Adam Grant stuffs Hidden Potential with loads of anecdotes and research on growth, learning, and performance.

Excellence

Excellence relies less on our natural talent.

It’s more about proactiveness, collaboration, discipline, and determination.

It’s never too late to build character traits in life to get this benefit.

Learning styles aren’t fixed

There are lots of different ways to learn. Mixing them up is worth it.

Sometimes working in your least preferred way is better for learning as it forces you to work harder.

Human sponges

Ask loads of questions and take notes. Seek and soak up information.

Asking others for one thing you can do to improve will help surface up lessons and ways to improve faster.

Don’t aim for perfection

Take small steps or slices and build gradually.

Not aiming for perfection can unlock good solutions.

Incorporate play and variety into practice

Adding play makes practice more effective.

Also ensure you take regular breaks as that’s a more effective way of internalising lessons and practice.

Getting stuck

Progress isn’t linear.

A rut or plateau or stagnation isn’t a signal you’ve hit your peak. It’s a chance to back up and try a different approach.

You will need to regress to progress.

Defying gravity

Pooling study resources in a group leads to higher collective outcomes.

The tutor effect: teaching others improves your understanding.

Being doubted by experts can have a demoralising effect. Being doubted by non-experts can drive higher performance.

When someone ignorant doubts you it feels like a challenge.

If credible people believe in us it is a signal that we should believe in ourselves.

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

Designing schools

The Finnish education system was focused on early intervention.

All kids are given attention—not just those that show early potential.

Teachers can stay with student for multiple years in a row—this is known as “looping”.

Teachers get more break time so they can better prepare.

Play leads to a love of learning.

I’m giving MusicBox and Play a crack for keeping track of music I want to listen to and videos I want to watch¹.

I was previously managing my music to listen to via a specific playlist in Spotify so I migrated that across.

For video, I migrated my YouTube Watch Later list, Instapaper videos folder, and AppleTV+ and Netflix watch later lists across.

I like how the apps sync across all my Apple devices and everything is in one spot.

I’m especially keen to give the Play app on AppleTV a try.

Now I need something similar for all my podcasts and audiobooks.

The Psychology of Money covers how doing well with money is more dependent on your behaviour than what you know.

Here are some of the topics that stood out to me.

Wealth is what you don’t see

Wealth is income not spent. An option not yet taken to buy something later. Its value lies in giving you options and flexibility.

General advice

“Does this help me sleep at night?” is the best universal guide post of all financial decisions.

If you want to do better as an investor the best thing you can do is increase your time horizon. Time is the most powerful force in investing it makes little things grow big and big mistakes fade away.

Use money to gain control over your time because not having control of your time is a powerful and universal drag on happiness.

The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want to, pays the highest dividend.

Getting wealthy vs staying wealthy

Only the paranoid survive. We can’t assume that yesterday’s success will translate to today.

What differentiates those who succeed is survival, not growth or brains, the ability to stick around for a long time.

Having an edge and surviving are two different things, the first requires the second, you need to avoid ruin at all costs.

Appreciate the following:

1. Rather than focus on the greatest returns be unbreakable—because being unbreakable means you get to stick around long enough for compounding to work. Compounding doesn’t require big returns, just sustained good returns.
2. Planning is great. Plan on the plan not going to plan. Embrace the downside and plan for it. Build in room for error (aka. Margin of Safety) so you can live without worry.
3. Have a barbelled personality—optimistic about the future but paranoid about what will prevent you from getting there.

It’s all in the tails

A small number of events can be responsibile for the majority of outcomes.

All big wins come in the distribution tails. Grab a broad set of things and wait for the winners to emerge. Most will be worth nothing, a very few may win big.

Art collectors grabbed portfolios of art across different emerging artists. Most of their collection was worthless, some had a bunch of Picassos.

Save money

Much of investing is out of your control. Personal savings and frugality are within your control and is effective now and in the future.

Have a buffer for the inevitable surprises life will throw at you.

Room for error

History is littered with good ideas taken too far which makes them indistinguishable from bad ideas.

The only way to deal with unknowns is to increase the gap between what you think will happen from what can happen while still leaving you able to fight another day.

Ben Graham: “The purpose of the margin of safety is to render the forecast unnecessary.”

Margin of safety is the only effective way to navigate a world dominated by odds and not certainties.

