Hidden Potential

by Adam M. Grant

Character is more than just having principles. It’s a learned capacity to live by your principles.

The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached, but how far you’ve climbed to get there.

Character is often confused with personality, but they’re not the same. Personality is your predisposition—your basic instincts for how to think, feel, and act. Character is your capacity to prioritize your values over your instincts.

If personality is how you respond on a typical day, character is how you show up on a hard day.

If our cognitive skills are what separate us from animals, our character skills are what elevate us above machines.

But psychologists find that procrastination is not a time management problem—it’s an emotion management problem.

When we’re encouraged to make mistakes, we end up making fewer of them.

Psychologists call that cycle learned industriousness. When you get praised for making an effort, the feeling of effort itself starts to take on secondary reward properties.

It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest … the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt.1 —LEON C. MEGGINSON

Improving depends not on the quantity of information you seek out, but the quality of the information you take in.

Growth is less about how hard you work than how well you learn.

A century ago, the great sociologist Max Weber traced extraordinary gains in achievement to the Protestant work ethic.11 He argued that before the Protestant Reformation, labor had been a necessary evil. Thanks to Martin Luther’s teachings in the 1500s, it was transformed into a calling.

Being reactive and ego driven is a surefire way to short-circuit learning. It traps people in a protective bubble. They limit their access to new information and reject any input that threatens their image. Their thin skin leaves them with thick skulls.

There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in1 —LEONARD COHEN

the purpose of reviewing your mistakes isn’t to shame your past self. It’s to educate your future self.

Beating yourself up doesn’t make you stronger—it leaves you bruised. Being kind to yourself isn’t about ignoring your weaknesses. It’s about giving yourself permission to learn from your disappointments. We grow by embracing our shortcomings, not by punishing them.

Ultimately, excellence is more than meeting other people’s expectations. It’s also about living up to your own standards.

Tadao Ando asks himself this question regularly. “What some other people think of my work” is “not my prime mover,” he says. “It’s my desire to satisfy me, and to challenge myself.”

the Tetris effect illustrates four key features of scaffolding.

One: Scaffolding generally comes from other people.

Two: Scaffolding is tailored to the obstacle in your path.

Three: Scaffolding comes at a pivotal point in time.

Four: Scaffolding is temporary.

the best way to unlock hidden potential isn’t to suffer through the daily grind. It’s to transform the daily grind into a source of daily joy.

Deliberate play is a structured activity14 that’s designed to make skill development enjoyable. It blends elements of deliberate practice and free play.

It turns out that taking breaks has at least three benefits. First, time away from practice helps to sustain harmonious passion.

Second, breaks unlock fresh ideas.

Third, breaks deepen learning. In one experiment, taking a ten-minute break after learning something improved recall for students44

Relaxing is not a waste of time—it’s an investment in well-being. Breaks are not a distraction—they’re a chance to reset attention and incubate ideas. Play is not a frivolous activity—it’s a source of joy and a path to mastery.

It turns out that if you’re taking a new road, the best experts are often the worst guides. There are at least two reasons why experts struggle to give good directions to beginners. One is the distance they’ve traveled—they’ve come too far to remember what it’s like being in your shoes. It’s called the curse of knowledge:

a second challenge. You don’t share the same strengths and weaknesses—their hills and valleys aren’t the same as yours. You might be heading for the same destination, but you’re starting far from their position. This makes your path as unfamiliar to them as theirs is to you.

23 Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. The term was coined by a sociologist (Corey Keyes) and immortalized by a philosopher (Mariah Carey).

If you focus your attention on a specific difficult moment, it’s easy to feel stuck. It’s only when you look at your trajectory over the course of weeks, months, or years that you appreciate the distance you’ve traveled.

coaching others reminds you that you have something to offer.

Whereas high expectations offer support for us to climb, low expectations tend to hold us back—it feels like our boots are made of lead. It’s called the Golem effect: when others underestimate us,24 it limits our effort and growth.

Maya Angelou wrote, “I do my best because I’m counting on you counting on me.”

Progress is not only reflected in the peaks you reach—it’s also visible in the valleys you cross. Resilience is a form of growth.

It’s more important to be good ancestors than dutiful descendants.

Too many people spend their lives being custodians of the past instead of stewards of the future. We worry about making our parents proud when we should be focused on making our children proud.

Just as Michelangelo thought there was an angel locked inside every piece of marble, I think there is a brilliant child locked inside every student.1 —MARVA COLLINS

Dave Barry quipped, “If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be: ‘meetings.’”

In organizations, a lattice is an organizational chart with channels across levels and between teams. Rather than one path of reporting and responsibility from you to the people above you in the hierarchy, a lattice offers multiple paths to the top.

If we listen only to the smartest person in the room, we miss out on discovering the smarts that the rest of the room has to offer.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles … overcome while trying to succeed.1 —BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

In a meta-analysis of 44 studies with over 11,000 people across a wide range of jobs, prior work experience had virtually no bearing8 on performance. A candidate with 20 years of experience on a resume may have just repeated the same year of experience 20 times. So, you need experience to get a job, but you need a job to get experience … and that experience reveals little about your potential.

The key question is not how long people have done a job. It’s how well they can learn to do a job.

Impostor syndrome says, “I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s only a matter of time until everyone finds out.” Growth mindset says, “I don’t know what I’m doing yet. It’s only a matter of time until I figure it out.”

impostor syndrome is a paradox: Others believe in you You don’t believe in yourself Yet you believe yourself instead of them