Adam Grant: The Surprising New Research On Procrastination, Perfectionism & Happiness!
Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, discusses unlocking hidden potential by challenging defaults, embracing imperfectionism, and fostering a culture of constructive criticism. He shares insights on creativity, team dynamics, and the importance of rethinking beliefs to achieve personal and professional growth.
Deep Dive Analysis
19 Topic Outline
Adam Grant's Mission and Core Beliefs
Redefining Success: Givers vs. Takers in Teams
Defining Originals: The Importance of Execution
The Surprising Benefits of Moderate Procrastination
Originality and Challenging Defaults: The Browser Study
Why Child Prodigies Rarely Become Adult Geniuses
Debunking Perfectionism and Embracing Imperfectionism
The Skill of Leaning into Difficulty and Discomfort
Trauma, Resilience, and the Role of Support Systems
Birth Order's Influence on Risk-Taking and Originality
Entrepreneurs as Cautious, Not Reckless, Risk-Takers
Building Great Teams: Leadership and Culture
Combating Complacency and Fostering Innovation in Successful Teams
Cultivating a Challenge Network for Honest Feedback
Rethinking Group Brainstorming for Better Ideas
Unlocking Hidden Potential: Confidence and Imposter Thoughts
The Distinction Between Self-Promotion and Idea Promotion
Thinking Like a Scientist: Values Over Beliefs
Personal Reflections on Potential and Work-Life Balance
10 Key Concepts
Givers vs. Takers
People who help others with no strings attached (givers) tend to outperform expectations in the long run compared to those who prioritize self-interest (takers). This dynamic impacts team performance, with self-centered individuals often having a net negative effect on team success.
Originals
Individuals who not only question established ways of doing things but also take the initiative to create and implement better alternatives. It's about action and execution, not just having novel ideas.
Incubation of Ideas
A process where, during moderate procrastination, ideas remain active in the back of the mind, allowing for new connections, patterns, and reframing of problems from a broader perspective, leading to creative boosts.
Imperfectionists
Individuals who are disciplined in discerning when to aim for the best and when 'good enough' is sufficient. They calibrate their effort based on the potential impact and are willing to ship and iterate, learning from feedback rather than striving for an unattainable 'perfect 10.'
Learned Industriousness
A theory suggesting that if effort and seeking discomfort are rewarded, being in uncomfortable situations can acquire secondary reward properties over time. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle where pushing past comfort zones feels good and leads to positive outcomes.
Commitment Culture
A company culture where founders prioritize hiring individuals who align with the company's mission and values. While successful for early growth and public offerings, it risks leading to homogeneity and groupthink, slowing growth post-IPO due to a lack of diverse perspectives.
Challenge Network
A group of trusted, thoughtful critics who are willing to provide candid feedback and hold up a mirror to an individual's blind spots. This network is crucial for growth and improvement, especially for leaders who may struggle to receive honest input as they gain status.
Brain Writing
An alternative to brainstorming where individuals first write down their ideas separately, then collect and independently rate them. This method leverages individual creativity to generate more diverse ideas and then uses collective judgment to filter for quality, avoiding production blocking and conformity pressure.
Imposter Thoughts
Everyday doubts about one's capabilities or readiness for a role, distinct from the rarer 'imposter syndrome.' These thoughts can be a powerful motivator, fueling extra effort and a willingness to learn from others to close the perceived gap between one's self-assessment and others' expectations.
Thinking Like a Scientist
An approach to life where one views opinions as hypotheses to be tested and decisions as experiments. This mindset fosters flexibility, quick self-correction, and a focus on 'getting it right' rather than 'being right,' by separating one's identity from one's beliefs.
19 Questions Answered
By applying useful insights from social science to think more clearly and critically, and by making choices that build happiness, meaning, and success, often by making work not suck and leading generous, creative, and curious lives.
Research suggests that givers, who are happy to help others with no strings attached, tend to outperform expectations in the long run compared to selfish takers.
The biggest difference is execution; originals not only have new ideas but also take action to create change, as 'ideation without execution is just hallucination.'
Both extreme pre-crastinators (never procrastinating) and extreme procrastinators (always procrastinating) are less creative. Moderate procrastination can boost creativity by allowing ideas to incubate and providing distance to reframe problems, especially if intrinsically motivated by the problem.
