80+ Adam Grant Quotes to Boost Your Productivity and Creativity

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

The most meaningful way to succeed is to help others succeed.

If you want your children to bring original ideas into the world, you need to let them pursue their passions, not yours.

People tend to have one of three ‘styles’ of interaction. There are takers, who are always trying to serve themselves; matchers, who are always trying to get equal benefits for themselves and others; and givers, who are always trying to help people.

Excellence is the product of high aspirations and low ego.

Knowledge is best sought from experts, but creativity and wisdom can come from anywhere.

When we use the logic of consequence, we can always find reasons not to take risks.

Procrastinate strategically… Procrastination may be the enemy of productivity but it can be a valuable resource for creativity.

Originality brings more bumps in the road, yet it leaves us with more happiness and a greater sense of meaning.

Dissenting opinions are useful even when they’re wrong. So instead of speaking to highly agreeable audiences, target suggestions to people with a history of originality.

Entrepreneurs who kept their day jobs had 33 percent lower odds of failure than those who quit.

The personality trait most associated with an interest in the arts is called openness, the tendency to seek out novelty in intellectual, aesthetic, and emotional pursuits.

If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” Instead, creators ought to build a car and see if customers will drive it.

Having a sense of security in one realm gives us the freedom to be original in another.

Complex problems like pandemics, climate change, and political polarisation call on us to stay mentally flexible.

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

When people are depending on us, we end up finding strength we didn’t know we had.

Saying no frees you up to say yes when it matters most.

When a salesperson truly cares about you, trust forms, and you’re more likely to buy, come back for repeat business, and refer new customers.

The most meaningful way to succeed is to help others succeed.

Chip Conley, the renowned entrepreneur who founded Joie de Vivre Hotels, explains, “Being a giver is not good for a 100-yard dash, but it’s valuable in a marathon.

Enemies make better allies than frenemies.

Passionate people don’t wear their passion on their sleeves; they have it in their hearts.

When we’re determined to reach an objective, it’s the gap between where we are and where we aspire to be that lights a fire under us.

Rather than looking outward in an attempt to predict the outcome, you turn inward to your identity. You base the decision on who you are – or who you want to be.

Progress always involves risk. You can’t steal second and keep one foot on first base.

Originality brings more bumps in the road, yet it leaves us with more happiness and a greater sense of meaning.

Negative relationships are unpleasant but predictable.

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.

For women to achieve equal representation in leadership roles, it’s important that they have the backing of men as well as women.

If we want a better original idea, we must generate our own before we screen others’ suggestions.

Strong leaders engage their critics and make themselves stronger. Weak leaders silence their critics and make themselves weaker.

The most effective leaders score high in both confidence and humility.

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

Good guys are most likely to finish last, but also most likely to finish first.

What distinguishes the greatest leaders of our time, it’s that success is very rarely a goal for them; it’s a byproduct of other goals that they have.

No one wants to hear everything that’s in your head. They just want you to live up to what comes out of your mouth.

To get real diversity of thought, you need to find the people who genuinely hold different views and invite them into the conversation.

Argue like you’re right and listen like you’re wrong.

Authenticity is a virtue. But just as you can have too little authenticity, you can also have too much.

That’s the nature of Power, today: Change, or be changed. Learn to Thrive in a networked world or Fall.

And they act in the face of risk because their fear of not succeeding exceeds their fear of failing.

To generate creative ideas, it’s important to start from an unusual place. But to explain those ideas, they have to be connected to something familiar.

I spend a lot of my time trying to help leaders build cultures of productive givers.

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

To get real diversity of thought, you need to find the people who genuinely hold different views and invite them into the conversation.

If we communicate the vision behind our ideas, and the purpose guiding our products, people will flock to us.

Timing accounted for forty-two percent of the difference between success and failure.

Givers reject the notion that interdependence is weak. Givers are more likely to see interdependence as a source of strength, a way to harness the skills of multiple people for the greater good.

When people know how their work makes a difference, they feel energized to contribute more.

That’s the nature of Power today: Change, or be changed. Learn to Thrive in a networked world, or fall.

Changing your mind doesn’t make you a flip-flopper or a hypocrite. It means you were open to learning.

If we want people to vote, we need to make it a larger part of their self-image.

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

After all, the purpose of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs; it’s to evolve our beliefs.

If we communicate the vision behind our ideas, the purpose guiding our products, people will flock to us.

Being original doesn’t require being first. It just means being different and better.

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

The mark of higher education isn’t the knowledge you accumulate in your head. It’s the skills you gain about how to learn.

There’s a wealth of evidence that people want to do meaningful work.

Gaining insight and perspective is not about the number of years you’ve lived. It’s about the number of lessons you’ve learned.

Negative feedback can make people feel inferior.

Choosing a career isn’t like finding a soul mate. It’s possible that your ideal job hasn’t even been invented yet.

Psychologists find that passions are often developed, not discovered.

At work and in life, the best we can do is plan for what we want to learn and contribute over the next year or two and stay open to what might come next.

Arrogance leaves us blind to our weaknesses. Humility is a reflective lens: it helps us see them clearly. Confident humility is a corrective lens: it enables us to overcome those weaknesses.

Good teachers introduce new thoughts, but great teachers introduce new ways of thinking.

If you want to be a generous giver, you have to watch out for selfish takers.

Being a giver is not good for a 100-yard dash, but it’s valuable in a marathon.

Successful givers secure their oxygen masks before coming to the assistance of others. Although their motives may be less purely altruistic, their actions prove more altruistic, because they give more.

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?

If you want to find out if someone’s a taker, it’s not actually that useful to know what they’ve accomplished. What you want to want to know is how they explain them.

Being a giver is not good for a 100-yard dash, but it’s valuable in a marathon.