Adam Grant Quotes

22 Sourced Quotes

When people think they are uncreative or unoriginal, it's because they've had a bunch of experiences that are just like the experiences that everyone else has had.

Adam Grant
When you're dealing with an ambivalent relationship, you're constantly on guard, grappling with questions of trust.

Adam Grant
If we leave all the idea championing to men, then we're going to lose out on a lot of ideas that need perseverance to see the light of day. If women don't speak up, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Adam Grant
In every creative project, there are moments that require thinking more laterally and, yes, more slowly. My natural need to finish early was a way of shutting down complicating thoughts that sent me whirling in new directions. I was avoiding the pain of divergent thinking — but I was also missing out on its rewards.

Adam Grant
They learn to read at age 2, play Bach at 4, breeze through calculus at 6, and speak foreign languages fluently by 8. Their classmates shudder with envy; their parents rejoice at winning the lottery. But to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, their careers tend to end not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Adam Grant
But while procrastination is a vice for productivity, I've learned — against my natural inclinations — that it's a virtue for creativity.

Adam Grant
When you put off a task, you buy yourself time to engage in divergent thinking rather than foreclosing on one particular idea...

Adam Grant
If we create networks with the sole intention of getting something, we won't succeed. We can't pursue the benefits of networks; the benefits ensue from investments in meaningful activities and relationships.

Adam Grant
Geniuses don't have better ideas than the rest of us. They just have more of them.

Adam Grant
The more I help out, the more successful I become. But I measure success in what it has done for the people around me. That is the real accolade.

Adam Grant
If you're a pre-crastinator like me, it may be worth mastering the discipline of forcing yourself to procrastinate. You can't be afraid of leaving your work un

Adam Grant
Focus attention and energy on making a difference in the lives of others, and success might follow as a by-product.

Adam Grant
Every time we interact with another person at work, we have a choice to make: do we try to claim as much value as we can, or contribute value without worrying about what we receive in return?

Adam Grant
The evidence says that although women tend to be more hesitant to speak up and challenge the status quo because of the risks of being seen as too assertive, they are actually more likely to persist. Once they commit to something, they will follow through to see that it succeeds, whereas men are much more likely to float an idea and be like, "No, just kidding."

Adam Grant
We all have original ideas. Even if we don't see ourselves as supercreative or as wild nonconformists, we have insights every day about how the world around us could be better.

Adam Grant
The gifted learn to play magnificent Mozart melodies, but rarely compose their own original scores. They focus their energy on consuming existing scientific knowledge, not producing new insights. They conform to codified rules, rather than inventing their own.

Adam Grant
Lower your standards for what counts as progress, and you will be less paralyzed.

Adam Grant
Creativity is generating ideas that are novel and useful. I define originals as people who go beyond dreaming up the ideas and take initiative to make their visions a reality.

Adam Grant
Creativity may be hard to nurture, but it's easy to thwart. By limiting rules, parents encouraged their children to think for themselves.

Adam Grant
Most of us don't act on these ideas. We're afraid we're going to be rejected or ridiculed, or that we're going to waste our time and no one is going to hear our ideas. It's amazing how many originals almost never acted because of fear and futility.

Adam Grant
Research reveals that the more we practice, the more we become entrenched — trapped in familiar ways of thinking. Expert bridge players struggled more than novices to adapt when the rules were changed; expert accountants were worse than novices at applying a new tax law.

Adam Grant
If your organization is larger than six people, there's a good chance not everyone will hate your idea equally.

Adam Grant