Adam Grant

What counts is not how hard you work but how much you grow.

Fans of learning styles would have us believe that verbal learning is good for one person and auditory learning is good for another person. But learning is not always about finding the right method for you. It’s often about finding the right method for the task

The more you grow, the better you know which flaws are acceptable.

their quest for flawless results, research suggests that perfectionists tend to get three things wrong. One: 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 can’t see the forest for the trees. Two: they avoid unfamiliar situations and difficult tasks that might lead to failure. That leaves them refining a narrow set of existing skills rather than working to develop new ones. Three: they berate themselves for making mistakes, which makes it harder to learn from them. They fail to realize that the purpose of reviewing your mistakes isn’t to shame your past self. It’s to educate your future self.

Perfectionists often worry that failing even once will make them a failure. But take it from eight studies: people don’t judge your competence based on one performance. It’s called the overblown implications effect. If you cook one bad dish, people rarely think you’re a terrible chef. If you leave a finger over the camera lens, they don’t conclude you’re a bad photographer. They know it’s only a snapshot from a single moment in time.

We’re often told that if we want to develop our skills, we need to push ourselves through long hours of monotonous practice. But the best way to unlock hidden potential isn’t to suffer through the daily grind. It’s to transform the daily grind into a source of daily joy. It’s not a coincidence that in music, the term for practice is play.

They found that shared tactics were an important predictor of alliances. Even if they care about different causes, groups find affinity when they use the same methods of engagement.

It’s hard to change other people’s ideals. It’s much easier to link our agendas to familiar values that people already hold.

The most promising ideas begin from novelty and then add familiarity, which capitalizes on the mere exposure effect we covered earlier. On average, a novel starting point followed by a familiarity infusion led to ideas that were judged as 14 percent more practical, without sacrificing any originality.

riginality is what everybody wants, but there’s a sweet spot,” Rob Minkoff explains. “If it’s not original enough, it’s boring or trite. If it’s too original, it may be hard for the audience to understand. The goal is to push the envelope, not tear the envelope.”