Unlocking Hidden Potential with Adam Grant
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My good friend Adam Grant, author and psychology professor at UPenn, has a new book out, Hidden Potential, The Science of Achieving Greater Things. He sent me a draft months ago. I told Adam, I love it so much that when it comes out, I want to sit down and interview you about it, and we'll run the interview in the Revisionist History feed.

Sure enough, Hidden Potential has now come out. And on Adam's publication day, he came to New York and joined me on stage at the 92nd Street Y for what turned out to be a really, really fun conversation, as we always have whenever we get together. So here it is. Thank you. Thank you all for coming. Adam, thank you for coming to New York. You know, we have done this

- We have, and this is, it's usually on my turf, not yours. - This is what I was about to say. I was going to ask you what is different this time around, and you, that's exactly right. You have finally come to my house. And I was reflecting on this and I was wondering what kind of an idiot am I that I have agreed to go to your turf like seven times in a row before demanding that we return the favor. This is like a, you know, in basketball, this is like someone's seating,

you know, home territory and saying, "Oh, let's just do it at your arena." - I will say though, you once invited me to your actual house where we had dinner and you cooked. - That's true. - Do you remember this? - Yeah, I wouldn't say that was necessarily to your advantage if I was cooking. - Well, it definitely wasn't because I've never told you this, but do you remember what you cooked? - No. - I think it was tilapia. - Really? - Or it was something that swims and I don't eat seafood. - Oh.

But I didn't want to hurt your feelings, so I ate it. I feel like we're even. Adam, that's very touching. You took tilapia for me. I wanted to start, we're going to be discussing your book, Hidden Potential, but I'm looking at the blurbs on the back, and I just want to not read the blurbs, but just talk about who has blurbed your book. Okay, so the first blurb is from Serena Williams, right? World's Greatest Tennis Player.

The second blurb is from Mark Cuban, the famous owner of the Dallas Mavericks, the guy who's on Shark Tank. The third quote is from Malcolm Gladwell, me. The fourth quote is from Yo-Yo Ma, world's famous cellist. And the fourth quote is from US Navy Admiral William McRaven. Okay, now, what's the theory behind the order?

Why does Serena, did she say, I'll give you a blurb if you put me first? Like, who decided she goes first? Do Cubans say, I'm willing to go second to Serena, but not, if I'm behind Gladwell, you're not getting a, what happened, how did that work? I didn't choose the order. It's not alphabetical, because...

- Wait, are you trying to argue for a higher placement than third? - No. - Is that what's happening here? - No, no, I'm not sure I belong third. - I think. - I don't know why I'm ahead of, why would I be ahead of Yo-Yo Ma? Yo-Yo Ma in every way is more culturally significant than I am. I will be dead and forgotten if people will be listening to Yo-Yo Ma. William McRaven defends this country.

And you have a blast? Like, what are your priorities, by the way? This is how you treat a guest in your home? Well, I mean, we have a history of me feeding you tilapia. So, all right, let's talk about your book, which I like a lot, by the way. Otherwise, I would not have blurbed it.

You're interested in character, which is, that's sort of an interesting twist, isn't it? You would think an organizational psychologist would be someone who would be interested in structures and procedures and those kinds of things. Well, I'm a psychologist first, and I happen to do a lot of my work on people at work. But what I care about is people and the quality of their lives and how much they get to grow. And so if you happen to do that in an organization, great, but I could care less about the org chart.

But I care deeply about helping people reach their potential. Yeah. I want to make an additional observation about your books as a group. And that is that they're fundamentally about character, as you say, but you're also very interested in sort of interrogating our intuitive ideas about character, right? I'm always reminded, and you will know this, didn't...

Lee Ross write a famous paper which was all about how our intuitions about psychology are wrong in the main. And it seems to me a lot of what you're doing in your books, is this a fair summary of them? Is you are continuing on that path of kind of interrogating our intuitive notions about psychology. Some would call that Gladwellian. No, I don't think, I think you're deflecting now, Adam.

You literally just deflected. I don't. Is anyone else watching this happen? His deflection is accusing me of deflection. It's meta-deflection. No, listen. I'm just a flat-out contrarian. There's a difference between someone who gently interrogates what we get wrong as intuitive psychologists and someone like me who just says...

provocatively and usually erroneously that everything we think is wrong. I'm a bomb thrower. You're not a bomb thrower. Yeah, I guess that's, I think that's a parody or a caricature of your work. But no, I think I start with really wanting to understand what makes people tick. Yeah. And how we can improve the quality of our lives. And then within that, I want to focus on what's surprising and unexpected. So yes, I think you're right. Yeah. Which causes me pain to admit.

