YouSaid · the spoken record

Adam Grant

lines on the record: 106
first: 2019-12-05
most recent: 2019-12-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“But I was trying to, I guess in the early lectures, I was trying to get students to think about tunnel vision. It's a problem I've seen over and over again with high achievers. I certainly felt it as an undergrad. I've watched a lot of my students at Wharton go through it since then. And what I was trying to highlight was that just because you're highly motivated and driven and you have clarity about your goals today doesn't mean that you won't wake up in two years and wish you had considered other goals. And so you might want to broaden your peripheral vision a little bit with sort of the punchline of the talk”
2019-12-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #399: Adam Grant — The Man Who Does Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was, let's see, the first lecture that I was doing was actually for an intropsychology class on career choice. And I was the worst person in the world to give this talk because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my career. And one of the reasons I became an organizational psychologist was I had figured out that I could take all the jobs that I thought were interesting and I could study those and live them vicariously. It's kind of cheating, right? I still don't know what I want to do with my life, so I study other people's interesting jobs.”
2019-12-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #399: Adam Grant — The Man Who Does Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lectures for other people's classes and force myself into a situation where I would have to be on a stage every day. I would have to give multiple talks on the same topic. I would then have to write new talks. And I think physiologically you can only sustain anxiety for so many hours at a time, right? And eventually it started to fade a little bit. I started to get a little more comfortable. And then a couple of good things happened. I remember I cracked a joke offhand after I'd done a lecture a couple times. And a few people laughed. And I thought, wait a minute, the audience actually liked something I did. Maybe there's hope. And so I think momentum, I guess, grew from there. And I felt like I had a couple of small wins to build on. And as I got more comfortable, I think it started to go better. And then eventually I decided I actually really enjoyed teaching and maybe I would become halfway decent at it.”
2019-12-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #399: Adam Grant — The Man Who Does Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then I started to realize that the reason I got into this in the first place was not about me. It wasn't about my emotions or my anxiety or the fact that I was described as looking like a muppet the way I awkwardly moved around the stage. It was because I loved ideas and I wanted to share them. And I wanted to be helpful to the students that I would one day teach. And so I guess I took a little cue out of my diving days. And I said, okay, when I started diving, I was really awful. What did I do? I did as many reps as possible every day. It sounds really boring, but last time I checked, you kind of plant the seeds of greatness in the daily grind. And I know you've lived your whole life that way, Tim. But for me, that meant I'm going to go and get in front of as many audiences as I can. And so I actually started volunteering to give guests.”
2019-12-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #399: Adam Grant — The Man Who Does Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then I go in front of my first audience and I get comments like that. And it wasn't just one student, right? It was over and over and over again. Instructor seems very nervous. Instructor seems like the most nervous professor I've ever heard in my life. Instructor is sweating so much that I've completely stopped paying attention to the lecture. And it's just went on and on. And I think I did what anyone would do in that situation, which is I started to wonder whether I should quit”
2019-12-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #399: Adam Grant — The Man Who Does Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, thanks for reminding me. You're welcome. It was painful. I remember going to grad school and thinking I've sort of found my calling. I had these professors who changed the way I saw the world and they were incredibly inspiring. And I wanted to try to pay that forward.”
2019-12-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #399: Adam Grant — The Man Who Does Everything · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT