2024-02-27
This Post will be about the notes i made about the book Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things by Adam Grant
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” —HELEN KELLER
In a study, 1500 West African entrepreneurs were divided into three groups: one group continued with their day-to-day business activities, while another concentrated on cognitive skills such as accounting, finance, and HR. The third group focused on developing character skills such as discipline and determination, actively putting these qualities into practice. The results showed that character skills training had the most significant impact.
Character is not personality → If personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on a hard day
Character skills often known as “soft skills” for the militarly, but this term does not hold true to its meaning its sounds weak
What if we all invested as much time in our character skills as we do in our career skills?
Why do some people learn languages so fast when they are in other countries, while others don't? → they get comfortable being uncomfortable
Becoming a creature of discomfort can unlock hidden potential in many different types of learning
Three forms of courage emerge:
Learning methods are a myth.
Procrastination is a common problem whenever you’re pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone (the brain gets hijacked by an instant gratification monkey).
Procrastination equals a lack of emotion management; you’re not avoiding effort. You’re avoiding the unpleasant feelings that the activity stirs up.
Writing exposes gaps in your knowledge and logic. It pushes you to articulate assumptions and consider counterarguments.
"If you’re comfortable, you’re doin’ it wrong."
Learned industriousness cycle: When you receive praise for making an effort, the feeling of effort itself starts to take on secondary reward properties.
"If we wait until we feel ready to take on a new challenge, we might never pursue it at all. There may not come a day when we wake up and suddenly feel prepared. We become prepared by taking the leap anyway."
You need to be like the sponge, only wanting to improve but relying on other people is not working. You need to strive for growth while learning proactively.
some people are like clay (javelin thrower story)
Coaches: A critic sees your weaknesses and attacks your worst self. A cheerleader sees your strengths and celebrates your best self. A coach sees your potential and helps you become a better version of yourself.
Instead of seeking feedback, you’re better off asking for advice. Feedback tends to focus on how well you did last time. Advice shifts attention to how you can do better next time.
get a bigger sample size so it is not about taste
“There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in” —LEONARD COHEN
Unlocking hidden potential is not about the pursuit of perfection. Tolerating flaws isn’t just something novices need to do—it’s part of becoming an expert and continuing to gain mastery. The more you grow, the better you know which flaws are acceptable.
Perfectionists excel at solving problems that are straightforward and familiar. Once you leave the predictable, controllable cocoon of academic exams, the desire to find the 'correct' answer can backfire. The average correlation between perfectionism and performance at work was zero. The great architects had rarely been great students: they typically finished college with a B average. Their perfectionistic colleagues had gleaming grades but went on to build far fewer glistening buildings.
Perfectionists often are wrong in three key areas:
Firstly, they obsess over details that do not matter, losing sight of the bigger picture and failing to prioritize essential problems.
Secondly, they shy away from unfamiliar challenges and difficult tasks, fearing the prospect of failure.
Thirdly, they harshly criticize themselves for mistakes, hindering their ability to learn and grow from them.
A filter to find the signal in the noise
In over 105 studies with more than 70,000 people, it's clear: valuing things like popularity and looks over personal growth and connection leads to feeling less good. Trying to get validation from outside sources is like chasing a never-ending prize. But if someone else's opinion helps you get better, then it might be worth considering.
To stay motivated and keep grinding, you gotta build scaffolds. People do this already—like watching a weird clip and then playing Tetris to forget it later. Tetris acts like the scaffold.
Scaffolding unleashes hidden potential by helping us spot paths we wouldn’t see otherwise. It lets us find motivation in the daily hustle, gain momentum when we're stuck, and turn tough times into strengths.
"It’s about transforming the daily grind into a source of daily joy. It’s no coincidence that in music, the term for practice is play."
If you're keen on enhancing your piano sight-reading skills, try testing yourself on new pieces and keep track of your progress weekly. And if you're a Scrabble enthusiast aiming to boost your anagram skills, why not practice drawing random sets of tiles and see how many words you can spell in a minute?
Mixing it up isn't just more motivating—it's also more effective for learning. Research from hundreds of experiments indicates that alternating between different skills helps people improve faster.
When our performance stagnates, it often declines before it improves again. This pattern was evident in studies of NBA teams: when the best players were injured and then returned, the team performed better.
When we encounter a dead end, to move forward, we may need to backtrack. Once we've retreated far enough, we can discover another path—a route that will help us gather the momentum needed to reach the peak.
Experts can't always teach the basics. 'As you get better at what you do, your ability to communicate your understanding or help others learn that skill often diminishes,' as the saying goes: 'those who can do, can't teach the basics.'
Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness, an emotional experience of stalling. That’s when you need to pull off the freeway and refuel.
In one study, when people had spent engaging evenings on their side hustles, they performed better the next day in their regular jobs. The progress they made at night put an extra spring in their step the following morning. The motivational benefits outweighed any distraction costs. So if you’re feeling 'meh' as a social worker or an accountant, a pottery project might just offer a new path to progress. The strongest known force in daily motivation is a sense of progress. A detour is a route off your main road that you take to refuel. You’re temporarily veering off course, but you’re still in motion. You’re advancing toward a different goal. Fuel can come from small wins (like climbing Kilimanjaro or excelling as one of the best players, rj dickey). What looks like a big breakthrough is usually the accumulation of small wins.
