Dr. Adam Grant: How to Unlock Your Potential, Motivation & Unique Abilities

In this episode, my guest is Dr. Adam Grant, Ph.D., a professor of organizational psychology at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, an expert in the science and practical steps for increasing motivation, maximizing and reaching our potential, and understanding how individuals and groups can best flourish. He is also an avid public educator, having written five bestselling books, delivered several top-ranking TED Talks and is the host of two psychology podcasts. We discuss how to overcome procrastination, how to increase intrinsic motivation (even for dreaded tasks), identify blind spots and rethink our assumptions, and how we can build a persistent growth mindset. We also explain tools to improve creativity and discuss the surprising relationship between creativity and procrastination. We then explore how to effectively solicit useful feedback and grow from constructive criticism and how you can improve your level of focus and attention using science-supported methods. We also discuss mental tools to get out of negative thought spirals, how to nurture potential in yourself or others, and the dark side of perfectionism. The discussion delivers more than a dozen science-supported protocols that are readily applicable to anyone seeking to live a more productive, fulfilling, and creative life.

Journal Articles

• At last, my research article on procrastination (Journal of Research in Personality)
• When Putting Work Off Pays Off: The Curvilinear Relationship between Procrastination and Creativity (Academy of Management Journal)
• Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. (The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology)
• Boring but important: A self-transcendent purpose for learning fosters academic self-regulation. (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)
• A self-determination theory-based meta-analysis on the differential effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on salesperson performance (Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science)
• Making Learning Fun: A Taxonomy of Intrinsic Motivations for Learning
• The Time Famine: Toward a Sociology of Work Time (Administrative Science Quarterly)
• Targeted dream incubation at sleep onset increases post-sleep creative performance (Scientific Reports)
• The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. (Psychological Bulletin)
• Teacher Mindsets Help Explain Where a Growth-Mindset Intervention Does and Doesn’t Work (Psychological Science)
• Getting unstuck: The effects of growth mindsets about the self and job on happiness at work. (Journal of Applied Psychology)
• Does intrinsic motivation fuel the prosocial fire? Motivational synergy in predicting persistence, performance, and productivity. (Journal of Applied Psychology)
• Bored by Interest: How Intrinsic Motivation in One Task Can Reduce Performance on Other Tasks (Academy of Management Journal)
• Running toward my challenges: Day-level effects of physical activity before work on appraisal of the upcoming workday and employee well-being. (Journal of Occupational Health Psychology)
• Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Science)
• Composing The Reflected Best-Self Portrait: Building Pathways For Becoming Extraordinary In Work Organizations (Academy of Management Review)
• Work motivation: The high performance cycle.
• That's Interesting!: Towards a Phenomenology of Sociology and a Sociology of Phenomenology (Philosophy of the Social Sciences)
• A large-scale field experiment shows giving advice improves academic outcomes for the advisor (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

Articles & Other Resources

• The Fine Line Between Helpful and Harmful Authenticity (The New York Times, Adam Grant)
• The Danger of Oversharing (LinkedIn, Adam Grant)
• Dr. Thomas Curran
• Nobel Prize Researchers & Creativity (The Conversation, Robert & Michele Root-Bernstein)
• There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing (The New York Times, Adam Grant)
• Dr. Becky Kennedy
• Rick Rubin: How to Access Your Creativity (Huberman Lab episode)
• How to Enhance Performance & Learning by Applying a Growth Mindset (Huberman Lab episode)
• ADHD & How Anyone Can Improve Their Focus (Huberman Lab episode)
• Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett: How to Understand Emotions (Huberman Lab episode)