Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

by Adam M. Grant

Many people associate procrastination with laziness. But psychologists find that procrastination is not a time management problem—it’s an emotion management problem. When you procrastinate, you’re not avoiding effort. You’re avoiding the unpleasant feelings that the activity stirs up. Sooner or later, though, you realize that you’re also avoiding getting where you want to go.

If they don’t care about you, they haven’t earned the right for you to care about their reactions. If they’re not qualified to judge the task or close enough to know your potential, you can discount their views and prove them wrong. But if they’ve demonstrated that you matter to them and they know the domain and your skills, they’re offering information to improve yourself. That doesn’t mean you have to accept every bit of constructive criticism they give. You also don’t have to agree with it to learn from it. By trying to understand what provoked their reactions, you can glean insights about how to elicit a different response next time.

Not long ago, it dawned on me that impostor syndrome is a paradox: Others believe in you You don’t believe in yourself Yet you believe yourself instead of them If you doubt yourself, shouldn’t you also doubt your low opinion of yourself? I now believe that impostor syndrome is a sign of hidden potential. It feels like other people are overestimating you, but it’s more likely that you’re underestimating yourself. They’ve recognized a capacity for growth that you can’t see yet. When multiple people believe in you, it might be time to believe them. Many people dream of achieving goals. They measure their progress by the status they acquire and the accolades they collect. But the gains that count the most are the hardest to count. The most meaningful growth is not building our careers—it’s building our character. Success is more than reaching our goals—it’s living our values. There’s no higher value than aspiring to be better tomorrow than we are today. There’s no greater accomplishment than unleashing our hidden potential.