be fearless, three things usually happen: 1. We avoid things that cause discomfort (which is good if we’re in danger, but not so good if we’re trying to learn) 2. We put the majority of our attention and focus on the discomfort (why am I feeling this, how do I get rid of it?) 3....
A video essay featuring: Amy Edmondson We’ve all seen or been a part of both good and bad teams. But what creates this gap? What separates bad from good and good from great? How can we build better teams on purpose? In 2012, Google set out to answer these questions. They rounded up the best researchers, statisticians, organizational psychologists, sociologists,...
On May 24, 2019 I found out I had bladder cancer. Yeah, WTF? Even the doctor was surprised when he found the tumor. It’s super rare, especially for nonsmokers, especially for people my age. So far I’ve actually been really lucky. The doctors were able to remove the tumor. There has been no need for chemo or radiation, and the...
Pause for a second and think of a few things you’re good at. No, really. Twenty seconds on the clock. Ready, set, go. We do this exercise during our workshops. And it’s one of my favorites because no matter what group we’re working with, the same thing happens: There are five seconds of awkward silence. And most people’s faces scrunch...
“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” – Eric Hoffer Great learners can adapt, solve problems, work through setbacks, build new skills. Learners are resilient. Learners are agile. No matter who we are or what we do, becoming a better learner is a...
My friend is bad with chopsticks. He’s so bad that he actively avoids places that use chopsticks. On the rare occasion when we convince him to come out for sushi, he’ll try to use them for a second, get embarrassed, then ask for a fork. In the scheme of things is this a huge problem? No. But it’s definitely an...
When we see someone perform at a high level we love calling them gifted. We see this in professional sports, in the workplace, and in schools. “Gifted” is coming from a good place but can send the wrong message. If I believe I’m gifted, I might take it a step farther and assume that I don’t need to work at...
An essential part of growth is choosing to put ourselves into situations that involve uncertainty – to do things that might not work: Applying for a new job Asking someone out Learning a new piece of software Publishing a new blog post Sending in your college application Asking for a raise When the outcome is unknown, there are a few...
There are two parts of learning something: 1. Figuring out how to do the thing 2. Practicing it Part 1 is fun, easy, and even exciting. We can read, listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos and start to rack up this knowledge almost without lifting a finger. A bit of this is useful – we need a concrete target to...
Tough emotions – stress, anxiety, fear – hold a lot of power over the way we perform, learn, and handle setbacks. We feel nervous before a big game or presentation and don’t perform our best. We’re presented with a challenge, we feel uncomfortable, we decide we’re not ready. We feel weird about speaking up or asking a question and then...
It’s 6:45pm. Friday night. A small friend squad is at my house. We’re sitting around the table talking, eating, the usual. After the snacks and chats it’s time for the main event – it’s game night bby. I head to the shelf to pull out some of our go-tos: Camel Up, Catan, What Do You Meme? My girlfriend, Emily, stops...
With our SFCOHTGGAS post we established that our mindsets have a big impact on our capacity to grow and that developing a growth mindset – the belief we can grow – can help us become better learners. That’s all great, but unfortunately it’s where most people stop when they teach growth mindset: “Our mindsets matter. Developing a growth mindset is...
Skills are built, not born. A simple phrase that can become the bedrock for great learning. Of course it takes time, effort, some experiments, and struggle to earn a skill. But, if it’s a skill and you do the work, you can build it. The best news: most of the good things in life are skills. There are the obvious...
If we zoom way out, the learning process looks something like this: We call this the SFCOHTGGAS: The Self-fulfilling Cycle of How to Get Good at Stuff. Yay for acronyms – woot! JK they’re the worst, but there’s a lot that this cycle can teach us about learning and how our mindsets can affect the process. The way it works...
A tiger living in the jungle is going to learn and develop more than a tiger living in a zoo. We made a video that presents the research that supports that statement and illustrates how we can apply the same logic to the way we learn. The big idea: in order to become a better learner we need to spend...
It’s 2013. I’m a few weeks into blogging for my freshly launched website and winner of the most terrible domain name of all time award – championshipbasketballschool.com. The focus of my posts: how to design better basketball practices and drills. Thrilling, I know. My mom is a middle school PE teacher and I’m living in her basement. One day she...
It’s February 2014. I’m sitting in a massive training complex in Anaheim, CA observing the USA Women’s National Volleyball team practice. I am in awe. Having spent most of the past year researching and writing for my blog, I was curious about the science of development. Now I was on a mission to discover how to apply it. Most of...
Building resilience can help us become better learners. Let’s outline four tools that can help make that happen by Trevor Ragan and Alex Belser PART 1 Challenges, obstacles, adversity, and struggle are inevitable in life – especially when we choose to spend more time out of our comfort zone. They’re going to happen – we can’t change, or control, that....
Lifting weights is essentially struggling on purpose. We understand the basics of how to build a muscle. So we pick a weight and exercise that induces resistance and tension, which leads to struggle, which leads to growth. Learning can be the same. When we teach people the basics of how their brain learns – and that creativity, innovation, and growth...
It’s easier to eat out. It’s better to cook at home. It’s easier to play someone that you know you can beat. It’s better to play the person who might beat you. It’s easier to read the SparkNotes. It’s better to read the book. It’s easier to do it how it’s always been done. It’s better to challenge, stretch, and...
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