I had picked up this book at an airport store on my way to Uruguay. I was impressed by another of his books – Think Again. This one did not disappoint either.

He dives into how to bring out the potential in every human being, of oneself, as well as bringing the same out in others. In the process, he breaks down a few myths and misperceptions.

The biggest one is how we judge and elevate people based on peak performance, not the journey there. The point is that if you want to understand a person’s full potential, it is not about the peak reached but about how much one has traversed to get there.

For oneself, he asserts that we stop learning as we grow up because we are unwilling to embrace the awkwardness of learning. Imagine picking up a new language. We wait to become experts before we feel ready to talk to native speakers. But the process of becoming an expert goes right through the heart of talking to native speakers while you are learning – and in the process overcoming the fear of making mistakes and being awkward.

He also asserts that to achieve full potential, one needs to accept imperfection. (the art of Wabi Sabi). Trying to be perfect will lead one down a very narrow path instead of developing new ones. He quotes this art of balancing the flawed with the flawless in words that appealed to me:

“There is a crack, crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”

Another important concept he stresses is that the path to full potential will not be linear. You will get stuck, have to back out, and then seek alternate paths. If you are not getting stuck, you are not on a path of full potential. “The roundabout path to forward progress”, as he says.

When it comes to helping others reach their full potential, he has a couple of important pieces of advice for all leaders. First, focus on what makes a great team, and it is not the same as putting great individuals together. The other is to judge a person’s character more than their talent. Talent sets the floor, but character sets the floor.

What is character? The author says that character is often confused with personality, but they’re not the same. Personality is your predisposition. Your basic instinct for how to think, feel, and act. Character is your capacity to prioritize your values over your instincts.

Some interesting direct quotes:

“Getting better is a worthy accomplishment in and of itself.”
“Ambition is the outcome you want to achieve. Aspiration is the person you hope to become.”
“Teaching is a surprisingly powerful method of learning.”

I forget how I landed up with this book. I think I was reading an article in The Economist that mentioned this book.

It is a fascinating book to understand what causes some of the grave ills of social media. I used to see all the young kids constantly on their phones. But from The Economist article, I learnt that constant social media doomscrolling is affecting the older generation even worse.

The author does not delve very deep into certain aspects of psychiatric issues caused by social media, like loneliness, anxiety, and so on. Instead, he focuses much more on how social media causes mass hysteria around conspiracy theories and deep echo chambers, to the point that ordinary people are becoming unhinged from reality.

He has studied Facebook and YouTube in the greatest detail. Interestingly, not much analysis of TikTok was presented, but he suggests that its algorithms are doing exactly the same.

It stems from the social media company single-mindedly chasing screen time – or the user’s attention. This is clearly driven by profit motives (ad revenue is proportional to the time you spend on an app or site).

As a second step, the social media companies created algorithms to feed you more stuff that they deem will keep you on the screen. The algorithms have developed this magic by constantly studying the behavior of millions of human beings. In and of itself, it does not have any value judgment – but a very good idea – based on data, what will make you stay on the screen.

And the third part is the foible of us human beings. We are attracted to salacious news items. We discount data that goes against our beliefs and instead are likely to believe more data that supports our belief – even after we are told that the data source is spurious!! And if enough people say it, we take it as a cardinal truth.

All this, when done on a large scale – where no human being can truly understand the AI algorithm’s complexity anymore – leads to extreme behavior from human beings. To the point, people have killed people – and in extreme cases, genocides like that in Myanmar – purely based on believing something to be true since the algorithms kept feeding one kind of item only.

The author has a strong point of view: owners of social media need to bear significant responsibility for this and should be held accountable. The owners, on the other hand, claim that it would be a violation of free speech. They have sometimes taken action when faced with political or social pressure, but things regressed soon after.

I think the problem manifestation is clear (people are killing people, and human beings are suffering from deep psychological issues – this is undeniable). However, the solution is equally unclear. In fact, the author does not seem to offer any elegant solution beyond suggesting that we hold social media owners responsible for what their algorithms do.

I would recommend reading this book.