Like we think again, for example, the idea of valorizing humility as the kind of cornerstone, the key, as the cornerstone of intellectual growth is really interesting and not one, I imagine if you gathered a group of people, of students, and asked them what did they think, what character trait did they think was the key to intellectual growth, humility would not be in the top three.

No, and that's why I wanted to write about it. I mean, I go to work when we used to go to a physical workplace. And still, when I go to teach, I walk into the classroom and I think, Donald Trump and Elon Musk both attended this fine institution. What would I want the next Trump or Musk to learn? And strangely, humility is very, very high on that list. Yeah. Yeah.

- I wonder how you could... So tell me about the thought process that led you to think, okay, the next stage in this journey through character, I want it to be about hidden potential. How did you get there? - I went down this path because I was once told that I couldn't write. - Who told you that? - The Harvard Writing Office, my first week of college when they recommended me for remedial writing.

which I was then told was for jocks and people who spoke English as a sixth or seventh language. So, wait, keep going. This is interesting. Yeah, so I failed the required writing test as a brand new freshman. It was the first piece of feedback I got from Harvard. And if you think I had imposter syndrome before...

Like already worrying, like I'm the one mistake, I don't belong here. Now I show up, I take the writing test, and they're like, nope, you must take an extra semester of writing. And you can't explain your thoughts coherently, and you don't know how to structure an argument properly.

And I was like, I think I don't belong here. And I think that's the point, right? That's why I wanted to write this book is we make so many judgments of other people's potential. Yeah. And so often they're driven by starting ability. Do you have the raw talent? Are you a prodigy? Do you look extremely capable? And if the answer is no, you think you should give up.

because you don't have what it takes. And I think that's a huge mistake. I think it counts out a ton of late bloomers. I think it overlooks many, many slow learners. And I think it also prevents us from stretching beyond our strengths and actually achieving more than we believe we're capable of. - But so wait, but this is interesting. 'Cause I associate you, can you give us a little more insight into your 18 year old self? You said you had imposter syndrome, why?

I think I didn't have any sense of what it took to be a Harvard student. I remember going to my interview, and the interviewer was the first Harvard graduate I ever met. And I thought that was a different intellectual league. I didn't know if I was smart enough. I didn't have any patents yet. I did not get a perfect SAT score. But you got in. Yeah, but I didn't know exactly why or how. And they're just evaluating me from a bunch of pieces of paper, which is a pretty...

It's a pretty poor proxy for somebody's potential. Yeah. Those of us who didn't get into Harvard are always baffled by those who did get into Harvard and profess to have imposter syndrome. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and I'd like to take a moment to talk to you about an amazing new podcast I'm hosting called Medal of Honor.

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So start protecting your identity today. Save up to 40% off your first year of LifeLock identity theft protection. Go to LifeLock.com slash metal to save 40% off. Terms apply. Hi, Dr. Laurie Santos here. Sometimes it's the little things that create happiness and peace of mind. What value do the right benefits bring to your employees?

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So keep your workforce moving forward with group benefits from the Hartford. The Bucks got your back. Learn more at thehartford.com slash benefits. This is Michael Lewis from Against the Rules with Michael Lewis. If you have a small business or work as a freelancer, every little decision matters. So it's important to get those decisions right. Lenovo Pro has the expertise and resources to help you get them right. And it's free.

Lenovo Pro is a partnership that will help you understand and utilize tech trends. It works with you over time to take advantage of offers and resources that are right for your business. For example, explore how AI can elevate your enterprise with Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon Powered by Intel at Core Ultra Processors. Lenovo Pro provides access to the critical IT tools you need to succeed.

whether you're a startup or a mature business. So to join Lenovo Pro, visit Lenovo.com. That's Lenovo.com. What I'm getting at with all these questions about your college years is to what extent this book strikes me

Each one of your books is steadily a little more personal. Some of the best parts of this book are where you illustrate some of your points with personal stories. And I'm wondering whether, in some sense, this book is a more personal project than your previous books.

