Hidden Potential summary

Half a billion years ago, when volcanic eruptions wreaked havoc on Earth, 75 percent of species were wiped out. Among the survivors was the humble sea sponge. Sea sponges feed by filtering nutrients out of the water they draw in through their outer walls, and then expelling what they don’t need. They’re remarkably resilient. If they get nibbled on or damaged, they can sometimes regrow their soft bodies. Their incredible ability to adapt to their environment can see them living for over 2,000 years.

When it comes to uncovering your hidden potential, you need to channel your inner sea sponge; absorbing, filtering, and adapting while you work toward mastering your chosen skill. Once again, your ability to do this is a choice, one that’s completely distinct from your genes or even the opportunities you were born into. To explore this further, let’s consider the journey of one high performer.

In academic environments, striving for perfection is often what underpins learning. Students know they’ll be scored, and those scores will indicate how close they are to perfection. This encourages students to memorize and regurgitate information rather than understand it. 

But perfectionism only serves us when problems are familiar or linear in nature. In the world outside school and college, life is rarely so straightforward. In fact, research shows that perfectionists have no advantage when it comes to skills acquisition or mastery. In fact, they often perform worse than their peers.

Evelyn Glennie is a professional percussionist who grew up in rural Scotland. Despite experiencing rejection when she first applied to London’s Royal Academy of Music, she became the first full-time solo percussionist on a global scale. She holds three Grammy Awards and has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. Evelyn Glennie has also been profoundly deaf since childhood.

As a child, Glennie demonstrated high levels of “sponginess” in her approach to learning music. But there was another aspect of Evelyn’s journey that tapped into her potential – joy. Evelyn was having so much fun advancing her musical talents that she didn’t see practicing as a chore. It felt like play. Despite our tendency to believe that mastery must be hard won, incorporating play into learning yields better results in the long-term.

When we first start learning something new, we often make big leaps forward. But as we move toward mastery, the gains become smaller and more incremental – so much so that we often don’t even notice them. When this happens – BAM! We think we’ve hit a wall. But what’s actually happened is that we’ve run out of momentum.

Research by cognitive scientists Wayne Gray and John Lindstedt has revealed something fascinating – and heartening – about progress. They found that when stagnation occurs while mastering a skill, there’s always a period of decline before performance improves again. So, when you hit that wall, it’s completely normal to backtrack a little. By doing so, you fuel momentum to propel yourself beyond where you left off.