30 Learnings From Think Again

Think Again is a best-selling book by Adam Grant about the power of critical thinking and why our intuition sometimes can fool us.

Photo by Diego PH on Unsplash

1. Think like a scientist: The foundation of science is critical thinking. Some scientists proclaim hypotheses and others verify or falsify them. By thinking like a scientist, you are staying curious and having an open mind.
2. Define your identity based on values: You are more than a collection of your opinions. Instead, define yourself based on your values and derive your views based on them.
3. Seek out information that goes against your views: Stay open-minded.
4. Beware of getting stranded at the summit of Mount Stupid: When you are starting with something new, a topic sometimes seems easy. This is because you don’t know what you don’t know yet - the Dunning-Kruger effect.
5. Harness the benefits of doubt: If you acknowledge that you don’t know something, it is the first step towards true expertise (the Dunning-Kruger effect is overcome!).
6. Embrace the joy of being wrong: Lough about your own mistakes!
7. Learn something new from each person you meet: Approach each conversation, or meet up with the mind of a scientist. Be curious. We can learn something from everybody!
8. Build a challenge network, not just a support network: Support is great, but it is also important to receive constructive criticism.
9. Don’t shy away from constructive conflict: Conflicts can be a spark for innovation.
10. Practice the art of persuasive listening: If you are a good listener, people you talk to will form positive memories of your conversations. Besides, listening to someone can be a better strategy to open someone’s mind to new ideas than trying to persuade them. A good track record is to increase your question-to-statement ratio.
11. Question how rather than why: When someone explains how they would turn their views into reality, they often come to realize the limits of their understanding. Questioning the why on the other hand, can lead to a discussion about the identity and such discussions aren’t very fruitful.
12. Ask “What evidence would change your mind?”
13. Ask how people originally formed an opinion.
14. Acknowledge common ground: If you admit points of convergence it doesn’t make your standpoint weaker. On the contrary: it shows that you are willing to negotiate.
15. Remember that less is often more: Don’t try to convince someone with too many facts and figures (I am personally guilty of this at times). Too much information can be overwhelming and make your counterpart defensive.
16. Reinforce freedom of choice.
17. Have a conversation about the conversation: If the fronts are hardened, it makes sense to zoom out and have a conversation about the conversation.
18. Complexify contentious topics: Every story has more than just two sides. Rather than treating polarizing issues like a two-sided coin, admit that there exists a continuum.
19. Don’t shy away from caveats and contingencies: Experts who admit limits to their findings are often trusted more than those who don’t.
20. Expand your emotional range: Show curiosity and even admit confusion - it makes you more human and more approachable.
21. Have a weekly myth-busting discussion at dinner with your kids: It teaches them critical thinking and questioning the status quo.
22. Invite kids to do multiple drafts and seek feedback from others: They shouldn’t only create one drawing of a kind, they should do multiple.
23. Stop asking kids what they want to be when they grow up: A job shouldn’t be identity-based. Instead, it should be developed based on unique interests and skills.
24. Abandon best practices: do “better” practices instead and improve continuously.
25. Establish psychological safety: This is the single most important factor in creating learning cultures that challenge the status quo and innovate.
26. Keep a rethinking scorecard: If you have a good outcome, but a bad process, you are lucky. However, if you have a good process with a bad outcome, it might be a smart experiment.
27. Throw out the ten-year plan: You aren’t born with your passions - they develop over time. It is good to set goals, but don’t overengineer them.
28. Rethink your actions, not just your surroundings: Cultivating a sense of purpose often begins with actions that enhance your learning or your contributions to others.
29. Schedule a life checkup: How is your life currently going? Ask this question at least once per year and update your work- and life-view.
30. Make time to think again: Rethinking takes time and energy, so scheduling a weekly time for rethinking and unlearning is a best practice (or a better one ;).

---

Thank you for reading! I hope you’ve enjoyed my article summarizing 30 learnings from Think Again by Adam Grant. If you are looking for a more in-depth summary of the book, please check out this article. I also can highly recommend the full book!