Library

No. 057

Dám Nghĩ Lại (Vietnamese edition of *Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know*)

Adam Grant

Personal Growth / MotivationalVietnamese~360 min original read

*Think Again*, published by organizational psychologist Adam Grant in 2021, argues that the ability to rethink and unlearn — to treat one's own opinions and identities as hypotheses to be tested rather than possessions to be defended — is an underrated cognitive skill, distinct from raw intelligence, and one that both individuals and organizations can deliberately strengthen. Grant's central metaphor, developed early in the book, is that people default to one of three unproductive mindsets when their beliefs are challenged: preacher (defending a sacred belief), prosecutor (attacking someone else's reasoning to win), or politician (seeking approval from a particular audience). Grant proposes a fourth mode — thinking like a scientist — treating one's own ideas as hypotheses to be tested against evidence, actively seeking disconfirming information, and updating one's views when the evidence warrants it, without treating that update as a personal defeat.

The book is organized into three parts, moving from individual cognition, through interpersonal dynamics, to collective and organizational rethinking. The first part focuses on the individual mind, addressing why confident people are often especially resistant to rethinking (a phenomenon Grant links to overconfidence and the discomfort of the "I don't know" state), and introducing the concept of confident humility — pairing genuine conviction in one's ability to figure things out with genuine uncertainty about one's current specific conclusions, which Grant argues is a more productive combination than either raw confidence or excessive self-doubt alone.

The second part shifts to interpersonal dynamics — specifically, how to encourage other people to rethink their own views without triggering the same preacher/prosecutor/politician defensiveness Grant described earlier, covering techniques drawn from research on effective debate, motivational interviewing (a technique originally developed in addiction counseling), and productive conflict, including the counterintuitive finding that genuine, respectful disagreement — rather than avoidance or artificial harmony — often builds trust and understanding more effectively than either forced agreement or conflict avoidance.

The third and final part scales the argument up to groups, organizations, and systems — covering how organizations can build cultures that reward changing one's mind rather than just being right, how polarized political and social debates might be productively reframed, and how education systems could better teach rethinking as an explicit skill rather than treating knowledge acquisition as the primary goal. Throughout the book, Grant draws on a wide range of research studies, historical case examples (including firefighting disasters, forecasting competitions, and vaccine hesitancy), and his own experience as an organizational psychologist, consistently returning to the argument that the capacity to say "I was wrong" and mean it — treated by many as a weakness — is in fact one of the more reliable predictors of good long-term judgment, in both individuals and the organizations they build.

Who This Is For

Anyone in a role requiring frequent judgment calls under uncertainty — managers, forecasters, anyone navigating disagreement — who wants a structured way to think about updating beliefs without treating it as a personal defeat.

When To Read This

When facing a significant decision under genuine uncertainty, or when stuck in an unproductive recurring disagreement that logical argument alone hasn't resolved.