Adam Grant – Hidden Potential (2023)
Heerlijk boek dat uitlegt waarom ‘lifelong learning’ een nastreefbaar doel voor iedereen zou moeten zijn. De auteur schrijft makkelijk en licht verteerbaar, terwijl er eigenlijk belangrijke levenslessen worden besproken.
People who make major strides are rarely freaks of nature. They’re usually freaks of nurture.
“Ambition is the outcome you want to attain, aspiration is the person you hope to become”
Building character requires the courage to seek out the right kinds of discomfort, the capacity to absorb the right information, and the will to accept the right imperfections
The nerve to face discomfort takes three kinds of courage:
- To abandon your tried-and-true methods;
- To put yourself in the ring before you feel ready; and
- To make more mistakes than others make attempts.
Instead of seeking feedback, ask for advice. Feedback tends to focus on how well you did last time, advice shifts attention to how you can do better next time.
In their quest for flawless results, research suggests that perfectionists tend to get three things wrong:
- They obsess about details that don’t matter, they’re so busy finding the right solution to tiny problems that they lack the discipline to find the right problems to solve;
- They avoid unfamiliar situations and difficult tasks that might lead to failure, that leaves them refining a narrow set of existing skills rather than developing new ones; and
- They berate themselves for making mistakes, which makes it harder to learn from them, they fail to realize reviewing mistakes is not to shame your past self, it’s to educate your future self.
If we want to develop our skills, we need to push ourselves through long hours of monotonous practice. The best way is to transform the daily grind into the daily joy.
Deliberate play often involves introducing novelty and variety into practice. That can be in the ways you learn, the tools you use, the goals you set, and the people with whom you interact. Depending on the skill you’re trying to build, deliberate play might take the form of a game, a role-play, or an improvisational exercise.
Languishing: a sense of stagnation and emptiness
If you’re the firstborn, you learn through educating your little brothers and sisters. These benefits emerge around age 12, when older siblings have more to teach and their younger siblings are more ready to learn. If you’re an only child, you don’t get to turn your siblings into your students, and as with lastborns, that limits your development.
We worry about making our parents proud when we should be focused on making our children proud. The responsibility of each generation is not to please our predecessors – it’s to improve conditions for our successors.
Students who made significant progress in math and reading performance (in fourth and fifth grade) didn’t have better teachers. They just happened to have the same teacher for two years in a row.
The best teams have a common goal and a unique role for each member. They know their results depend on everyone’s input, so they share their knowledge and coach one another on a regular basis. […] The best leaders put the mission above their ego and team cohesion above personal glory. They know the goal isn’t to be the smartest person in the room; it’s to make the entire room smarter.