Preparing for Workplace Excellence:
A Simple Yet Powerful Program Created by Professionals, refined by educators.
The MindSage Durable Skills Program reverses negative classroom habits and empowers students to build workplace strengths. Built on three foundational pillars and refined over seven years, it uses microlearning and metacognitive strategies to help students shed limiting school mindsets and embrace professional behaviors.
By simulating real workplace environments, students learn to collaborate, take initiative, and think critically—skills that employers value most. With over 15,000 students having taken our lessons across four states and worldwide, our program equips students to step confidently into the workforce.
How it Works
The MindSage program is designed for both flexibility and effectiveness. Whether you're a teacher, trainer, tutor, or mentor, you can seamlessly incorporate lessons into your schedule. The program allows for group, class, or individual review, facilitating asynchronous learning. Find out how you can practically and realistically integrate our program.
Why it Works
The effectiveness of the MindSage professional durable skills program stems from its incorporation of research-proven approaches for teaching non-academic, non-cognitive skills. Crafted and instructed by seasoned trainers with extensive experience in transformational personal and professional development, the program integrates well-established principles of learning into the design of each lesson and the overall approach.
WE ADAPT
The MindSage program's effectiveness is rooted in practical workplace testing and refinement over the last seven years. The program, originally developed as an intern training initiative based on the developers' own corporate training experiences, is specifically designed for developing non-academic skills. From extensive surveys spanning various companies, organizations, and universities, a fundamental set of 15 durable skills lessons that employers deemed essential was established. Eventually, the core training expanded to encompass 32 comprehensive lessons.
First Evolution
Recognizing that interns had acquired counterproductive school-based habits that weren't conducive to the professional world and could potentially sabotage their effectiveness on the job, additional lessons were created to highlight these habits and offer strategies for replacing them with valuable durable skills. These lessons facilitate interns' transition effectively from academia to the workplace, ensuring their preparedness for success in their professional roles.
Second Evolution
Our goal was to swiftly move interns from training to live projects. Specific lessons were designed to enhance their competence and ability to contribute in the workplace. These lessons focused on imparting durable skills that promised the most immediate impact and return on investment (ROI) for employers.
Third Evolution
A critical realization emerged: interns often struggled to fully apply soft skill lessons due to self-esteem and self-confidence issues. Consequently, the MindSage program introduced the concept of the three foundational durable skills that should be developed first. These foundational qualities—Self-awareness, Self-appreciation, and Self-acceptance—establish the cornerstone of Self-reliance, upon which all other durable skills can be constructed.
By merging these four focus areas—essential lessons in durable skills as deemed by employers, lessons countering negative school habits, lessons offering the quickest workplace return on investment, and lessons that laid a foundation for the intern or student to develop durable skills—the MindSage program emerges as a straightforward yet potent and efficient durable skills development program suitable for individuals of all ages.
2024
We collaborated with AmericaSucceedes.org to align with their durable skills framework and partnered with the Washington Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board and DOC to pilot a program at a state correctional facility, receiving powerful feedback on its transformative impact. These partnerships continue to help us tailor training for educators and students.
2025
Our focus is now on expanding our remote eight-week course, providing comprehensive, durable skills training in ways traditional classrooms cannot. While every other educational is chasing after AI integration in schools, we’re doubling down on helping students develop the human skills that will allow them to harness and guide the power of Ai.
Partnering with Educators
When developing MindSage, we knew collaboration with teachers was essential—if educators couldn’t implement the program, it wouldn’t succeed. A common concern was the limited time for programs outside the core academic curriculum. MindSage’s lesson format addresses this, drawing on current research and proven results.
In our two-year pilot at middle and high schools, we delivered three 10–15 minute micro-lessons per week, typically on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with Monday and Friday lessons required for maximum benefit.
Understanding that schools, teachers, classes, and students vary in schedules and learning pace, the lessons are flexible for synchronous or asynchronous use, in-person or remote.
Each week also includes a metacognitive assignment, encouraging students to reflect on themselves in relation to the lesson and develop deeper self-awareness.
More on the overall approach, now known as the Catalyst approach, can be found in the book: Eighty Five Percent: The Skills Schools Weren't Designed to Teach
EASY IMPLEMENTATION
We’ve customized our lessons for many schools, but the general implementation is as follows:
One lesson per week, divided into three sections—ideally covered on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The format mirrors how young adults are used to learning and consuming content.
Each day’s section can serve as your lesson plan for class discussion, or you can cover the introduction and primer questions in class and assign the rest for independent review.
Fridays are ideal for reviewing the material and encouraging students to share insights from the week—a group metacognitive activity that reinforces learning.
Most sections take 10–15 minutes. If time is limited, students can review any remaining content outside class.
Note: These are our best recommendations based on pilot testing. Schools may adapt the schedule—some cover all three sections in a single one-hour session, others spread lessons across multiple days. The goal is for students to engage with the content in a way that works for your schedule.
Employers can’t be fooled.
Listing durable/soft skills on your resume isn't enough; you must actually possess them.
Durable skills training can't be approached like any other academic subject. Developing and effectively demonstrating durable skills requires more than just memorizing definitions or citing examples. At MindSage, we excel at assisting people in cultivating non-cognitive traits, qualities, mindsets, and habits.
“The most profound changes a person can make, are those they choose to make themselves.”
Contact us if you have questions about customizing and implementing a durable skills program in your class, school or district, or you’d like professional durable skills PD for your staff. All consultations are free.
Take Action
Get Certified
Apply now for our next remote Durable Skills Professional Certification, and master the skills today’s employers demand.
Get Access
For less than a double oat milk mocha, get a month of full access to all core durable (soft) skills lessons. Go through lessons at your own speed and on your own time. Subscribe monthly, or save with an annual plan.
Get Trained to Train
Sign up for PD and begin applying the Catalyst Durable Skills method in your own classroom or cohort.