Adam Grant on why having ‘a mistake budget’ could unlock your hidden potential

Setting up a “mistake budget” is one of the many recommendations in Grant’s latest book, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, which argues we place too much emphasis on talent when assessing how far someone might go in life.

Why we need a ‘mistake budget’

It’s an idea he picked up from the Irish engineer and polyglot Benny Lewis, who is fluent in six languages and aims to make at least 200 mistakes a day when starting to learn a new one.

Research suggests he’s on to something. Grant writes in Hidden Potential that many experiments have shown that students were less likely to make errors in tests when they were earlier randomly assigned to guess wrong before being given the right answer.

“Early mistakes help us remember the correct answer – and motivate us to keep learning,” Grant says.

But making mistakes may feel uncomfortable, which is why Grant wants us to embrace discomfort. He says he experienced the power of this approach when he went from being the worst diver in his school to ranking among the best in the country.

“I would come out of the water, and [my diving coach Eric Best] would say, ‘throw harder’, or ‘circle your arm sooner, we need to make a change to spin faster’, and I would make the change and come out of the water and Eric would say, ‘under-corrected, you need to overcorrect’,” Grant says.

“I was like, ‘no, I don’t want to overcorrect because then it’s going to feel wrong, and I’m trying to do it right’. And Eric would say, ‘Adam, you have to make it feel wrong, in order to get it right’.”

Seeking discomfort is just one part of Grant’s recipe for realising potential. The Wharton School professor also attaches equal importance to having “the capacity to absorb the right information” and “the will to accept the right imperfections”.

Seek ‘advice’, not ‘feedback’

To absorb the “right information”, Grant recommends we ask for “advice” focused on what we can do better next time, rather than “feedback” focused on how well we did last time.

He says a good question to ask is: “What’s one thing I can do better next time?”

“In experiments, that simple shift is enough to elicit more specific suggestions and more constructive input,” Grant writes in the book.

Another way to separate the signal from the noise is to be careful about selecting the people from whom we seek advice. Grant recommends setting up a “judging committee” composed of people who satisfy three criteria: they know you well; they want what is best for you; and they have relevant expertise.

“You may need three, four, or even six or eight different perspectives if you really care about improving, [as this will allow you] to figure out, ‘OK, which of these points are consistent?’” Grant says.

Strive for excellence, not perfection

In his book, he details his process for seeking advice when writing an article or book chapter. For each project, he assembles a different judging committee composed of five to seven people with relevant and complementary skills. Then, when he finishes a first draft, he asks these judges to rate his work on a scale of 0 to 10.

“No one ever says 10. Then I ask how I can get closer to 10,” Grant writes.

“My target score varies with my skill and the importance of the task. For a major project like this book, I set two targets: an aspirational goal (9) and an acceptable result (8). When I get eights across the board, I know I can be satisfied with my progress.”

He doesn’t aim for 10 because perfection is unachievable and striving for it makes us more likely to burnout.

“A lot of ambitious people think they have to get a 10 on everything, and the reality is if you aim for a 10 on everything, you’re not going to get even a nine on anything, because you’re going to end up obsessing about details that don’t matter, you’re going to ruminate and beat yourself up, and that’s going to leave you bruised and burn you out,” Grant says.

Trying to land a perfect score also encourages us to avoid challenging tasks, and dulls our appetite for experiments and risk-taking, which inadvertently limits our growth by preventing us from learning better ways of doing things.

Perfectionists may score well on school exams where the questions are often predictable, Grant says. But, in the real world, it’s no surprise that one meta-analysis found the average correlation between perfectionism and performance at work was zero.

“If perfectionism were a medication, the label would alert us to common side effects. Warning: may cause stunted growth,” Grant writes in the book.

“Perfectionism traps us in a spiral of tunnel vision and error avoidance: it prevents us from seeing larger problems and limits us to mastering increasingly narrow skills.”

Adam Grant will share his perspectives on work culture and potential at two Adam Grant Live events in February.