It might be. I think I've gotten more comfortable realizing I've gotten so much, I guess, reader feedback and also listener feedback from podcasts. Like, we like hearing your personal stories. Like, don't always use the data as a crutch. I'm like, they're not a crutch. That's literally what I do. It's how I think. Like, if you ask me a question about anything, I'll be like, well, what is the best randomized controlled trial on that? Yeah. So this is not me...

avoiding sharing, it's that I consider systematic evidence to be a better source of knowledge than my idiosyncratic lived experience. But I realize that a lot of people's brains don't work that way. And I think I've come around to the idea that yes, if I'm sharing my story in service of explaining an idea or revealing a lesson,

then that's not about me. That's actually me trying to offer a gift from my life to theirs. I think this book is a personal project because I've realized over the course of writing it that all my achievements that I'm actually proud of were things that I started out bad at. Yeah.

And I thought most of my life the opposite was true. I thought what I was supposed to be proud of were the things that came naturally to me. So this is really interesting, and I want to dig into many parts of this. But I want to start with, we were talking earlier about the kind of hidden project in many of your books is interrogating our kind of lay notions of intuitive psychology that are incorrect. And I'm curious about this. So

The lay notion this book is, to the point you just made, the lay notion this book is focused on is we have this kind of veneration of innate ability, but in fact, what the evidence suggests is that

Many of the most important accomplishments we have are not about what we start with, but what we acquire along the way. And what I want to know is, what I'm curious about is, why do we have, in this specific respect, a lay notion that's so clearly at odds with the facts? Why would we venerate innate ability if innate ability is not nearly as important as

Like, what's the reason for that? - Such an interesting question. Off the top of my head, I think there are a couple things going on. Number one, how many parents do you know that are living vicariously through their kids? I mean, your kids are two in less than a year, so. - It's already started, it's already started.

A lot of people, whether it's wanting their kids to be highly intelligent or accomplished in their careers or great athletes or incredible musicians, whatever dreams people have unrealized, they often impose on their kids. And I think saying I didn't have the natural ability is a convenient way to say, you know what? Maybe I didn't waste my potential.

I didn't squander an opportunity, which is a lot of cognitive dissonance to live with. To say maybe I could have been great and I just didn't have the right approach to learning or the right level of discipline or the right coach. That's unsettling to think about. I think just blaming a lack of progress on raw talent, it lets us off the hook a little bit would be one thought.

I think the second thought is that when we see natural talent, we're just blown away by it. If you've ever watched a four-year-old play Mozart, it's mind-boggling. And you realize that is a human that's cut from a different cloth than me. And so it's hard to ever see yourself in that person. I remember, actually, I'll give you a personal example on this since you invited me to talk more about myself. So this is about to become the Adam Grant show.

Are you ready? Yes. All right. I remember when I, so you know I'm an introvert. I'm shy. I was extremely afraid of public speaking. And when I decided I wanted to do it, I said, okay, I have to go and learn from great speakers. So the first thing I did was I watched videos of MLK's I Have a Dream speech. It was completely demoralizing. I mean, I watched this and I'm like, I will never, no matter how hard I work at this, I will never get that good. So I'm like, I might as well quit now.

And I think that, I mean, it just, it feels unfathomable, right? When you see that the innate ability differences between you and someone else could be that great, it just seems impossible for you. And so you assume then that that is what is required. What you're doing with MLK is you're assuming that what you're observing is an innate ability

In fact, he's practiced, he grows up in an oral culture, he grows up watching his father and others preach sermons. I mean, he's surrounded in a world that is speaking in that vein. It's like he's actually not the right person to look at and see evidence of. That's exactly right, but we don't know it. You watch someone as good as Martin Luther King Jr., and you think that's got to be a God-given gift.

There's no way he was ever bad at speaking, right? He used to do good. It's impossible. What we don't see is the history you're describing. We admire people at their peak. We don't get to see the distance they've traveled. We don't see the fact that he started entering public speaking competitions when he was 15 years old.

that he had 20 years of deliberate practice under his belt, that the year he gave the dream speech alone, he gave over 350 speeches, which is probably as many speeches as you've given in your career, I would imagine. So I think we have unfortunate access to greatness. We see people at their peak and we assume that they started far ahead of us.

But is this a universal affliction or an American affliction? Because I say, I bring it up because one of my favorite chapters in this book is you have a chapter on talking about the educational system in Finland and how much it differs from the American system in its sort of assumptions about learning. And it doesn't sound like the Finns, at least as is expressed in their educational system, hold to a notion of innate ability and knowledge.

