Academic Buoyancy

The concept of academic buoyancy is the second key to overcoming our own internal obstacles to learning.

Learning is bound to be difficult, even for those with supposed innate intelligence. Nothing comes easy, at least not at the levels of mastery we are aiming for. And yet, so many people take themselves out of the running by giving up at the first sign of hardship.

People who don't give up when they're faced with learning challenges are said to have academic buoyancy. Like intelligence, this isn't an inborn characteristic that some are born with, but rather a set of skills that can be learned and habits that can be cultivated to result in the ability to push past challenges and keep learning.

Confidence is just one element of academic buoyancy, but confidence alone is what allows us to overcome our fears and anxieties. In the first chapter, we discussed how confidence can unlock your lack of motivation. Imagine how much more empowered you would feel with the hardships of learning if you could embody every element.

Researchers from the University of Sydney and the University of Oxford have identified five C's that, if developed, will result in academic buoyancy. These five C's are composure, confidence, coordination, commitment, and control. They are not specific to learning, but they are traits that certainly harm it.

It will be apparent why they are important to overcoming obstacles associated with learning - most of them are truly not about the content or information itself. Rather, most obstacles have to do with our mindset toward it; our belief and sense of perseverance ends up being what separates most learners at the end of the day. Their influence is far, far greater than any of the techniques in this book. Is this to say that where there is a will, there is a way? Yes - learning in large part depends on how you feel about it, and the rest is just about saving time and working smarter.

Composure is the ability to manage and minimize anxiety. When learners feel anxious while engaging in their studies, it's usually because we're afraid of being ashamed and embarrassed. What if people find out we're trying to learn something, and expect us to display our knowledge? What if we fail completely when this happens? What if we fail? The fear can be paralyzing.

When people can't manage their anxiety, they are weighed down by their fear and crippled by the tension it produces in their bodies. In the worst cases, worries overcome the thoughts of the learner, preventing the student from focusing on and understanding new information. But there's good news: those fears are entirely baseless.

As anxiety is largely based on the fear of failure, we must directly address that. When we think about fear, we think about the worst-case scenario. Whatever we "fail" at, we imagine the world ending as a direct result. This is known as catastrophization, and it occurs whenever you ignore the realistic consequences and jump to drastic measures.

This is conquered by managing your self-talk. Acknowledge that negative things may happen, but that many of your thoughts may be irrational and fiction. Consider the alternative explanations and outcomes.

If you find yourself worrying, counter that worry with optimism. If you berate yourself for a mistake, remind yourself that it's a learning opportunity and that you'll do better next time. Any negative thought can be successfully and honestly countered by positive, encouraging, forgiving, and accepting alternatives. With time, the brain comes to accept these retorts as more valid than the negative, fearful thoughts. If anxiety is a problem for you, be persistent. This bugaboo really can be beaten. You can gain the composure you need to be academically buoyant.

Confidence, also called self-efficacy, is the belief that you are able to perform a specific task. When we lack confidence, we are certain we can't successfully accomplish a goal. We talk ourselves down, insult ourselves, and belittle any progress we make. When this happens, we often give up on our goal early before we can prove to ourselves and others that we're a failure. The trouble is that giving up is failing too; it can be satisfying to confirm these negative beliefs about ourselves, but it's far more satisfying - and less stressful - to set our doubts aside and actually reach our goals.

If you're ready to improve your confidence, there are two main techniques to employ. The first, as we saw in the section on composure, is self-talk. When your brain tells you that you're a failure or that a subject is too hard for you to learn, counter that thought with an assertion that you're going to keep studying, and with time and effort, you will succeed. If you keep countering these thoughts, they really will fade in time.

The second method is more concrete: goal-setting. We gain confidence naturally when we accomplish tasks. When we have a track record of success, it becomes harder and harder to believe our doubts have any credibility. The fastest way to do this is to create daily, or even hourly, study goals, and to watch yourself meet them over and over again. When this happens, congratulate yourself! Each goal you reach gets you one step closer to your ultimate goal of skill mastery. More than that, each goal you reach demonstrates that you have the skill and fortitude to reach the goals you set for yourself. It's a sign that your confidence is real and legitimate.

