GRANTED: The new reads to brighten your winter

January 2022

 The most important quality in a mentor, teacher, or coach is not how much they know. It's how much they care.
 
Caring is more than taking pride in your success. It's feeling joy as you progress. The people you want in your corner are the ones who celebrate your growth.
 
In the spirit of growth, some links to check out:

1. How disgust explains everything (Maisie Cousins, NYT)
Science journalism at its best—a riveting read on what grosses us out, and why.
 
2. Grief is unexpressed love (Andrew Garfield, Colbert)
A beautiful reframe of an emotion that many people see as sadness to avoid or pain to process quickly.
 
3. Why great leaders take humor seriously (Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas, TED)
This talk won’t just make you laugh—it's filled with fun ways to bring more humor into your work and your life.

From my desk

4. We’re living through the ‘boring apocalypse’ (NYT)
It’s time to stop treating the pandemic like a horror film. Repeatedly sounding the alarm has put us through a form of exposure therapy—we’ve built up antibodies against fear.
 
5. The 12 new idea books to brighten your winter (Bulletin)
My top picks to start 2022 convinced me that regret can be a good thing, productivity guilt isn’t inevitable, we’re not doomed to statistical illiteracy, and there’s hope for human judgment in a world of data.

In solidarity,

Adam Grant, Ph.D.
Organizational psychologist at Wharton, author of THINK AGAIN, and host of the TED podcast WorkLife