And, you know, so what are we dealing with here? Is this is there something uniquely American about this idea? There may be to some extent. I think when yeah, when I think about what we do culturally in the U.S. that's different from other parts of the world, there is a tendency to make the fundamental attribution error more in the U.S.,

You should define that. Yeah, the tendency to attribute people's actions and station to their innate characteristics as opposed to their situation and affordances and opportunity and circumstances. An idea that you thoroughly decimated in Outliers, I will point out. But we still do it a lot in the U.S., right? We're an individualistic society. What we like to do is we like to say, okay, you, you are where you are because of the things that are inside of you.

And I think you're right. I think in Finland, I think in Estonia, I think we could probably make a whole list of other countries. There's a stronger sense that every child has hidden potential. And it's the job of parents and teachers and coaches to realize it in two senses of the word. One, to recognize it. And then two, to develop it.

It seems to me fundamentally paradoxical, and no one's properly explained to me why it would be the case that a culture like the United States, which is the highest achieving, you could argue it's the highest achieving culture in the world on a number of metrics, should have a notion about achievement that is fundamentally wrong. It just doesn't make any sense. In fact, if you said to me that America was the one place where people recognize that

hard work, that everyone has a lot of potential and that it's revealed in hard work practiced over your life and that trying to judge someone on the basis of their performance at 12 is a fool's errand. If someone said that is a distinctly American view, I would have said that makes sense. It doesn't make any sense at all that we should have a backwards of all cultures. I think part of the problem is our country feels too big to invest in everybody.

And so what we often do is we say, okay, well, we're going to create gifted and talented programs. And we're going to build a winner-take-all system so that the kids with the true promise are going to get to rise to the top. And that allows us to believe in the notion of meritocracy.

It allows us to feel like we've earned all the success that we've achieved as opposed to partially lucking into it. And so I think there is a function there, right? It allows us to think that America, like when we talk about the American dream and we say that anybody can live the American dream, this is the land of opportunity. We are justifying our system. And I think that serves a soothing function for a lot of people.

I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and I'd like to take a moment to talk to you about an amazing new podcast I'm hosting called Medal of Honor. It's a moving podcast series celebrating the untold stories of those who protect our country. Brought to you by LifeLock, the leader in identity theft protection.

Now you may think, I'm smart, I'm careful with my data, I don't need to worry. But the truth is, a lot of your personal information is in the control of others, like your doctor's office, your bank, your insurance provider. All it takes is one breach of any organization that has your info and you could become a victim of identity theft.

LifeLock is a leader in identity theft protection and empowers you to take control of your identity, alerting you to more uses of your personal information and fixing identity theft if it happens. Guaranteed. All your money back. LifeLock offers extensive proactive protection and all plans include the LifeLock Million Dollar Protection Package.

So start protecting your identity today. Save up to 40% off your first year of LifeLock identity theft protection. Go to LifeLock.com slash metal to save 40% off. Terms apply. Let's talk about what it takes to keep your business competitive. Sure, you need to be responsive to your customers, but it's just as important to look out for the needs of your employees.

They're the ones who keep things humming along and fuel your company's success. So let the experienced professionals at the Hartford provide the quality benefits that your employees deserve.

The Hartford Group Benefits makes managing benefits and absences a breeze, providing world-class customer care to ensure that your employees are treated like people, not like policies. The Hartford offers flexible products to meet the needs of every employee. From supplemental health benefits to coverage for life and loss, the Hartford has you covered.

So keep your workforce moving forward with group benefits from the Hartford. The buck's got your back. Learn more at thehartford.com slash benefits. This is Michael Lewis from Against the Rules with Michael Lewis. If you have a small business or work as a freelancer, every little decision matters. So it's important to get those decisions right. Lenovo Pro has the expertise and resources to help you get them right. And it's free.

Lenovo Pro is a partnership that will help you understand and utilize tech trends. It works with you over time to take advantage of offers and resources that are right for your business. For example, explore how AI can elevate your enterprise with Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Carbon Powered by Intel at Core Ultra Processors. Lenovo Pro provides access to the critical IT tools you need to succeed.

whether you're a startup or a mature business. So to join Lenovo Pro, visit Lenovo.com. That's Lenovo.com. Another one of my favorite chapters in this book is about perfectionism.

