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Think Again
What It’s About
Why the smartest people are the most willing to be wrong. Wharton psychologist Adam Grant argues that rethinking is the most underrated skill in modern work and life. He walks through the cognitive habits of scientists, debaters, and forecasters who hold strong opinions weakly, and how to install those habits yourself.
Three Key Ideas
The Scientist Mindset
Treating your beliefs as hypotheses rather than fixed identities makes it easier to update them when new evidence arrives.
Confident Humility
Being sure of your ability to figure things out is entirely compatible with genuine uncertainty about specific conclusions.
Persuasion Through Questions
Asking people to articulate their own reasons for change works far better than presenting them with facts and arguments.
Read a Sample
Think Again
On the afternoon of August 5, 1949, thirteen men died on a hillside in Montana because they could not abandon what they knew.
They were smokejumpers, elite wildfire fighters who parachuted into remote blazes when no road crew could reach them in time. The fire at Mann Gulch had started from a lightning strike the day before, and by the time the crew dropped in, the conditions had shifted in ways nobody had accounted for. Wagner Dodge, their foreman, led the team across the gulch and toward a ridge. Then the wind changed. The fire jumped the gulch behind them and began racing uphill faster than a person can run on flat ground. On a slope, with dry grass, it was moving at an estimated six hundred to seven hundred feet per minute. The men had maybe ninety seconds.
Dodge did something nobody in his crew had ever seen. He stopped running. He struck a match and lit the grass in front of him, creating a small oval of burned ground. Then he lay down in the ash and called for his men to do the same. His idea was simple but alien: burn away the fuel ahead of the fire, then shelter inside the burned patch. The coming wall of flame would have nothing to consume where he lay.
Not one of his men followed him. They ran. Thirteen of them died on that hillside. Dodge survived, and so did two men who escaped through a crevice in the ridge.
Who It’s For
- Anyone who wants to update beliefs more easily without feeling threatened by disagreement.
- Anyone who leads teams and wants to build a culture where honest pushback is welcome.
- Anyone who feels stuck in a career path or life plan they chose when they knew far less.
- Anyone who needs to change minds on difficult topics without triggering defensiveness.
About the Author: Adam Grant
Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He studies how people find motivation and meaning at work, and how we can create more generous and creative environments.
He is the author of several bestselling books and one of the most widely read management thinkers writing today. Think Again was published in 2021.
