Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

by Adam M. Grant

Turn the daily grind into a source of daily joy. To maintain harmonious passion, design practice around deliberate play.

Compete against yourself. Measure your progress over time, not against an opponent.

Don’t hold yourself hostage to a fixed routine. It’s possible to avoid burnout and boreout by introducing novelty and variety into your practice.

Be proactive about rest and recovery. Don’t wait until you’re burned out or bored out to take breaks—build them into your schedule.

When you’re stuck, back up to move forward.

Find a compass. You don’t need a map to start on a new route—you just need a compass to gauge whether you’re heading in the right direction.

Seek multiple guides. Instead of relying on a single expert or mentor, remember that the best directions come from multiple guides.

Find a side gig. When you find yourself languishing, you can build momentum by taking a detour to a new destination.

Teach what you want to learn. The best way to learn something is to teach it.

The advice you give is usually the advice you need to take.

Be a good ancestor. When your faith falters, recall who you’re fighting for. Our deepest reserves of resilience come from knowing that other people are counting on us.

Open doors for people who are underrated and overlooked.

Cultivate a growth mindset in teachers, not only in students. Gauge success by the progress of every student, not just those at the top.

Professionalize education. Following Finland’s example, train and treat teachers as trusted professionals. When teachers are equipped and encouraged to stay up-to-date on the latest evidence, coach one another, and shape the curriculum, the next generation can achieve greater things.

With more time to get to know each student personally, teachers can become coaches and mentors, tailoring their instructional and emotional support to help all students reach their potential.

Give students the freedom to explore and share their individual interests.

Transform groups into teams. Collective intelligence depends on cohesion—aligning a team around shared responsibility for a meaningful mission. When people believe they need one another to succeed in reaching an important goal, they become more than the sum of their parts.

Choose leaders based on prosocial skills.

When teams are eager to contribute, the most effective leader is not the loudest talker, but the best listener.

Shift from brainstorming to brainwriting. For more balanced participation and better solutions, before you meet as a group, have people generate and evaluate ideas independently. Once all the ideas are on the table and all the voices are in the room,

have the group select and refine the most promisi...

Replace the corporate ladder with a l...

give people multiple paths t...

Eliminate requirements for credentials and experience.

Background and talent determine where people start, but character skills shape how far they can climb.

To account for the obstacles candidates have faced, put their performance in context by comparing them to peers in their school, major, and neighborhood.

Use trajectories in evaluations. It’s not enough to

look at recent or average performance—the trajectory of performance o...

Invite applicants to share what they love and showcase their strengths. Afterward, ask if they thought their performance represented them well—and if not, give them a do-over.

The ultimate mark of potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached, but the distance you’ve traveled—and helped others travel.