The strategic mindset

A famous quote from Thomas Edison is that "genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration."

While passion and perseverance are essential to reaching your goals, we should remember the strategic process involved in reaching our goal. Edison didn't just randomly move from one failed design after another but adapted and refined his ideas. He made intelligent decisions that learned from the failures and built on the successes.

A strategic mindset questions and refines your current approach while facing setbacks and challenges. People with a strategic mindset continuously look for a more efficient route.

We might all benefit from thinking strategically in the pursuit of our goals.

A new study found a strategic mindset may make the difference between success or failure.

We should be aware and understand our own thinking processes. Useful strategies would include tracking your progress, recognizing your flaws and the areas that need improvement, then creating steps to overcome those challenges.

Rate the statements on a scale of 1(never) to 5 (all the time). When you are stuck on something, how often do you ask yourself:

• “What are things I can do to help myself?”
• “Is there a better way of doing this?”
• “How can I do this better?”
• “What are things I can do to make myself better at this?”
• “What can I do to help myself?”
• “What can I do to get better at this?”

The higher you score, the more likely you are to have a strategic mindset.

Grit is about orienting yourself to pursue a long-term goal despite setbacks, while a strategic mindset is looking for efficiency in any goal, short or long term. To be gritty without finding improved ways to achieve your goal is not ideal. By thinking strategically, we can save ourselves a lot of effort and frustration.

Grit is known to be very important for life outcomes. But a study found that grit was mainly unrelated to the strategic mindset.