Etensive evidence underscores that our perception of obstacles greatly influences our response. When we perceive hurdles as threats, we often retreat and abandon our pursuits. However, when we approach barriers as challenges to overcome, we rise to meet them.
The ability to see obstacles as challenges is closely linked to cultivating a growth mindset—believing in our capacity to improve. Rigorous experiments involving over 15,000 students demonstrate that fostering a growth mindset among high schoolers leads to academic improvements, particularly when their teachers acknowledge their potential and their schools foster cultures that embrace challenges.
There is substantial evidence indicating that studying alongside knowledgeable peers promotes growth. Furthermore, one of the most effective ways to learn something is to teach it. For instance, physicist John Preskill mastered quantum computing by committing to deliver a course on the subject. Similarly, the Golden Thirteen excelled in their Navy officer exams by teaching the material they aimed to learn.
Underestimation from others can restrict our effort and hinder our growth.
These self-fulfilling prophecies are especially significant among stigmatized groups, who often face low expectations.
The impact of underestimation varies depending on the credibility of the source. If the doubt comes from someone knowledgeable about the task, it can negatively affect performance. Conversely, if the doubter lacks credibility and understanding of the task, individuals may be motivated to prove them wrong, leading to increased effort and better performance.
The success of Finnish schools largely stems from their inclusive culture, rooted in the belief in the potential of every student. Unlike focusing solely on the best and brightest, Finnish schools prioritize providing opportunities for growth to all students. Their approach reflects in the smallest achievement gaps between schools and students worldwide, with being disadvantaged posing less of a setback in Finland compared to elsewhere. In Finnish schools, the mantra "We can't afford to waste a brain" underscores their commitment to nurturing hidden potential in every student, rather than just those showing early signs of high ability. They offer early interventions like individual tutoring and extra support to students falling behind, rather than repeating grades. Additionally, teachers in Finland not only specialize in subjects but also in their students, contributing to the remarkable progress seen among students who had the same teacher for two consecutive years.
Benjamin Franklin famously observed that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
In many elite education systems, students often sacrifice their mental well-being in pursuit of academic excellence.
Building schools where students achieve greater things isn’t about prioritizing a select few and pushing them to excel. It's about nurturing a culture that fosters intellectual growth and emotional well-being for all students.
"Some other eyes will look around, and find the things I’ve never found." —Malvina Reynolds
Instead of relying solely on a select group of established experts, they developed a system to tap into a wider range of ideas and intelligence. Their first voice contact with the miners was made possible by a simple $10 innovation from a small-time entrepreneur. The eventual rescue was facilitated by suggestions from a 24-year-old engineer who wasn't part of the core team. Maximizing group intelligence goes beyond relying on individual experts or gathering people together to solve a problem. It requires leadership practices, team processes, and systems that leverage the capabilities of all members. The most effective teams aren't necessarily those with the brightest minds; they're the ones that extract and utilize the best ideas from everyone.
When choosing leaders, we often prioritize talkativeness over true leadership skills, a phenomenon known as the babble effect. Research suggests that groups tend to promote individuals who dominate discussions, regardless of their actual abilities or expertise. Unfortunately, this means that confidence is often mistaken for competence, and quantity of speech is valued over quality.
However, it's not just the loudest voices that rise to leadership positions; often, the worst babblers are the ones who hog the spotlight. Individuals with poor social skills and inflated egos are more likely to assume leadership roles, despite being less effective in those positions. This leads to self-serving decisions and fosters a zero-sum mentality, which can harm team dynamics and hinder collaboration.
The goal isn’t to be the smartest person in the room; it’s to make the entire room smarter.
In reactive teams, extraverts excel by rallying the group with their vision. Conversely, in proactive teams, introverts shine, guiding diverse ideas to success.
André empowered those with top-notch prosocial skills, rather than just experience or assertiveness.
Research indicates group idea generation often falls short due to ego, noise, and conformity pressures in meetings.
Start by having everyone generate ideas individually, then share them anonymously within the group. Each member evaluates the ideas independently to preserve impartial judgment. Finally, the team collaborates to select and refine the most promising options. This 'brainwriting' technique works wonders for groups aiming to boost collective intelligence.
A single rejection can halt an idea or even hinder a career. Managers often default to saying no, driven by ego protection or fear of reputation damage.
Xerox programmers pioneered the personal computer but faced hurdles in getting management buy-in. Similarly, a Kodak engineer invented the digital camera but struggled to sway leadership priorities. Adopting a different hierarchical approach within organizations can mitigate such issues
The aim is to connect you with supportive leaders who can propel you forward. Weak leaders stifle communication, while strong ones encourage it. Great leaders not only embrace voices but also create mechanisms to amplify them. Initially overlooked, Igor's claw machine idea gained traction through the lattice system, offering alternate pathways for his voice to be heard.
Discovering Uncut Gems in Job Interviews and College Admissions (single blog post)
Recent findings reveal that individuals with ambitious aspirations tend to achieve greater success. Despite controlling for various factors like cognitive and character skills, family background, and parental influence, the magnitude of one's dreams significantly impacts their educational and professional advancement.
Impostor syndrome presents a puzzling paradox: while others express confidence in you, you struggle to believe in yourself. Yet, if you doubt your abilities, shouldn't you also question your negative self-perception? Impostor syndrome may actually signify untapped potential, where it seems others overestimate you, but in reality, you're underestimating yourself.
I encourage you to read the book
Thanks,
Finn