People don't procrastinate primarily to avoid hard work, but rather to avoid negative emotions and unpleasant feelings like frustration, confusion, boredom, or anxiety, often driven by fear of not being up to the challenge.
Child prodigies often become masters of existing methods but don't learn to stretch their creative muscles, take risks, or experience failure, which are crucial for inventing new things and becoming an adult genius.
No, perfectionism is a risk factor for burnout and does not lead to better job performance in the real world, as perfectionists are often terrified of failure and avoid risks, which stunts growth.
It's a learned skill, not just willpower. Strategies like making discomfort less tempting (e.g., in the marshmallow test) and practicing being uncomfortable can help. Rewarding effort and seeking discomfort can make these situations feel good over time.
While there's a survivorship bias, many people experience post-traumatic growth, becoming stronger or better in some way after adversity. Resilience is not just an individual skill but requires a support system or 'scaffolding' from parents, mentors, or coaches.
Later-borns tend to be more willing to take risks and become originals, possibly due to parents granting them more freedom or because they seek to differentiate themselves from older, conventionally achieving siblings.
The most successful entrepreneurs don't love risk; they take cautious, calculated risks, constantly trying to reduce the downside and increase the upside, rather than throwing caution to the wind.
We often mistakenly elevate people who dominate conversations (the 'babble effect') or mistake their confidence for competence, rather than selecting humble givers who prioritize the team's success and are committed to continuous learning.
The culture and team one works with are highly influential. Star performers moving to a new organization often take five years to regain their star status unless they bring their team, highlighting the interdependence and importance of established routines and shared experience.
By deliberately 'breaking what's not broken,' like Pixar did by hiring an unproven director to challenge their established methods, and by cultivating 'disagreeable givers' who are willing to challenge the status quo out of care.
Brainstorming often results in fewer and poorer quality ideas due to production blocking (people can't talk at once), ego threat (fear of looking foolish), and conformity pressure (HIPPO effect, where people align with the highest paid person's opinion).
Confidence is built by taking the leap, not by waiting to feel ready. Putting oneself in situations where one doesn't yet feel capable is the way to become ready.
Imposter thoughts can fuel motivation by highlighting a gap between what others think one is capable of and what one feels prepared for, prompting extra effort and learning to close that gap.
Self-promotion is about showing off accomplishments and awards to impress others, while idea promotion is about sharing valuable insights or products to create a gift for others, seen as an act of generosity.
By thinking like a scientist, viewing opinions as hypotheses and decisions as experiments, and by basing one's identity on values (what's important) rather than beliefs (what's true). This makes changing one's mind a moment of growth.
38 Actionable Insights
1. Base Identity on Values, Not Beliefs
Anchor your sense of self on what you deem important (values like curiosity or learning) rather than what you believe to be true, making it easier to admit when you’re wrong and embrace growth.
2. Build Confidence by Taking Leaps
Instead of waiting to feel ready or confident before acting, take the leap into challenging situations, as confidence is built through the act of trying and learning.
3. Adopt a Scientist’s Mindset
Treat your opinions as hypotheses to be tested and your decisions as experiments, fostering a flexible approach to life that allows for quicker recognition of errors and faster adaptation.
4. Seek Advice, Not Just Feedback
When seeking input, ask for advice rather than feedback, as this prompts people to offer specific, actionable suggestions for future improvement instead of just critiquing past actions.
5. Cultivate Discomfort as a Skill
Recognize that the ability to lean into discomfort is a learned skill, not an innate trait, and actively put yourself in situations that challenge you to expand your capabilities.
6. Practice Imperfectionism by Calibrating Goals
Be disciplined in determining when to aim for excellence (a “9” or “10”) and when “good enough” (a “6.5” or “7”) is sufficient, aligning your effort with the potential impact and avoiding the pitfalls of perfectionism.
7. Moderate Procrastination Boosts Creativity
Allow for moderate procrastination on intrinsically motivated tasks, as this provides time for ideas to incubate in the back of your mind, connect dots, and reframe problems from a broader perspective, leading to more creative solutions.
8. Use Brain Writing for Better Ideas
To maximize collective intelligence, have individuals write down their ideas alone, then collect and independently rate them before refining the most promising ones, generating more diverse and higher-quality ideas.
