Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

by Adam M. Grant

When we dedicate ourselves to a plan and it isn’t going as we hoped, our first instinct isn’t usually to rethink it. Instead, we tend to double down and sink more resources in the plan. This pattern is called escalation of commitment. Evidence shows that entrepreneurs persist with failing strategies when they should pivot, NBA general managers and coaches keep investing in new contracts and more playing time for draft busts, and politicians continue sending soldiers to wars that didn’t need to be fought in the first place. Sunk costs are a factor, but the most important causes appear to be psychological rather than economic. Escalation of commitment happens because we’re rationalizing creatures, constantly searching for self-justifications for our prior beliefs as a way to soothe our egos, shield our images, and validate our past decisions.

Early on, he had fallen victim to what psychologists call identity foreclosure—when we settle prematurely on a sense of self without enough due diligence, and close our minds to alternative selves. In career choices, identity foreclosure often begins when adults ask kids: what do you want to be when you grow up? Pondering that question can foster a fixed mindset about work and self. “I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child,” Michelle Obama writes. “What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.”

They become seduced by status, failing to see that no matter how much an accomplishment or affiliation impresses someone else, it’s still a poor choice if it depresses them.

They get trapped in an overconfidence cycle, taking pride in pursuing a career identity and surrounding themselves with people who validate their conviction.

For the record, I think it’s better to lose the past two years of progress than to waste the next twenty.

My advice to students is to take a cue from health-care professions. Just as they make appointments with the doctor and the dentist even when nothing is wrong, they should schedule checkups on their careers. I encourage them to put a reminder in their calendars to ask some key questions twice a year. When did you form the aspirations you’re currently pursuing, and how have you changed since then? Have you reached a learning plateau in your role or your workplace, and is it time to consider a pivot? Answering these career checkup questions is a way to periodically activate rethinking cycles. It helps students maintain humility about their ability to predict the future, contemplate doubts about their plans, and stay curious enough to discover new possibilities or reconsider previously discarded ones.

Whether we do checkups with our partners, our parents, or our mentors, it’s worth pausing once or twice a year to reflect on how our aspirations have changed. As we identify past images of our lives that are no longer relevant to our future, we can start to rethink our plans. That can set us up for happiness—as long as we’re not too fixated on finding it.

Psychologists find that the more people value happiness, the less happy they often become with their lives. It’s true for people who naturally care about happiness and for people who are randomly assigned to reflect on why happiness matters. There’s even evidence that placing a great deal of importance on happiness is a risk factor for depression. Why? One possibility is that when we’re searching for happiness, we get too busy evaluating life to actually experience it. Instead of savoring our moments of joy, we ruminate about why our lives aren’t more joyful. A second likely culprit is that we spend too much time striving for peak happiness, overlooking the fact that happiness depends more on the frequency of positive emotions than their intensity. A third potential factor is that when we hunt for happiness, we overemphasize pleasure at the expense of purpose. This theory is consistent with data suggesting that meaning is healthier than happiness, and that people who look for purpose in their work are more successful in pursuing their passions—and less likely to quit their jobs—than those who look for joy. While enjoyment waxes and wanes, meaning tends to last. A fourth explanation is that Western conceptions of happiness as an individual state leave us feeling lonely. In more collectivistic Eastern cultures, that pattern is reversed: pursuing happiness predicts higher well-being, because people prioritize social engagement over independent activities.

Psychologists find that passions are often developed, not discovered.

My favorite test of meaningful work is to ask: if this job didn’t exist, how much worse off would people be? It’s near midlife that this question often begins to loom large.

When my students talk about the evolution of self-esteem in their careers, the progression often goes something like this: Phase 1: I’m not important Phase 2: I’m important Phase 3: I want to contribute to something important

We know that open systems are governed by at least two key principles: there are always multiple paths to the same end (equifinality), and the same starting point can be a path to many different ends (multifinality).

Our identities are open systems, and so are our lives. We don’t have to stay tethered to old images of where we want to go or who we want to be. The simplest way to start rethinking our options is to question what we do daily.

“What I believe” is a process rather than a finality. —Emma Goldman

As the eminent physicist Max Planck put it, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die.”

Failing to reconsider “settled science” has stalled progress at too many times in history.

For me, the difference between reflection and rumination is whether you’re still learning. If you’re pondering a familiar problem without gaining fresh insights, it’s time to seek new information or reach out to your challenge network.

Bold, persistent experimentation might be our best tool for rethinking.

I’m curious: do you agree? If not, what evidence would change your mind?

Sharing our imperfections can be risky if we haven’t yet established our competence. In studies of lawyers and teachers searching for jobs, expressing themselves authentically increased the odds of getting job offers if they were rated in the 90th percentile or above in competence, but backfired if they were less competent. Lawyers at or below the 50th percentile in competence—and teachers at or below the 25th—actually did worse when they were candid. Experiments show that people who haven’t yet proven their competence are respected less if they admit their weaknesses. They aren’t just incompetent; they seem insecure, too.