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

by Adam M. Grant

What we want to attain is confident humility: having faith in our capability while appreciating that we may not have the right solution or even be addressing the right problem.

Her confidence wasn’t in her existing knowledge—it was in her capacity to learn.

When adults have the confidence to acknowledge what they don’t know, they pay more attention to how strong evidence is and spend more time reading material that contradicts their opinions.

The most effective leaders score high in both confidence and humility.

They know they need to recognize and transcend their limits if they want to push the limits of greatness.

But one of my newly formed beliefs is that we’re sometimes better off underestimating ourselves.

The standard explanation for their accomplishments is that they succeed in spite of their doubts, but what if their success is actually driven in part by those doubts?

Still, it leaves me wondering if we’ve been misjudging impostor syndrome by seeing it solely as a disorder.

we might be better off embracing those fears, because they can give us three benefits of doubt.

it can motivate us to work harder.

Impostors may be the last to jump in, but they may also be the last to bail out.

Second, impostor thoughts can motivate us to work smarter.

When we don’t believe we’re going to win, we have nothing to lose by re...

Feeling like an impostor puts us in a beginner’s mindset, leading us to question assumptions that o...

can make us better ...

seek out insights from others.

“Learning requires the humility to realize one has something to learn.”44

They saw themselves on a level playing field, and they knew that much of what they lacked in experience and expertise they could make up by listening.

Now she had reached a point of confident humility, and she interpreted doubts differently: they were a cue that she needed to improve her tools.

Plenty of evidence suggests that confidence is just as often the result of progress as the cause of it.

We don’t have to wait for our confidence to rise to achieve...

We can build it through achieving chal...

“Impostor syndrome always keeps me on my toes and growing because I never think I know it all,”

Great thinkers don’t harbor doubts because they’re impostors. They maintain doubts because they know we’re all partially blind and they’re committed to improving their sight.

A mark of lifelong learners is recognizing that they can learn something from everyone they meet.

Confident humility is a corrective lens: it enables us to overcome those weaknesses.

The goal is not to be wrong more often. It’s to recognize that we’re all wrong more often than we’d like to admit, and the more we deny it, the deeper the hole we dig for ourselves.

when ideas survive, it’s not because they’re true—it’s because they’re interesting.

Asimov, great discoveries often begin not with “Eureka!” but with “That’s funny….”

When a core belief is questioned, though, we tend to shut down rather than open up.

“Being wrong is the only way I feel sure I’ve learned anything.”

he said he refuses to let his beliefs become part of his identity.

Even positive changes can lead to negative emotions;

evolving your identity can leave you feeling derailed and disconnected.

Over time, though, rethinking who you are appears to become mentally healthy—as long as you can tell a coherent story about h...

I was too fixated on knowing. Now I’m more interested in finding out what I don’t know.

separating your opinions from your identity.

Our opinions can become so sacred that we grow hostile to the mere thought of being wrong,

and the totalitarian ego leaps in to silence counterarguments, squash contrary evidence, and close the door on learning.

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

When they define themselves by values rather than opinions, they buy themselves the flexibility to update their practices in light of new evidence.

The single most important driver of forecasters’29 success was how often they updated their beliefs.

Better judgment doesn’t necessarily require hundreds or even dozens of updates.

Just a few more efforts at rethinking can move the needle.

They saw their opinions more as hunches than as truths

It’s a sign of wisdom to avoid believing every thought that enters your mind.

“There’s no benefit to me for being wrong for longer. It’s much better if I change my beliefs sooner, and it’s a good feeling to have that sense of a discovery, that surprise—I would think people would enjoy that.”

desirability bias.

Research suggests that identifying even a single reason why we might be wrong can be enough to curb overconfidence.

Laughing at ourselves reminds us that although we might take our decisions seriously, we don’t have to take ourselves too seriously.