And it's sort of your critique of where perfectionism leads us, what it costs us. And you start with a really interesting discussion of your time as a diver in high school and how you were a perfectionist. Can you talk a little bit about how your perfectionism manifested itself and how you came to believe it was self-defeating?

Yeah, I actually, first, I didn't know I was a perfectionist when I started diving. And then at some point it crystallized and I thought it was a big advantage because in diving, I mean, you've all heard Olympic announcers say perfect tense. And I thought, okay, in a sport that's judged on perfection, aiming for perfection has got to be the way. And it was such a liability for me, more than an asset.

There are a whole bunch of things that I did that were counterproductive. One was I just wasted a lot of time trying to perfect easy dives as opposed to learning harder ones, which limited my degree of difficulty. I actually got an award one year from my teammates. It was the If Only Award, and there was a little drawing of me on a paper plate with a cartoon that said, if only I had pointed my left pinky toe on that dive, I would have gotten an eight and a half instead of an eight.

And that's not what mattered. I should have been stretching so I could actually touch my toes without bending my knees. That would have made me a better diver. I think not only did I focus on the wrong things, I ruminated a lot. I beat myself up a lot. And I was constantly shaming my past mistakes as opposed to trying to sort of educate my future self from those lessons. And that was not helpful. Probably the worst thing that I did, though, was the balking.

where diving when you're going to take off forward, you walk down the board and then jump to the end.

Well, if my hurdle, if my takeoff, if my approach wasn't perfect, I would just stop and start over and stop and start over. And then there's a two-balk rule, and then I have to get off the board, and then I'm not doing dives all practice because, like, what's the point of... Yeah. If you balk... In other words, if you stop and start again more than twice, you have to dismount from the... Well, that was the rule that my coach, Eric Best, had to institute because otherwise I would just balk all practice.

So, but I... What's going on inside your head? Are you enjoying being a diver? Yeah, I loved it. I loved it, but I was really frustrated feeling like I couldn't get it right. I couldn't get it right. I was really bad. And then when did you start reflecting on the experience and kind of... I think the reason I ask this question is

Forgive me, Adam, if I could play Dr. Freud for a moment, and if you'd like to recline. I feel there's a lot more... Your books are a lot more of a personal project than you let on. And this one in particular, I was reading this one, and you have these little moments where you start talking about diving, and I think, you know, if I was a psychoanalyst, I would say, Adam, this book is...

really about you trying to make sense of the mistakes that little Adam made and the experiences that little Adam had. Is that not fair? I mean, I wouldn't frame that in Freudian terms because I think he set psychology back a century. Of course you would say that. I mean, his approach was so unscientific. And if you disagree with him, well, you're in denial. How is that helpful to anyone? Exhibit A. Who's in denial here?

I will say there are some good meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials of psychodynamic therapy that show that it can have efficacy for some people in some situations, but I'm still extremely skeptical. Anyway, I will not be paging Dr. Freud. Can I remind you where you are? You're in a place called Manhattan, and you're dissing psychoanalysis. What?

- I don't know, Malcolm. - An act of self-sacrifice. You want people to buy your book afterwards? And this is what you're telling them? - First of all, I think most people here have already bought the book.

And I also think there's a point at which you stop blaming your behavior on the sins of your parents. Adam. And start taking responsibility for your adult choices. I brought this up because I was wondering whether you were doing a version of the same thing, which was at the age of how old are you now? Now? 42. At the age of 42, still working out the problems you had as a teenager.

Swimmer is a diver. Oh, don't ever call a diver a swimmer. Yeah, no, that's like me calling you a jogger as a runner. I think there's a difference between trying to work out the problems of little Adam, which is how Malcolm Freud would approach this discussion and trying to figure out if there are lessons from my biggest struggles and also my greatest moments of growth and

that could become teachable moments for me and others. I'm trying to reflect on the fact that I really was my own worst enemy for a good part of my diving career. But then I ended up ascending to a much greater height than I ever thought possible. I should not have gotten where I got as a diver. I shouldn't have been a... What was I doing in the Junior Olympic Nationals as somebody who literally was called Frankenstein because I didn't bend my knees when I walked?

