Feeling Stuck? Here’s How To Achieve a Breakthrough, with Adam Alter
Jun 27, 2024
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New York University's Adam Alter shares tips on achieving breakthroughs, exploring why people feel stuck and ways to overcome it. Discusses knowing when to quit, embracing failure, and enhancing creativity through recombination of ideas.
Recognize the plateau effect and lifequakes to overcome feeling stuck.
Utilize sacred pauses and friction audits to aid in achieving breakthroughs.
Embrace failure as a learning opportunity for nonlinear progress and creativity.
Deep dives
Understanding Stuckness and Breakthroughs
Adam Alter, a psychology professor, delves into the concept of being stuck in various life aspects. He discusses prolonged stuckness and the belief that other people have fewer obstacles. Stuckness is a common experience and can be overcome with actionable steps. His research provides insights on brain hacks for goal completion and optimal failure acceptance.
Navigating Plateaus and Lifequakes
Alter explains how the plateau effect and changing world conditions can lead to feeling stuck. Lifequakes, significant life shifts every 8-12 years, impact personal growth. The end-of-decade crisis at 'nines' prompts reflection and change. Recognizing the goal gradient effect helps maintain motivation towards long-term goals.
Applying Sacred Pauses and Friction Audits
The concept of sacred pauses emphasizes the importance of slowing down amidst stuckness. Alter shares examples of how pausing and reflecting have led to breakthroughs. Implementing friction audits, identifying and addressing areas of high friction, aids in moving forward. Netflix's approach with post-play feature exemplifies reducing friction for user engagement.
Embracing Failure and Hot Streaks
Failure is a key component for growth and learning, essential for creativity. Alter emphasizes embracing failure as a learning opportunity for nonlinear progress. He highlights the significance of exploratory phases followed by exploitation in finding hot streaks. Exploration allows for varied attempts, leading to discovery and subsequent focus for excellence.
Fostering Creativity and Innovation
Alter's recommendation of maintaining a repository of intriguing ideas sparks creativity. Recombination of old ideas leads to innovative outcomes. Through constant exposure to diverse concepts, one gains inspiration for novel connections and creative endeavors. This approach promotes originality and ingenuity in problem-solving and idea generation.
We've all been stuck at some point in our lives — whether we've been stuck at a job and wanting to make a career change, stuck in a location and wanting to move somewhere new, or stuck in relationships or friendships. But the method to getting “unstuck” and achieving a breakthrough might be easier than you think.
Using research-backed tools, New York University's Adam Alter shares his tips for how to get unstuck in his new book, Anatomy of a Breakthrough. Alter shares success stories from some of the world's most successful people, and explains how altering your thoughts and habits could lead you on a better path to success. Alter is a professor of marketing at New York University's Stern School of Business and the Robert Stansky Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow.
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