SUCCESS

The Scaffolding Principle: Here’s How You Can Reach That Impossible Goal

Making the impossible possible

In the movie Meet the Fockers, there’s a hilarious scene where a cat gets out of the toilet after a flushing noise. Did I say to myself: WTF? A trained cat that goes to the loo?! Little did I know this was not far from reality, as we’ll see in a couple of lines.

Many times, we feel intimidated by seemingly impossible goals. You know the expression:

The fool didn’t know it was impossible, so he did it.

Which begs the question: is our common sense limiting us?

That’s what we’ll find out in a few lines.

The cat who learned to take a dump in the toilets

Many years after watching the movie Meet the Fockers, I finally saw a picture of a cat taking a dump in the toilet:

I was intrigued. We know how stubborn a cat can be, right? That kind of feat wouldn’t be that easy!

In fact, it was stupidly simple. You just need to put the litter on top of the toilet bowl. Then you remove it gradually, using some kind of toilet training kit.

This kit bears a striking similarity with the concept of scaffolding. Except this is used for learning. As long as the cat can’t pee in the loo by itself, you sustain it with a device. Then, you remove the device gradually. As simple as that!

This impossible feat now looks so simple!

In academic terms, a similar notion is “instructional scaffolding”.

Instructional scaffolding is when you help a student learn a task or master a skill by giving them extra guidance and support.

The young boy who dreamed about Formula 1

Now let’s see if we can apply this concept to our most grandiose goals, shall we? For example, let’s pick: becoming a Formula 1 champion. How do you transition from complete Formula 1 newbie to Formula 1 champion?

Looks almost impossible if you are not rich, right? Well, the answer is to scaffold your way to the top. Lewis Hamilton won seven world champion titles. But as a young boy, he just took the challenge gradually.

At five, his father bought him a radio-controlled car. He then competed in the adult British Radio Car Association championship and finished second. When he was six, his father bought him a go-kart for Christmas. He then promised his son he would support his passion if he worked hard at school.

His son quickly began winning races and cadet class championships. He became the youngest driver to win the British cadet karting championship at ten.

At 13, he was enrolled in the McLaren driver development program. He then became European Champion with maximum points.

At 16, he began his car racing career with Formula 3 and won several championships.

Finally, he joined the McLaren Formula 1 team at 19. The following year, he became the then-youngest Formula One World Champion in history. Contrary to what one might think, there were a lot of intermediate steps to reach the top. Now let’s see some other examples from my experience.

How I crushed my limits

Many times, I have had imaginary limits that I would then crush. I would fail badly. Then I would dust myself off. I would use another angle of attack and succeed.

When I was 12, my mathematics teacher told me I would never be good at math because I could not do mental calculations on my feet. He was a brutal teacher and loved to insult us.

Then I arrived at high school, and suddenly, there was so much more respect. I managed to have a 60% mark for my High School Diploma, and I got accepted into a class that prepares students for elite French engineering school.

But again, the conditions were very harsh. The teachers were racing at full speed when they wrote the course on the blackboard. The pace was impossible to follow. I finished 37th among a total of 39 students.

I was so disappointed. I felt I was a failure. So I went to University, back at square one, the first year, to do the same courses again. That time, I shined. The rhythm was just right, and I understood everything. After my 2nd year at University, I was accepted into an engineering school and obtained a Master’s degree in computer science!

The same thing happened with management. For me, management had never been an option because I am an introvert. I am a slow thinker and can’t follow when people talk very fast.

Then I went to work in Madagascar and became a team leader right away because I had a high degree of education compared to the other workers. That’s how I learned leadership. And I’ve done this for 15 years.

As you can see, the environment where you study or work plays a significant role in your development. Sometimes, you can quickly feel like a failure because it is not adapted to your style of learning.

But by switching to an environment that progressively gets more and more challenging, you manage to develop yourself better.

How to do it deliberately?

Many times, I had to change environments to learn a skill in the best conditions. I would find one place too challenging for me. Then I would move somewhere else where the level was just right for me.

It is the same for many skills. For example, let’s take: public speaking, singing, comedy, selling, …

If you try to get in the first league too early, you get beaten and bruised. It’s better to find a non-threatening environment to take your time to learn.

For example, for public speaking, you can attend Toastmaster’s clubs to learn how to deliver professional speeches.

For singing, you can join a choir at the church or simply find an online coach.

Just find the scaffolding environments where you can learn the skill in the best conditions and improve quickly. If you are short of scaffolding ideas, read books, especially biographical books. Study your favorite experts and check how they managed to scaffold their way to the top.

Or hunt for talented people on LinkedIn and ask them for an interview. You then ask them how they managed to pursue their career at the very beginning. That way, you can reverse-engineer their success and find creative ways to scaffold your way to success.

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Do you often feel intimidated by tricky goals? Like the trained cat, you might just need some kind of scaffolding to support your learning, a concept related to the academics notion of “instructional scaffolding”.

The Formula 1 career path is a good example. As seen together, F1 champion Lewis Hamilton transitioned from radio-controlled car races to go-karting car races, then Formula 3 races, and finally Formula 1 races.

To complement these examples, I also cited my struggles in mathematics and management when I didn’t have the right supporting environments set in place. Once I had it, I was ready to shine.

You can apply the same concepts to many other fields that might look intimidating to you, like public speaking, comedy, singing, or selling.

And if the goal still looks impossible to you, just study how the masters got into the field and copy their scaffolding strategies.

Yes, you can do it. No more excuses. Let’s get it done!

On February 1st, 2022, I embarked on a 100 days writing challenge. This is post number 92.