like something about this does not add up. And so I think that juxtaposing those kinds of moments with what does the social science tell us is really powerful. But if you had, I guess what I'm trying to say is the work that you've done, the extraordinary work that you've done as an adult is in some way, we're all beneficiaries of some of these struggles you had as a, right? If you had been this kind of

non-nerdy golden boy who was a kind of diving prodigy and to whom things came easily. We don't get this book. Definitely not. Yeah. To go back to our earlier point, this is another kind of crucial flaw in the kind of obsession with innate ability and the way in which we celebrate. We happen to celebrate those who achieve things early and without apparent effort.

and that is that we're not thinking about the downstream consequences, right? We're not thinking that a lot of what looks like struggle at an early age is simply kind of raw material in preparation for some kind of future better thing, right? Struggling as a diver, as a

Freshman is in the grand scheme of things a pretty small thing, but it's a little kernel that becomes something really interesting when you're 40 and you're interested in writing about hidden potential, right? It starts to matter then. I think you're onto something important here. And I think I read a book once, they called it desirable difficulty by you. Yes. I think that

Yeah, this is actually something that Maurice actually stressed to me that I hadn't appreciated. So, you know, Maurice from the book is a chess grandmaster and I think an extraordinary coach who recognizes and brings out the hidden potential in kids that nobody else thought had a chance.

And one of the things Maurice said is he is watched in chess over and over again. The biggest prodigies young are the ones who have the biggest struggles when they're older because it came too easily to them at first.

And they're used to kind of having this natural success. And all of a sudden, they lose the game and they can't take it. And they haven't, I think the fundamental problem there, if you look at the research is, they have not built the character skills that are necessary to face obstacles. They don't know how to embrace discomfort.

They don't know how to accept the right imperfections and say, these mistakes are actually part of my growth. And so I think that sometimes early success does a major disservice to our future selves. I reminded a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in a coffee shop in Orlando, Florida, long story. And I emailed- You emailed me about this. I emailed Adam. There's two

sitting next to me. Of course, I was eavesdropping. And one of them had a daughter who was at Cornell Medical School. And he was boasting about how she was, she loved Cornell. Cornell's amazing. She got into Cornell. Isn't that fantastic? Blah, blah, blah. And I emailed Adam and I was like, how does this guy get it completely backwards? Why doesn't he boast about his daughter that

my daughter's having an amazing time in medical school. Isn't it amazing that she's the kind of person who can go into an institution and find what's meaningful to her and flourish? And, you know, he was focused on Cornell and he wasn't interested in the character traits his own daughter had that allowed her to flourish and be happy and find meaningful. And I was just like,

There's something about parents, what you're describing is, why are parents so bad at kind of decoding the psychology of their own children? It just strikes me as like, why are we making these mistakes? Then why on earth are we so in love with prodigies? Like, I don't, again, I mean, I'm just baffled by this. I mean, when psychologists study this, they talk about parental over-involvement and over-identification.

And the notion that as a parent, like we were touching on this earlier, you start to define your own success by your children's accomplishments. And I just want to sit parents down. I see this all the time with our students at Penn. I want to sit these parents down and say, like, what your children achieve is not a reflection of your greatness as a parent. Right?

You should be much more concerned with who your kids become and how they treat other people. Being a great parent is not about how much prestige your kids attain in their school choices or in their jobs. It's not about career success, it's about character.

I think you might have found someone who had not yet internalized that message. You say, on the subject of perfectionism, I want you to talk a little bit more about what, in general, what precisely is damaging about having a perfectionistic attitude? And what do you feel we should have instead?

Okay, so if you look at the current work, which I think is the most comprehensive and rigorous to date, what we see goes wrong with perfectionists is one, they lose the forest and the trees. So they tend to focus on small details and overlook the big picture. Two, they do a lot of the rumination and sort of self-shaming as opposed to self-compassion that's necessary for learning from your mistakes.

And three, they actually tend not to stretch themselves much. They want to focus on the things they know they can master, as opposed to venturing into uncharted territory. And by avoiding failure, they actually avoid risk-taking and they avoid learning and challenging themselves. And that means they end up with a static or even ever-narrowing comfort zone, as opposed to an expanding domain of expertise. You make the comment in the book that you think perfectionism, of the sort you've just defined,

is on the rise. Why would it be on the rise? So empirically, perfectionism has risen in the US, in the UK and the great nation of Canada. I think if you look at why it's increasing, what everybody does is they say social media. Like it's got to be social media. Everybody has a perfect image of themselves on Instagram and that's leading our kids to have unrealistic expectations.

