The book:
The author, Professor Adam Grant Ph.D., a brilliant psychology professor and youngest to be granted tenure at age 28 at Wharton, presents a masterpiece in three types type of rethinking: individual, interpersonal, and collective. This book is intriguing and jarring. The stories it tells are engaging and they create curiosity. The outcomes either confirm insights or shock us with new possibilities that can allow us to make better decisions.
What’s the core message?
Rethinking can save your life, literally. It makes for better decisions, enables building bridges, creates hope where none existed before, and allows for stronger and cleaner focus on solving problems resulting in living life with less conflict and stress in personal and professional spaces.
How do these concepts compare with points raised in other books?
The brilliance of the book lies in the masterful weaving and consolidating a multitude of concepts, research, and real life examples into a thought provoking, compelling narrative. Many of the tools that Dr. Grant speaks of are known and addressed in previously published books, but not all stories, research, and new outcomes are woven and presented as persuasively as he does in this book.
What the book does well.
This book effortlessly pries open, closed minds to pause, rethink, evaluate, and consider alternatives. It does so by the telling of everyday relatable stories. The stories are factual with real life and death, profit and loss, friendship and alienation, and good and better choices, and they are supported by scientifically completed research studies. This book challenges and inspires us to rise above habitual conscious and unconscious biases and fixed mindsets to seek a better path by mindfully rethinking our options.
What could have made this book better?
The book spoke to me, it made me think, engaged me at intellectual and emotional levels, and educated and inspired me. It is conversational and brilliant. The book is deceptive in a good way. In a very low-key style, it delivers very powerful messages. Collectively, those messages have the potential of being life-changing.
What could have taken this book to another level? It could have served more readers better if it had a workbook with exercises which could make it easier for readers to adapt and apply the tools this book presents. Perhaps it is already in the works.
Who would benefit from reading this book?
This book should be taught in schools. Everyone would benefit from this book. It cuts across all divisions and reaches the core of human interactions and decision making.
How it affected me
This book made me rethink. Think Again is the book’s title, and it made me rethink how I make choices and decisions. Do I only seek out support networks or do I also have a challenge network? How often do I do a life-goals checkin to live life to the fullest? How do I deal with uncertainty and urgency? The brilliant author, Prof. Adam Grant provides tools and insights that will make me meditate and contemplate on how I make choices and how I could do this better.
The one caveat that applies here applies to many psychology and sociology work and to work that fits in the category of self improvement, is that when we have clarity of goals and a set of values, we can make better choices without falling into some of the traps this book highlights. This matters because we can only be at one place at one time and our actions tell all about all our inner programming that are the substance of this book. Most of us make poor choices when we are swayed by arguments, temptations, or views that are not our own priorities. When we know our priorities and can work to achieve them, we become the better versions of what we can be. These tools will return better gains and improve our actions by having clarity about our own goals .