Even a five percent chance of ruin is not worth the risk over the long term. Leverage is something that can push routine risks into areas where they can produce ruin.

Think of your own money as barbelled. Take risks with one portion and be terrified with the rest.

Here’s a roundup of things, mostly media, I enjoyed in 2023.

Music

I create a Spotify playlist each year where I add songs I like. Here’s my 2023 edition.

I scrobbled about 6700 songs this year.

Here are my top ten tracks and top ten albums.

TV shows

Slow Horses — A season a year, six episodes each, sharp, great cast, Oldman ripping three zingers an episode, set in London which hits me in the nostalgia spots, can’t wait for this season’s finale next week.

The Bear — Season two built nicely on the first season. Episode seven of the second season was a highlight.

Scavengers Reign — Body horror stuff isn’t my thing but this show was great. The creativity on show in the flora and fauna design is incredible. The art reminds me of Mœbius.

What We Do in the Shadows — After each season I feel like the show is running out of steam but then each season I laugh during each episode. It has the best intro song ever and Matt Berry is a genius.

Hijack — Idris and some tightly shot thrills.

Deadloch — Everything is inverted. Finished strong.

Succession — They stuck the landing.

Better Call Saul — Finally finished this slow burn. Satisfying finish to the series.

Jury Duty — Wild that this worked. Made me laugh.

Station Eleven — Unexpectedly uplifting post apocalyptic story.

Silo — I love a good mystery. Made me start reading the books.

Movies

Dune (2021) — Well done. Sent me off reading the books again.

John Wick: Chapter 4 — So over the top. Beautifully shot. They shouldn’t make any more, though.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse — The best comic movie fare by a wide margin.

Dunkirk — I’m seemingly on a five year lag with Christopher Nolan movies.

The Killer — Fassbender and Fincher on one.

Books

Dune Chronicles — I reread Dune and then read Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, and most of God Emperor of Dune. I underappreciated Herbert’s world building which is incredibly influential. I lost steam about three quarters into the fourth book.

Faith, Hope, and Carnage — Whirls around creativity, spirituality, loss, religion, partnerships. Probably only for Nick Cave sickos like me.

The Psychology of Money — Principles around money and how to handle it. Hold strong and let the power of compounding do its thing.

This is How You Lose the Time War — Sci-fi time travel done well.

Rendezvous With Rama — Classic mysterious space objects baby.

Podcasts

The Watch — Chris and Andy forever.

The Rest is History — Educational and funny. (The live show was great too.)

Dithering — 15 minutes is a sweetspot.

The Rewatchables — Always makes me laugh.

Bandsplain — Yasi has charm for days. The Afghan Whigs episode was a particular favourite.

Conversations with Tyler — I love Tyler’s interview style. I always learn things.

Games

God of War Ragnarök — Nothing more satisfying than that axe flying back into your hand.

Elden ring — Only scratched the surface as I don’t have the hours or energy to get up the difficulty curve of this.

Diablo 4 — As addictive as ever. I ended up mashing buttons on this on many evenings.

Baldur’s Gate 3 — Throw back CRPG. Will crack this back open once time allows.

Cyberpunk 2077 — Cool world. Choices didn’t seem like that big a deal. Will crack this open again at some stage given the latest patch seems to have changed a bunch of things up.

King of Tokyo — The kids love playing this. Quick to set up and is great fun.

Products

AirPods Pro 2 — I use these every day. Apple’s best product in a while.

Leica Q2 Reporter — I’m back in Leica land. I carry this camera with me often and have shot way more this year as a result.

True Classic Shirts — These dadcore shirts go good.

I caught the lads on the last show of their Australia Live tour.

Top drawer stuff. They had me laughing in my seat.

The Q&A questions from the audience were sometimes deranged which was perfectly appropriate.

Adaptive Audio on iOS 17 feels like an improvement over Transparency mode.

One thing that was driving me nuts however, was that whenever I’d put my AirPods Pro in, the volume would get dropped super low.

I thought it was Adaptive Audio doing it but in fact it was the Personalized Volume feature.

I’ve switched that off and things work a treat.

Things getting on top of you?

Need to quiet it all down?

Go sit in front of a campfire under the night sky.

A campfire is like a broom for the mind.

A big part of leading teams is identifying issues to address and opportunities to exploit. The bigger the team, the harder it is to sense trends that need attention. Your job is to help ferret out the signal from the noise—like a human high-pass filter¹.