That may be part of the story, but guess what? Perfectionism started rising a generation before social media existed. It started rising when Mark Zuckerberg was in diapers. So there's got to be something else going on, and my read of the evidence is there are two things that seem to be contributing to it, and both of them are parental behaviors. One of them is rising parental expectations for kids.

holding children to increasingly impossible standards. And two is increasingly harsh criticism of kids who don't meet those standards. Did you, so why would, okay, let's take one step further. Why would parents, I mean, it seems like an obvious question, but I don't know that I know the kind of

Good answer. Why would parents' expectations have risen? So we're talking about the 90s, 80s, 90s. What's driving parental expectations in that era? So we don't know. I think probably the consensus hunch right now is that the world has gotten more competitive.

So, you know, however hard it was to get into college in the 80s, it got a little bit harder in the 90s and it got increasingly difficult over time. And so in a world that feels more and more zero sum, I think we've probably seen a lot of talk about how the current generation of kids is the first in America that might not sort of outdo their parents or have a better standard of living than their parents. And so when you see that world, when you see a world of scarcity, you see a world of scarcity.

You think, I've got to do whatever it takes to help my kids succeed. Forgetting that the very things you're doing to try to help your kids succeed are just turning them into achievement robots who one day realize this is no way to live a life and burn out. How were you, how did your parents, would you think your parents were guilty of that? My mom used to tell me, Adam, no matter what grade you get, as long as you do your best, I'll be proud of you. And then she would add,

But if you didn't get an A, I'll know you didn't do your best. She said it with a smile. I think she was half kidding, but I took it seriously. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I guess there was a little, I didn't get the harsh criticism though, but I definitely felt like expectations were high. Yeah. The last chapter of your book, could you talk a little bit about

interviews and admissions and college admissions and things. And I had some big and some small questions about that. You have a very interesting part where you talk about what the evidence, social science evidence, tells us about the success and or failure of affirmative action programs. Can you summarize what social science tells us about that?

Yeah, I went in to read the evidence to ask, what is the impact of these programs? A lot of people have strong ideological positions on them. I feel like my job as a social scientist is to look at the most careful research that's been done and try to paint the picture of what do we know. And I think what the evidence suggests is that affirmative action programs are a double-edged sword, even for the very people they're trying to help.

So, on the one hand, they do manage to open doors for people who have historically been denied opportunity by virtue of group membership. On the other hand, if you enter a university or a workplace that is known to have affirmative action, you perform worse if you are a beneficiary of that program than if the program didn't exist.

So we see this with women. We see it with racial minorities. What happens is, and I don't think this will shock anyone, people start to doubt whether they really deserve that spot. Am I qualified? Do I belong here? It's a massive version of imposter syndrome and not the healthy kind. And then other people question it too. And they're like, well, I don't think you really got in on your own merit. And that self-doubt and constantly being doubted by others, that takes a toll.

It's exhausting to deal with. It's distracting to constantly question your capabilities day in, day out. And so I came away from this evidence thinking, I don't know where I stand. I think that we're sort of damned if we do and we're damned if we don't. But I do think there's an alternative approach that might be helpful to think about. Two questions about that. One is,

Why doesn't that same logic hold for the white beneficiaries of affirmative action? If I'm a legacy kid, gets into Harvard because daddy went to Harvard, why aren't I walking around with a big burden of imposter syndrome? I'm only here because daddy gave $17 million to... Does it not work? Are white people exempt? Can we just pause to acknowledge the fact you just called legacy admission affirmative action for white people? That's what it is. I think that's an accurate characterization.

I think that not only should legacy admission be banned, I think that if there, it used to be used by a lot of Ivy League schools as a tiebreaker. And I think it should be a reverse tiebreaker. If you're on equal footing with somebody whose parents didn't go to an elite institution,

then you already had an advantage, so the other person should get in. I think, first of all, a lot of people don't know who the legacies are. I think also there's not the same stigma. Historically, there hasn't been the same stigma associated with legacy admission. So affirmative action is seen as lowering standards. And in most cases, it's not. It's just saying we're going to look at people who all meet the qualifications and requirements, and then we're going to make sure that those whose groups have been historically disadvantaged get a shot

But I think in the case of legacy, there hasn't been that stigma. It's been assumed, oh, you come from a genius family. You belong here. Yeah. So the problem is really not necessarily the problem is inherent in the notion of, in this case, treating a group of disadvantaged students differently. It's the narrative we tell around the policy that we don't have the same kind of, we have a disparaging narrative around policy

racial affirmative action, but not a disparaging narrative around rich people affirmative action. Look, we had a Supreme Court ruling that happened as the book went to press. And I think actually one of the ideas that I float in this book is maybe an option now that we ought to take seriously, which is maybe we should stop defining people by their group membership.