Coordination is your ability to plan and manage your time effectively. When people fail to do this, they often fall prey to The Planning Fallacy. This fallacy points out that people are poor at determining how long tasks take to complete. As a general rule, we presume tasks will take less time than they actually need to complete. Worse, when we presume things won't take very much time, we often put those tasks off, because we feel like we have plenty of time to get them done. This is usually untrue, and then we find ourselves with late assignments and failed work tasks.

Several steps can be taken to eliminate this problem. Minimizing distractions in your work area is a great way to start. Turn off your phone, close your door, and tell friends or family that you're busy and not to be disturbed. You should invariably do this soon after you gain a new task to complete or subject to study. Putting things off leads to being late, while doing them immediately takes advantage of all the time you have. Lastly, it's best to do the longest, most difficult task first. Leaving it for last will produce a false sense of security and may lead to your work being incomplete at the time it's due. Getting it out of the way does the opposite, setting you up for easier tasks and an early finish.

Commitment, also called grit, is a combination of passion and persistence that can be nurtured to help you reach your goals. It's easy to study for a day or a week, but attempts to build new habits often fail. When we do, we find ourselves listlessly settling into the couch to watch another movie or television show, without putting any more effort into bettering ourselves. This keeps us in the same life situation, wasting precious time, when we could be using those same hours to improve ourselves and our circumstances.

As in the previous two categories, self-talk can be a useful tool in bolstering commitment. Talking yourself into doing things and ensuring yourself that you can make it to the end are useful tools. Having others support you in a similar way and encourage you to study when you're flagging can bolster your sense of personal responsibility and keep you trucking along even when your energy is waning.

Finally, understanding what you are sacrificing and committing for can be powerful. Without a sense of how we stand to benefit, or what pain we will clearly avoid, we can sometimes lose motivation. What dreams does this information help you attain? What hardships and difficulties will be removed once you master this information? Keep these in mind and know that you are working for something greater than the current moment of discomfort.

Finally, control. We have to feel like we can control our fates. There are multiple aspects of this. First, we should feel that we have the ability and capacity to achieve the learning outcomes we want. Lacking this makes us feel like we are in motion just for motion's sake, never getting closer to the end goal. We covered this in an earlier chapter, but there is no real thing as innate intelligence. Well, there is, but it doesn't really affect ninety-nine percent of us in the middle of the bell curve. Understand that with hard work, the result you want is possible, and that struggles are an unavoidable part of the process. Discomfort should be the expectation, not the exception.

Second, we should feel a sense of ownership over our learning process. When we have a sense of control in our work, we feel personal responsibility, or a sense of ownership, that propels us to do our best and keep working in the face of setbacks. When we don't have that, working and studying can seem futile, like a waste of time. We will simply feel that we are being told what to do, and this is adding insult to injury.

This can be addressed by proactively making sure of what your goals are and tailoring your everyday work to reach it. Take your fate into your own hands and create your own plan. You always have the choice to float toward other people's expectations, goals, and plans, or create a personalized set for yourself to follow.

Learning itself is not a difficult task. But missing any of these academic buoyancy elements will simply set you up for failure. They are more of prerequisites to effective learning than tactics in themselves.

Academic buoyancy is perhaps better framed as resilience: the ability to adapt to stressful situations. More resilient people are able to "roll with the punches" and adapt to adversity without lasting difficulties; less resilient people have a harder time with stress and life changes, both major and minor. It's been found that those who deal with minor stresses more easily can also manage major crises with greater ease, so resilience has its benefits for daily life as well as for the rare major catastrophe.

Psychologist Susan Kobasa noted three elements to resilience: (1) looking at difficulties as a challenge, (2) committing to achieving a goal no matter what, and (3) limiting their efforts and even concerns only to factors that they have control over.

Another psychologist named Martin Seligman noted three different elements of resilience: (1) seeing negative events as temporary and limited, (2) not letting negative events define them or their perspective, and (3) not overly blaming or denigrating themselves for negative events. His general theme appears to be letting negativity pass as temporary events and not being indicative of personal shortcomings.

It's clear how any of those six resilience factors can play a role in achieving the learning goals we want. It's simply about how you bounce back from failure. Failure is a part of life, and it's what we do after the fact that determines our character and, ultimately, success in life.