9. Build a Challenge Network
Actively seek out and cultivate a group of thoughtful critics whom you trust to provide candid, constructive criticism, as these “disagreeable givers” are essential for identifying your blind spots and pushing you to innovate.
10. Promote Ideas, Not Yourself
Frame your contributions as sharing valuable ideas or insights rather than self-promotion, which is perceived as an act of generosity and encourages others to engage with your work.
11. Question Defaults to Drive Performance
Develop a habit of questioning the status quo and seeking better ways of doing things, as this initiative is a predictor of higher job performance and job satisfaction.
12. Prioritize Giving to Outperform
Adopt a “giver” mentality by helping others with no strings attached, as research shows that givers often outperform expectations and achieve greater success in the long run.
13. Elevate Others for Team Success
True leadership involves making everyone around you more effective, as individual superstars who don’t elevate their team can have a net negative impact on overall performance.
14. Take Cautious Risks, Mitigate Downside
Successful entrepreneurs don’t love risk; they take calculated, cautious risks by figuring out how to reduce potential downsides and increase the probability of success for unproven ideas.
15. Temper Radical Ideas for Acceptance
When presenting bold or extreme ideas, moderate them to make them more familiar and plausible to others, allowing you to gradually introduce your vision and gain buy-in.
16. Address Negative Emotions to Reduce Procrastination
Recognize that procrastination is often driven by avoiding negative emotions (frustration, confusion, anxiety) rather than laziness, and identify these emotions to change your approach to the tasks.
17. Gamify Tedious Tasks for Engagement
Transform boring or repetitive tasks, like editing, into creative exercises by reframing them (e.g., rewriting in different authors’ voices) to maintain interest and motivation.
18. Interview for Status Quo Challengers
During interviews, ask candidates how they have challenged the status quo in the past, as this reveals their initiative and willingness to seek better ways of working.
19. Avoid Homogeneity in Culture Fit Hiring
While aligning on core values is important, avoid hiring solely for personality or background “fit,” as this can lead to groupthink and stifle innovation by weeding out diversity of thought.
20. Introduce Novelty to Avoid Entrenchment
To combat cognitive entrenchment and foster continuous innovation, regularly bring in outside talent, fresh perspectives, or rotate team members into new roles or skill sets.
21. Value Honesty as Highest Loyalty
Communicate to your team that honesty is the highest expression of loyalty, assuring them that the only way they can hurt you is by not telling you the truth, fostering a culture of candor.
22. Criticize Yourself to Invite Feedback
To encourage others to speak up, openly acknowledge your own shortcomings and areas for improvement, demonstrating your ability to receive criticism and creating a safe space for others to offer feedback.
23. Leverage Imposter Thoughts for Motivation
When experiencing imposter thoughts, recognize the gap between others’ belief in your capabilities and your own self-perception, using this gap as fuel to put in extra effort and learn from others.
24. Trust Others’ Belief in Your Potential
If multiple trusted people believe in your capabilities, it’s probably time to believe them yourself, as your own judgment of your abilities can be biased and inaccurate compared to objective observers.
25. Avoid Regret by Taking Action
Recognize that long-term regrets are more often about actions not taken rather than failures from trying, motivating you to take risks and pursue opportunities.
26. Be Vulnerable to Connect and Learn
When facing a skeptical audience or team, be vulnerable by acknowledging potential perceived weaknesses or challenges upfront, which can break the ice and foster a more open learning environment.
27. Embrace Contradiction for Learning
View contradicting your past self or ideas as a sign of learning and growth, rather than a failure, to maintain intellectual flexibility and avoid being typecast by previous beliefs.
28. Recognize Interdependence for Best Work
Understand that your best work is highly dependent on the people around you and the routines you build together, even if you perceive yourself as an individual expert, highlighting the importance of team dynamics.
29. Build a Support System for Resilience
Recognize that resilience is not a solitary skill but requires a “scaffolding” of support from parents, mentors, or coaches who believe in your potential and provide tools to bounce forward from hardship.
30. Reward Effort to Embrace Discomfort
Condition yourself to associate discomfort with positive outcomes by rewarding effort and hard work, making uncomfortable situations feel good over time due to learned industriousness.