It’s tempting to jump in at the first sign of difficulty—this can send you around the bend as you chase an increasing number of tails. It can also lead to intervention bias.

The trick, instead, is to slow down and “debounce the signal”. Wait for input around a topic to collect, then take stock of your response.

Having a broad purview and taking the time to think means you can internalise things that others haven’t yet. Typically, the challenge isn’t whether something needs resolving but which of the many opportunities you should direct your constrained capacity towards.

Letting some time pass and banking a couple of nights of sleep can soften your view and reduce the effect of tilt. Working with trusted advisors in your team can also help establish perspective and modulate your response.

What happens when you slow down?

Sometimes, things resolve themselves. The team steps up and sorts things². Internal or external factors change and obviate the issue.

Sometimes, new information comes to light that contradicts what you’ve previously heard. Follow-up conflicting information is particularly prevalent with interpersonal issues within teams. Welcome to the Rashomon Effect. Regardless, you need more information to establish what is happening.

Sometimes, you don’t hear anything more on a topic. Given a large enough team, this scenario is pretty standard. The risk here, of course, is that low-frequency issues can still have a high impact.

Sometimes, things are chronic and severe enough that they need more attention. It becomes evident that you need to do something.

Finally, some issues or opportunities are significant enough that you need to act immediately.

The art is in knowing when to act and when to wait.

I make a new Spotify playlist at the beginning of every year, and I keep adding songs I enjoy throughout the year.

Now that it’s September the 2023 edition is nice and ripe.

You can also listen to the 2022, 2021, and 2020 editions.

The Trusted Advisor is a book focused on trust and relationships in professional services but feels applicable to any work partnership.

I’ve collected a few choice quotes below.

Show, don’t tell

To make anyone believe something about you, you must demonstrate, not assert. What you claim about yourself, your colleagues, or your firm will always be received skeptically, if it is listened to at all. In Emerson’s words, “Your actions speak so loudly, I cannot hear what you are saying,”

Listen first

We must listen effectively, and be perceived to be listening effectively, before we can proceed with any advisory process. Cutting to the chase without having earned the right to do so will usually be interpreted as arrogance.

Interruptions and reordering

…if the listener breaks up our sense of story (insists on interrupting, or rearranging, or imposing his or her own sense of story line), the meaning we intend is disrupted. It feels inappropriate when someone jumps to a conclusion, or misses a connection, or gets things out of sequence. All these are forms of not “getting it.” Good listening respects the speaker by respecting the sequence of the story he or she chooses to tell us.

Listen for what’s different

At the core of earning someone’s trust is convincing them that you are dealing with them as a human being, and not as a member of a group or class or subset. Accordingly, as you listen to a client talk, the question on your mind should be, “What makes this person different from any other client I’ve served? What does that mean for what I should say and how I should behave?”

Unfortunately, this is hard work. The natural tendency for most of us is to do the exact opposite: We listen for the situations we recognize, so that we can draw upon past experience to use the words, approaches, and tools that we already know well. It’s the way most of us work, but it doesn’t always serve us well.

Sincere interest in others

So much of our time is spent focusing on ourselves, and so much of other people’s time is spent focusing on themselves, that it is a rare and surprising event whenever someone breaks the veil. Sincere interest in another person comes across strikingly simply because it is unusual.

Be sure advice is being sought

One of the biggest mistakes that advisors make is to think that their client always wants their advice. This is dangerously wrong.

…

What the advice receiver wanted was a combination of a sympathetic ear, emotional support, an understanding of the difficulties faced, and the opportunity to collect his or her own thoughts by talking them through in a non-threatening environment.

Long-term vs short-term

It’s near impossible for any professional to hide his or her true motives, whatever they may be. And if those motives are rooted in naked self-interest, they will be duly noted and reciprocated. We are not loyal to self interested people we don’t trust them. Which means we are always likely to leave them for a better price-or for someone we actually trust.

Which in turn means longterm success is compromised by such behaviour. And since the long term is nothing but a series of short terms, short-term results themselves are being harmed, not improved, by slavish adherence to short-term goals.

The truth is, both long-term and short-term results are maximised by long-term behaviour on our part. The old Goldman Sachs mantra expressed this well: “We are longterm selfish.” It is in the long-term that our goals and our clients’ goals merge and that merging reveals itself over a series of short terms.

