How Adam Grant uses data and intuition to make life decisions

How Adam Grant uses data and intuition to make life decisions

From Worklife with Molly Graham by TED

April 28, 2026 · 43 min

About this episode

Adam Grant discusses how he navigates uncertainty in decision-making, balancing data and intuition.

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. Featured guest Follow Adam on Instagram , LinkedIn , and at adamgrant.net/ Subscribe to Adam’s substack Connect with the team Follow Molly on Instagram , LinkedIn , and at glueclub.com/ Subscribe to Molly’s Substack Lesson Watch WorkLife videos on YouTube at TEDAudioCollective Follow TED on X , Instagram , Facebook , LinkedIn , and TikTok For the full text transcript, visit https://www.ted.com/podcasts/worklife-transcripts Learn more about our flagship conference happening this April at  attend.ted.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People in this episode

Host: Molly Graham

Guest: Adam Grant

Topics covered

  • data-driven decisions
  • intuition
  • career navigation
  • uncertainty
  • success measurement

Keywords

  • data
  • intuition
  • career decisions
  • success
  • uncertainty

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: TED

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