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

Sun, 03 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The smartest people aren’t automatically the best thinkers. A high IQ makes you faster at spotting patterns, which also makes you quicker to fall for stereotypes and slower to update a belief once it’s outdated. What actually matters, Adam Grant argues, is the willingness to be wrong — to hold your opinions as hypotheses you keep testing rather than treasures you defend. In 1949, when a Montana wildfire turned on a crew of smokejumpers, their leader Wagner Dodge survived by lighting an escape fire to burn away the fuel around him; most of his crew thought he’d lost his mind, ran for the ridge, and died in the flames. Dodge lived because he could rethink under pressure. The rest of us rarely face those stakes, but we make the same choice constantly: cling to what we think we know, or stay open to being wrong.

Adam Grant on SummaryShelf

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