How Adam Grant uses data and intuition to make life decisions | from WorkLife with Molly Graham
ReThinking
TED
4.7 • 626 Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2026
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Most of us assume data-driven people make data-driven decisions. Not quite. Adam Grant has built a career helping others think more clearly — but when it comes to his own career, the most important calls he’s made didn’t have clear data behind them. So how did he decide? In this first episode of WorkLife with Molly Graham, Adam joins Molly to talk about how he actually navigates uncertainty — the four questions he asks before committing to any big project, what he calls “deliberate then dive”, and how he measures success when the numbers don’t tell the whole story.
WorkLife is a podcast from TED where host and company builder Molly Graham and her expert guests talk through the messy feelings we all experience at work. Ambition and failure, joy and burnout, confidence and self-doubt — this show digs into it all to help you build a career without losing yourself. Listen now: https://link.mgln.ai/BVK6Sn
ReThinking is produced by Cosmic Standard. Our Senior Producer is Jessica Glazer, our Engineer is Aja Simpson, our Technical Director is Jacob Winik, and our Executive Producer is Eliza Smith.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. I love data, but when making big decisions in your career and your |
| 0:05.3 | life, you don't always have data. So today I'm sharing a special conversation I had on my former show, |
| 0:11.0 | work life, with its new host, company and community builder Molly Graham. I joined her to break down |
| 0:16.1 | how I use data and intuition to make my biggest life choices. You can find more episodes of WorkLife |
| 0:21.6 | with Molly Graham wherever you listen to podcasts. Now, on to the episode. |
| 0:26.3 | Hey, WorkLifers, it's Adam Graham. I'm excited to do this today. We're actually handing off |
| 0:32.6 | WorkLife to a new host, Molly Graham, who is a tech superstar. And I thought I would take today as a chance to get |
| 0:40.8 | inside her head and figure out what motivates her, how does she work, what's she going to teach us as she |
| 0:46.5 | host this show. So Molly Graham, welcome to work life. Thanks, Adam. But just so you know, I'm actually |
| 0:52.7 | interviewing you today. Wait, what? Yeah. know, I'm actually interviewing you today. |
| 0:54.9 | Wait, what? |
| 0:57.2 | Yeah. |
| 0:59.1 | Wait, I'm sorry. I thought this was still my show. |
| 1:03.0 | Nope. It's my show now. So we get to interview you. |
| 1:04.5 | Okay, here we go. |
| 1:08.1 | Hi, Adam. Welcome to the new work life. |
| 1:19.7 | Hi, everyone. I'm Molly Graham, and I'm taking over as the host of this show. |
| 1:24.3 | For the past eight years, Adam Grant has built work life into one of the most thoughtful explorations of how we work, using research and psychology to help us |
| 1:28.4 | understand our careers, our teams, and ourselves. I've learned a lot from it, and I know many of |
| 1:34.1 | you have too. Now, I want to take you on the next step of that journey, because most of what I know |
| 1:40.1 | about work, I learned the hard way. In my career, I've led teams, scaled companies, |
| 1:46.0 | and built things that worked, and things that really didn't. Over time, I've come to believe |
... |
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