Via Talks at Google

"It all started when I learned about a high school in Chicago where students have to pass 84 units to graduate. If they didn't pass a unit, they got the grade "Not yet." I thought, Isn't that great?

Because if you get a failing grade, you think "I hate this, I'm out of here, I'm no good at this," and you lose your steam. [In contrast,] "Not yet" means you're on a learning trajectory. Maybe you're not at the finish line, but you're on your way there."

— The Growth Mindset | Carol Dweck | Talks at Google, at 26:30

---

Dr. Carol Dweck, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and bestselling author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, learned about a high school in Chicago where students who didn't pass a required unit didn't receive a failing grade. Instead, they received the grade "Not Yet."

This simple language change transformed students' self-narratives about their progress.

• A failing grade functions as a verdict: you are not good at this. It leads to damaging self-talk about the person's identity. Students who receive failing grades are more likely to disengage because continuing feels pointless, especially if they try again and 'fail' again.
• "Not yet" reframes the same outcome as a journey. It's just a point on the timeline, not a final judgment. You haven't mastered it yet, which implies you will, eventually, if you keep going. The person's identity is not under attack. Learning momentum doesn't stall.

Dweck has built a formal research program around this single word. The research showed that hearing "not yet" after a wrong answer keeps up motivation and encourages persistence in ways that a plain "wrong" or "incorrect" does not.

Saying 'yet' works with adult self-talk, too

The same fixed mindset statements that trap students appear in adult thinking every day: "I'm not a tech person," "I'm not a numbers person," "I could never speak in public." These feel like facts, but they're just self-narratives.

Dweck's instruction: listen to yourself. Notice when you make these statements. Then add one word.

"Yet" doesn't make the statement false. It acknowledges where you are while leaving room for where you could go. That small opening is enough to keep us moving forward.

Try this today: Add "yet" to any fixed mindset statement, and you'll transform it: "I can't do that… yet."