Steps to develop trust

We suggest that there are five distinct steps in the development of a trusted relationship. In this chapter we will define each of these In the succeeding chapters, we will explore each stage in detail.

Expressed in their simplest form, the five stages are:

• Engage. “Let’s talk about…”
• Listen. “Tell me more…”
• Frame. “So the issue is…”
• Envision. “Let’s imagine…”
• Commit. “I suggest we…”

How to Decide digs into the characteristics of decision making and provides tools for making better decisions.

I took away loads of things to try and recommend the book.

Below are some of the salient points that stood out to me.

Traits of good decision making

Two things determine how your life turns out: luck and the quality of your decisions. You can only control the second.

Any decision is essentially a prediction about the future.

When making a decision your objective is to choose the option that gains you the most ground in achieving your goals, taking into account how much you’re willing to risk.

You need to develop a decision process that improves your decision quality and helps you sort your decisions to identify which are larger and which are smaller.

A good decision tool seeks to reduce the impact of cognitive biases.

Determining whether a decision is good or bad means examining the quality of the beliefs informing the decision, the available options, and how the future might turn out given any choice you make.

Using the quality of the outcome to judge the quality of the decision causes you to learn the wrong lessons and is called resulting.

Uncertainty and decision making

Imperfect information is a kind of uncertainty that interferes before a decision.

Luck is a kind of uncertainty that can interfere after the decision is made but before the outcome.

Chasing certainty causes analysis paralysis.

Biases

Hindsight bias is the tendency to believe an event, after it occurs, was predictable or inevitable.

Memory creep is when what you know after the fact creeps into your memory of what you knew before the fact.

Tilt is when a bad outcome causes you to be in an emotionally hot state that compromises the quality of your decision making.

Quitting

Quitting is a powerful tool for defraying opportunity cost and gathering intel, intel that will allow you to make higher-quality decisions about the things you decide to stick to.

Tools and Techniques

There are quite a few in the book. Here are some that resonated with me.

Use a Knowledge tracker to avoid hindsight bias.

Use Decision trees for evaluating past decisions and improving the quality of new ones.

Repeating options are when the same type of decision comes up over and over again you get repeated chances to choose options, including options you may have rejected in the past.

When a decision is hard, that means it’s easy. When you’re weighing two options that are close it can feel like the decision is difficult. The decision is actually easy, because whichever one you choose you can’t be that wrong since the difference between the two is so small.

The lower the cost to quit, the faster you can go, because it’s easier to unwind the decision and choose a different option, including options you may have rejected in the past.

I’m a sicko for trawling the internet and loading up Instapaper with things to read later.

Which means, you’ll be shocked to hear, my reading queue can get large and unmanageble.

Longer articles tend to stay in the queue unread for quite a while.

Often, as with my productivity system, I’ll declare read later bankruptcy, archive a bunch of the stale articles, and walk away a little disappointed in myself.

Kagi’s Universal Summariser to the rescue!

Now, when I scroll through my queue and see those intransient “40 minutes to read” articles, I put their URL into the Kagi summariser.

If the concise summary it provides piques my interest I’ll ask for the key moments summary.

Then…I’ll usually still archive it. But! I feel a little better about life. 😎

I like the sound of these “now” pages so I added one here.

I was having an after-work chat with Simon a while ago. We were discussing how we can cultivate a more resilient culture at work, specifically enhancing the capacity of individuals to constructively handle feedback.

He mentioned that he’d been reading Thanks for the Feedback which emphasises that, contrary to popular advice, it’s better to focus on helping people get better at receiving feedback rather than giving it.

This reminded me of a design principle in software engineering called the “Robustness principle” or “Postel’s law”. This principle guides how software systems should be designed to communicate with each other.

It’s often summarised as: “Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept”.

It felt like when it came to feedback and people working better together we were talking about the same thing, i.e. Postel’s law for people.

This makes me wonder what other software design principles might be useful when applied to people.

One of my favourite features of Artifact is the ability to use machine learning to replace clickbait titles.

It’s good that you can trigger it from the listing page so that you can choose whether it’s worth reading an article or not.

It’s great that if enough people report the same article, a human reviewer may decide to make it the default title for all Artifact users.

It’s a very helpful feature for internet trawlers such as myself.