Adam Grant: The Surprising New Research On Procrastination, Perfectionism & Happiness!
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.