Maybe instead of assuming that just because people came from a particular background that they had the same degree of difficulty and the same adversity, we should actually get to know the individual students and find out the obstacles they faced and then adjust our expectations of them according to how much poverty did they individually face.

according to did they run into major challenges? And I think that that seems like a much more fair way to give people who have been disadvantaged a real shot. Yeah. Wait, I want to... I mean, there's much to be said for that idea, and that's a longer conversation, but we're running out of time. But I have one last thing I want to say. So this is... I'm now... I'm asking you to give me some advice because I'm working on a book right now, and this is very...

I deal with this very question we're talking about in this book. Are we talking about the revision of the tipping point? Yes. Or a different book? The revision of the tipping point. Are we allowed to say that publicly, that you're rewriting the tipping point? Yes, I'm revising the tipping point. And I, so I was thinking of posing the following question. Given what you're saying, what advice would you give to a bright,

ambitious African-American student who's interested in STEM, wants to be a doctor or engineer or scientist of some kind, who has two admissions offers, one from an Ivy League school and one from an HBCU. So one where he goes, where she goes with the stigma of affirmative action and one where she goes without the stigma. What would you tell that student?

That's a fascinating question. I'm not sure I'm qualified to advise on it, is my first reaction. My second is... You just wrote a book called Hidden Potential. Yeah, but...

I'm trying to look at what works for most of the people most of the time, not necessarily assume that I know the path that's going to be most effective for a complete stranger. I'd want to see much better data about what are the life trajectories of students with similar profiles who both have the same set of opportunities and then end up, for a variety of reasons, in one or the other.

I guess the first thing I would want to do though is I'd want to know what are your goals? Are you trying to maximize your status or objective career success? Are you trying to lead a life you can be proud of? Are you pursuing happiness or meaning? I think there are lots of different outcomes and I think the big mistake that I see, I've had a lot of students come by office hours with these kinds of dilemmas.

over the years, often their grad school dilemmas or their job dilemmas, but sometimes it's high schoolers trying to choose a college. And the main advice that I find myself giving them is to say, you don't want to just define your success by achieving your goals. You should think about success as living your values. If you have a career target that you hit, but it requires you to compromise your principles, that's not success, that's failure. It's the worst kind of failure because you've abandoned what matters most to you.

So why don't we talk about what your values are? Is one of your core principles to break glass ceilings? Do you want to prove to people that other people can follow in your footsteps? Karen Knowlton is here. Karen did some brilliant work on being a trailblazer. Is one of your core priorities in life to open a door and clear a path for other people? If so, you can ask, do I want to do this by starting out in an Ivy League school or

or do I want to go to an environment where I might be more supported and maybe it's easier to blaze a trail later? I don't know. I can't predict the future. That's the kind of conversation I'd want to have, and it wouldn't end with advice. It would end with me asking, what have you learned through this conversation about your values, and which path do you think is going to help you avoid straying from them? Adam, that's a

It's a beautiful answer to the question. You started by saying you didn't think you could answer the question, then you gave me a beautiful answer to the question. But that's because I didn't answer the question. No, no, no. But it goes to, and this is actually, I think, a lovely moment to kind of sum up. When I read this book, the first and overwhelming thought I had was, we really are asking the wrong questions about...

something like potential. We're just like, our premises are all wrong, right? That's what you're getting at here, right? In one chapter after another, you're just saying, wait a minute, we're starting with this perspective and it's just like, why? What do we, you know, it's that kind of need to go back to fundamentals and re-ask some really basic questions is what is really wonderful about this book.

And please go and buy Adam's book. Thank you all. This bonus episode of Revisionist History was produced by Nina Lawrence and Jacob Smith. It was mastered by Ben Chano. Special thanks to Daniela Belarezo, Paul Durbin, and Constanza Gallardo. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and I'd like to take a moment to talk about an amazing new podcast I'm hosting called Medal of Honor.

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