31. Develop Strategies for Discomfort
Learn and apply simple strategies to make temptations less tempting or discomfort less uncomfortable, such as physical actions to delay gratification or mental reframing.
32. Absorb and Filter Information Relentlessly
Act like a sponge, soaking up vast amounts of information, then diligently filtering out what’s helpful and ruling out what’s harmful to continuously expand your knowledge and understanding.
33. Aim to Improve the ‘Game’ of Life
Move beyond merely “beating the game” or achieving personal success; instead, strive to “make the game better” by redefining rules and improving systems for collective benefit.
34. Act on Ideas to Be Original
To be an “original,” don’t just question the status quo or have new ideas; take the initiative and action to create change, as ideation without execution is merely hallucination.
35. Embrace Video Games for Skill Development
Recognize that playing video games, even a few hours daily, can foster self-control, working memory, grit, and resilience by constantly presenting challenges to overcome.
36. Avoid Prodigy Traps for Originality
Be wary of the “prodigy trap” where early mastery prevents developing original thinking, risk-taking, and experience with failure, which are crucial for true genius and innovation.
37. Evaluate Effort by Impact, Not Reward
When deciding where to invest your time and effort, consider the potential for greatest impact rather than immediate personal reward, focusing on contributions that have lasting value.
38. Build Reputation, Not Personal Brand
Distinguish between authentic influence and superficial self-promotion by focusing on being known for a set of values rather than a packaged product with slogans.
11 Key Quotes
My job is to study how to make work not suck and help you become a better version of yourself.
Adam Grant
Ideation without execution is just hallucination.
Adam Grant
Practice does make perfect, but it doesn't make new.
Adam Grant
If I only play to my strengths, then I'm never stretching myself and I'm not taking on enough new challenges.
Adam Grant
There's no such thing as a perfect 10.
Eric Best
The ink lasts. And that, you know, people ask questions about a book that I wrote a decade ago. Nobody asked me about my social media posts from several years ago.
Adam Grant
The only way you can hurt me is by not telling me the truth.
Adam Grant
The people you work with every day, they already know what you're bad at. You can't hide it from them, right? So you might as well get credit for having the self-awareness to see it and the humility and integrity to admit it out loud.
Adam Grant
The worst problem he sees in humanity is the addiction to being right.
Adam Grant
You are what you value.
Adam Grant
Our biggest regrets in the long run are not our failures. They're our failures to try.
Adam Grant
5 Protocols
Managing Procrastination for Creative Boost
Adam Grant- Identify tasks you consistently procrastinate on.
- Ask what negative emotions these tasks stir up (e.g., frustration, confusion, boredom, anxiety, fear).
- Change those emotions by reframing the task (e.g., rewriting paragraphs in the voice of a favorite fiction author to make editing more creative).
Calibrating Effort for Different Projects
Adam Grant- For each project (e.g., book, Instagram post, op-ed), ask: 'What is my target score here?' (e.g., 9 for a book, 6.5 for an Instagram post).
- Calibrate the amount of effort and time invested based on the target score and the potential impact or return on effort.
- Move on once the target score is achieved for a given task, rather than striving for unattainable perfection.
Cultivating a Challenge Network
Adam Grant- Identify individuals who have been willing to push you and provide honest criticism in the past.
- Communicate to them that you consider them a 'founding member of your challenge network' and value their candid input.
- Explicitly state that honesty is the highest expression of loyalty and that the only way they can hurt you is by not telling you the truth.
- To further create psychological safety, criticize yourself out loud, admitting your own shortcomings and areas for improvement, to prove you can take feedback.
Generating and Filtering Ideas in Groups
Adam Grant- Have everyone write down their own separate ideas individually (brain writing).
- Collect all the ideas.
- Have everyone do independent ratings of the ideas to preserve their unbiased judgment.
- Take the most promising ideas based on the ratings and begin developing and refining them.
Turning Critics into Coaches
Adam Grant- Instead of asking for feedback (which often yields cheerleaders or devastating critics), seek advice from those who have criticized you.
- Frame your request by asking what to do differently in the future.
- Be vulnerable and call out potential 'elephants in the room' or self-perceived weaknesses to break the ice and encourage candid responses.
- Listen to their specific, actionable tips and suggestions for future improvement.