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

by Adam M. Grant

It’s not the frogs who fail to reevaluate. It’s us. Once we hear the story and accept it as true, we rarely bother to question it.

Most of us take pride in our knowledge and expertise, and in staying true to our beliefs and opinions. That makes sense in a stable world, where we get rewarded for having conviction in our ideas. The problem is that we live in a rapidly changing world, where we need to spend as much time rethinking as we do thinking.

We need to develop the habit of forming our own second opinions.

The risk is that we become so wrapped up in preaching that we’re right, prosecuting others who are wrong, and politicking for support that we don’t bother to rethink our own views.

pivoted more than twice as often.

I’m beginning to think decisiveness is overrated . . . but I reserve the right to change my mind.

Einstein opposed the quantum revolution: “To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself.”

One of my beliefs is that we shouldn’t be open-minded in every circumstance. There are situations where it might make sense to preach, prosecute, and politick.

It might be possible, they argued, to build a smartphone that everyone would love using—and to get the carriers to do it Apple’s way.

Of course, I might be wrong. If I am, I’ll be quick to think again.

she was mentally blind to her blindness.”

Who am I not to serve?

One of my biggest pet peeves is feigned knowledge, where people pretend to know things they don’t.

My mom would drive Adam crazy. She always said when proven wrong, Oh well, you know me, if i don't know the answer I will make a logical one up.

As Dunning quips, “The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club.”[*]

Before we poke fun at them, though, it’s worth remembering that we all have moments when we are them.

I explained that being wrong isn’t always a bad thing. It can be a sign that we’ve learned something new—and that discovery itself can be a delight.

and started calling me Mr. Facts.

Who you are should be a question of what you value, not what you believe.

there’s an old saying that historians can’t even predict the past.

“The absence of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy.”

a challenge network, a group of people we trust to point out our blind spots and help us overcome our weaknesses.

Psychologists have long found that the person most likely to persuade you to change your mind is you.

there’s evidence that people are more interested in hiring candidates who acknowledge legitimate weaknesses as opposed to bragging or humblebragging.

As historian Ibram X. Kendi writes, “Racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be a racist one minute and an antiracist the next.” Humans, like polarizing issues, rarely come in binaries.

Through years of education, they had come to take it for granted that textbooks told the truth.

like people trust the untrustworthy media

In performance cultures, the emphasis on results often undermines psychological safety. When we see people get punished for failures and mistakes, we become worried about proving our competence and protecting our careers. We learn to engage in self-limiting behavior, biting our tongues rather than voicing questions and concerns.