Adam Grant on Perfectionism and Procrastination

According to guest Adam Grant, excellence does not require perfectionism, and rather than obsessing over the outcome of your work, there are better ways of measuring your own success. 

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Adam Grant is a frequent flier on this show and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 5 books that have sold millions of copies and have been translated into 35 languages: Think Again, Give and Take, Originals, Option B, and Power Moves. He’s an organizational psychologist who has been the top-rated professor at Wharton for seven years. He’s also the host of a newish podcast, called Re:Thinking with Adam Grant, in addition to his other chart-topping podcast, called WorkLife. 

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In this conversation, we talked about:

• Adam’s definition of neurotic vs. normal perfectionism
• Why he thinks we’re seeing a rise in perfectionism amongst younger people
• Strategies for managing perfectionism
• A different metric for measuring the quality of our work
• The importance of finding the right judges of our work
• Reimagining our relationship to failure by setting a failure budget
• The difference between procrastination vs. what he personally suffers from: “precrastination”

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Where to find Adam Grant online: 

Website 

Social Media:

• Twitter 
• Facebook 
• Instagram

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Books Mentioned:

• Think Again
• Give and Take
• Other books by Adam Grant

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Other Resources Mentioned:

• Adam Grant podcasts
• Essay in The Wall Street Journal
• Column in The New York Times
• TED Talk - “How to Stop Languishing and Start Finding Flow” 
• TED Talk - “The Benefits of Not Being a Jerk to Yourself”
• Tom Curran
• Angela Duckworth
• Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone
• John Green
• Fuschia Sirois, Timothy Pychyl 
• Carol Dweck et al
• Brené Brown

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