On Mindset and the Difference Between Resilience and Grit
Getting into structured training was the biggest improvement of my quality of life I have ever made. On a recent episode of Marcello Seri's excellent It's Not Just Numbers podcast the other guests and I spoke about it at length.
Structured (endurance) training is based on a few basic principles such as periodization, progressive overload, specificity and individualization. With the help of these principles, you can design a training plan and adapt it according to circumstance. But training is more than following a training plan, the psychological component is hugely important. And recently, I have tried to learn more about the psychological dimension as well, not least because all of it is directly applicable to my day job as a scientist, mentor and educator.
Amber Malika's Be A Good Wheel podcast is a great resource for that. She is a former athlete, a swimmer-turned-professional-cyclist, with a clear talent for podcasting. Her episode with Dr. Omit Fotuhi centered on the topic of mindset, i. e. how we react psychologically to challenges, obstacles and failures. One important distinction is between fixed and growth mindset. People with a fixed mindset tend to perceive the limits of their ability as immutable and innate. In contrast, people with a growth mindset will tend to view the boundaries of one's ability as malleable, one can expand what one is capable of by trying and working on it. Of course, people do not fall into neat black-and-white categories and it is not as simple as “let's all adopt a growth mindset everywhere”. But experience with sports and e. g. playing an instrumet can help to open up new possibilities. Both activities engrain simple lessons like “you get better with practice” and that “your current limitations do not define you”. Those little factoids sound mundane and like cheap inspirational quotes. What makes all the difference is the experience of putting them into practice.
Recently, a student of mine who had previously struggled with one of my classes, passed and was significantly above average. I leaned on their experience in sports to mentor them, and since they were willing to put in the effort, they passed. “Practice and you get better.” is more convincing if you experience it for yourself. In my conversations with them afterwards, I had the impression they were even a bit intimidated by their own success as it challenged their self-image of “being bad at math”.
The podcast also discussed two other notions, namely resilience and grit. Typically, both have a positive connotation. But Fotuhi clearly distinguishes the two and recommends more emphasis on resilience. According to him grit is the ability to lean into difficulties. On its face, that sounds very positive — and it can be. However, it can become problematic since grit is about mobilizing the resources within ourselves to overcome obstacles. In contrast, people who are resilient also mobilize their entire support network — friends, colleagues, family, mentors and other resources — to tackle a problem. In the long run, that gives resilient people more to work with than just grit.
I hope I can put these learnings into practice soon.
AfterMath: My Time in the Industry As Told on the “It's Not Just Numbers” Podcast
My friend Marcello Seri's podcast is now well into its second season, and when he asked me to join, my response was “What took you so long?” My only condition was that he kept the working title AfterMath, very inspired. The podcast is aimed at students of mathematics of all vintages (and I am including researchers and professors here!).
The topic of the podcast is very timely: In the last two weeks, I had discussions with three different people about whether/how/why to make the transition to the industry. The erratic behavior of the Trump administration with its punitive measures against academia, budget cuts in countries like the Netherlands, the UK and Italy, mean that the academic job market has contracted significantly while at the same time, sudden policy shifts have led to more people needing to look for their next contract. That is a bad job environment to be graduating into, I am not envious of this generation.
Even during “normal” times, this is a topic that is often avoided. Many people feel that the industry is (compared to academia) a somewhat lesser choice. The shift is something they have had to do, because they feel they were not “good enough”. Despite that, the overwhelming majority of students will leave academia for a job in the industry. Even those who do not plan to stay in academia will often be unsure as to what they ought to be doing with the next 40ish years.
Marcello (one of the hosts), the two other guests, Oskar and Sven, share our stories how we have transitioned from academia to the industry at various stages in their academic career. Even though Marcello and I have since returned to academia, we both feel very strongly that our time in the industry has enriched our lives. We both had had jobs that were intellectually stimulating as we needed to tackle very challenging problems that were just at the edge of what is possible.
In my case, I had found a job at EV Group, world market leader in wafer bonding, which is one crucial manufacturing step in the production of semiconductors, CMOS image sensors and e. g. MEMS. I really loved my job there, my boss and my colleagues were great. They took a chance on me, and I will remain thankful for that. Had I known the opportunities that were out there, I would not have approached going into industry with as much trepidation and anxiety.
Mini course and not-so-mini course on semiclassics on Youtube
Last year I co-organized a workshop at the Lorentz Center with Constanza Rojas Molina, Giuseppe De Nittis and Marcello Seri. We had invited experts from various fields of mathematical physics and talk about conductivity properties in metals, e. g. from the random operators community, non-commutative geometry, semiclassics and classical dynamical systems. Our hope was that the workshop was an opportunity for cross pollination.
For the workshop I have recorded one of the four mini courses and published it on my Youtube channel. Since it turned out quite long, I have also created a second playlist with a shorter version.