Hey everybody!
Welcome to week two of reading Think Again by Adam Grant - how are you finding it so far?
Can we tell you a slightly embarrassing story?
Basically, Tristan ran out of audiobook listening minutes on his Spotify Premium account, which means he can no longer listen to the audiobook. Fiona, who prefers to read than listen, has the physical copy so now we have to share. But seeing as we both like reading at night, we’re taking turns reading to each other out loud - like a little kid’s bedtime story…
Anyhoo, first up, we wanna give a big shout out to any new people who joined us this week! Welcome to the club - it is a pleasure to have you.
We also want to say how cool it is that there are so many of you in this book club for whom English is your second language. It might seem easy to you, even second nature, but being able to read a book like this in your non-native tongue is much more impressive that being able to order a beer, badly, in Spain.
In today’s book club update, we’re sharing insights on the book that have come via our Bad Ass Bookshelf community members on our Discord channel as well as some additional resources for those who want to think again (and again).
Finally, a reminder about the end of month book club call which we hope you can all make. 15 of you have registered so far, but those are rookie numbers. We need to pump those numbers up: Register here for our end of month book club call
Star Wars droid getting in on the action! - Ben
﹅ Community insights
Sensational storytelling
“He’s a great story-teller! I’m already invested after just listening to the prologue!” - CJ B
Ours is not to question why
“I found the idea of going into different ‘profession’ mindsets interesting. Even if we don’t think of ourselves as (or aren’t trained as) preachers / prosecutors / politicians / scientists, it doesn’t mean that we don’t naturally find ourselves exhibiting some of these behaviours. I like the idea that although I’m a scientist in my profession I can use that mindset to also apply to everything else in life, and that others can too. Going to be questioning a lot of why I do/think things this month!” - Heather
Wrong = Learning
“I think being able to "fail fast" - experimenting, trying new methods, and continuously reevaluating to reorient yourself and your ideas - in both business and in life is vital to success. It ties back to the scientist type thinking he spoke about in Chapter 1. As it's said many times in Chapter 3 in different ways, being wrong is an opportunity to learn.” - Squanchy
Finished already!? Woah!
“I just finished the book! I liked the profession mindset too and as a scientist, I have been doing a lot of thinking and rethinking so I'm open to changing my mind. In later chapters, I am guilty of thinking I'm stuck because I've already sunk so much time into a certain thing. But I've recently overcame that as I pivoted my career from chemist to data analyst... Getting somebody to challenge me changed that and set me on a new path.” - Katie
✷ Referrer of the month
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The top referrer for this month will receive a copy of next month’s Bad Ass Bookshelf book of the month!
If you enjoy being a part of the Bad Ass Bookshelf and know colleagues, friends or family that would also benefit from being a part of it, send them our way.
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● Additional resources
Here are some great resources that Grant has put out it to the world if you’re thirsty for more!
The Psychology Podcast - In this episode, Adam Grant discusses the importance of thinking again with cognitive scientist, Scott Barry Kaufman.
Candost’s blog - Candost is a writer and software engineering leader who has written an in-depth book review on Think Again.
Thought Economics - A conversation with Adam Grant on why we need to think again, about everything.
► Our burning questions
Last week we asked you…
How might you apply what you’ve learnt so far from Think Again at work or in your personal life?
Here’s what you guys said:
“I’m a few chapters in, and what’s standing out to me is how easy it is to get attached to being ‘right’ instead of staying open to being wrong. It’s made me realize how often we stick to familiar ways of thinking, even when better options exist. I want to get better at considering different perspectives before making decisions. The challenge is figuring out how to build that habit day to day.”
“I liked the idea of writing down the assumptions on which a decision was made so that you can revisit it and see if your assumptions have changed. We did this in our consulting projects when there was no clear evidence and an assumption needed to be made, but it never struck my mind that this might be useful in life generally.”
This week we’re asking…
Has to book encouraged you to challenge any of your firmly held opinions or points of view? If so, what were they and how have they changed?
Let us know by dropping a reply to this email - or better yet - heading over to share these thoughts with the rest of the Bad Assess on Discord!
♦︎ Next book club call
We're so excited to host our first Bad Ass Bookshelf bookclub call to discuss Think Again at the end of February! Call details below:
Date: Thursday 27th February
Time: 17:00 GMT (12:00 EST / 09:00 PST)
Register for the call here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/xWHBRfkcQOGyawRm2-5UPQ
Cannot wait to see you all there!
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