Maximize Your Potential: Grow Your Expertise, Take Bold Risks & Build an Incredible Career (99U Book 2)

rest is a critical component of achieving sustainable excellence over time.

Dunbar’s surprising discovery was that most insights didn’t actually occur when the researchers were alone in the lab. In fact, the majority actually occurred during regularly scheduled lab meetings where individual researchers revealed their latest findings and shared their most difficult setbacks with the rest of the team.

employers “are all looking for the same kind of people—people who not only have the critical thinking skills to do the value-adding jobs that technology can’t but also people who can invent, adapt, and reinvent their jobs every day, in a market that changes faster than ever.

asking for help when you need it actually makes people think you are more capable, not less.

When I was training my memory, I kept meticulous spreadsheets to track my performance.

A ritualized approach to practice helps conserve our precious and finite reserves of energy.

The kind of feedback we get from parents, teachers, and mentors when we are young has a major impact on the beliefs we develop about our abilities—including whether we see them as innate and unchangeable or as capable of developing through effort and practice.

Taken together, Dunbar’s and Uzzi and Spiro’s findings imply that the most successful creative projects are generated by teams that include a healthy mix of pre-existing connections, shared experiences, and totally new perspectives. If you’re looking to enhance your creative potential, then being on a team helps. But it’s not enough to be on any ol

The great thing about the Get Better mind-set is that it is practically bulletproof. When we think about what we are doing in terms of learning and improving, accepting that we may make some mistakes along the way, we stay motivated and persist despite the setbacks that might occur.

it’s possible for nearly anyone to reach excellence in nearly anything, given sufficient persistence and expert feedback along the way.