Hidden Genius

What if the traits that make the world’s most successful people extraordinary aren’t luck, talent, or circumstance—but a specific way of thinking that you can learn? In Hidden Genius: The Secret Ways of Thinking That Power the World’s Most Successful People, journalist and creator of The Profile, Polina Marinova Pompliano, investigates what separates the exceptional from the ordinary. Through riveting stories and behavioral insights drawn from business leaders, athletes, artists, and thinkers, her central claim is bold yet practical: genius is not born—it’s built.

Pompliano argues that hidden genius reveals itself not through IQ or pedigree, but through daily patterns of curiosity, discipline, resilience, and empathy. Everyone—if willing to learn—can develop these internal systems of greatness. Her thesis challenges the conventional idea of innate talent, reframing genius as something accessible and cultivable through deliberate thought and action. The book serves as both a celebration of extraordinary minds and a blueprint for anyone eager to sharpen their own mental and emotional toolkit.

People-Focused Learning

Pompliano begins with her idea of people-focused learning. She recounts how her own curiosity about historical figures—like Marie Antoinette, whose tragedy became more vivid when she imagined her as a flawed human rather than a figure in a textbook—sparked a lifelong fascination with human stories. This discovery launched her newsletter, The Profile, which dissects the lives of high-achievers to extract practical frameworks. Her premise is that stories are our ultimate teachers: when you examine how others think, act, fail, and recover, you identify patterns of genius that fuel your own growth.

Pompliano insists that learning from role models must not slide into imitation or idolization. By studying figures like basketball legend Kobe Bryant and Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, she explains that even the greats resist copying others’ formulas. Bryant consulted icons across generations—Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan—and discovered that mastery comes from synthesis, not mimicry. Kerr likewise sought wisdom from top coaches before realizing that success required being authentically himself. The takeaway? Geniuses study others to find themselves.

From Idolizing to Learning

The first major contrast Pompliano draws is between idolizing and learning. Idolizing traps you in imitation—blindly venerating “perfect” versions of imperfect people. Learning, on the other hand, means extracting wisdom, filtering out flaws, and designing an original path. Chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen exemplifies this mindset. Though he absorbed insights from masters like Kasparov and Fischer, he refused to emulate them entirely, saying, “I just try to get the best from the great masters.” His ability to transform borrowed knowledge into something uniquely his own is what made him a champion. Pompliano builds from these stories to teach a flexible learning strategy: distill, adapt, and evolve—not replicate.

The Messy Reality of Success

Pompliano dismantles the myth that high performers live linear, enviable lives. Behind brilliance often lie missed opportunities, personal turmoil, and difficult trade-offs. Her profiles reveal that even icons like Al Pacino, admired for his professional genius, carry regrets—his choice to never marry, shaped by a fractured childhood, is one example of success intertwined with sacrifice. The book urges readers to ask a confronting question: Would you be willing to pay the same price for their success? Recognizing the full humanity of our role models keeps our aspirations grounded and self-aware.

Why This Matters

The heart of Hidden Genius lies in equipping you to uncover your own patterns of excellence. Over ten chapters, Pompliano translates the habits and decisions of extraordinary people into frameworks you can apply in everyday life—whether you want to spark creativity, strengthen relationships, build resilience, think more clearly, or create meaningful work. Each chapter centers on a key mental model: creativity as connection, toughness as trained endurance, relationships as trust compounding, storytelling as control of narrative, leadership as service, decision-making as risk calibration, and much more. Ultimately, Pompliano’s message is both humbling and energizing: the genius you admire in others is a mirror, reflecting what’s already possible within you—if only you learn to think like one.

Creativity isn’t a divine spark, argues Pompliano—it’s a skill that can be learned, practiced, and strengthened. Through the story of revolutionary chef Grant Achatz, director Christopher Nolan, and other innovators, she shows that breakthroughs emerge from connection, discipline, and comfort with failure. Creativity, in this view, is less about inspiration and more about awareness and synthesis.

Connecting the Unconnected

Grant Achatz’s story is the epitome of imaginative thinking. At his restaurant Alinea, diners eat floating edible balloons and encounter dishes that defy sensory expectations. His mantra—“Who says food can’t be art?”—forces guests to rethink what a meal can be. Achatz treats every sensory detail as part of the performance: the scent of nutmeg air, the soundscape of music, the illusion of texture. His hidden genius isn’t showmanship—it’s curiosity. By asking questions across disciplines (music, architecture, painting), Achatz embodies Leonardo da Vinci’s idea of connecting the unconnected.

Neuroscience supports this approach. Research by Penn State’s Roger Beaty found that creativity relies on “flexibility of thinking”—the ability to link unrelated ideas. (This reflects Steve Jobs’s quote: “Creativity is just connecting things.”) Achatz transforms world observations into flavor experiments, proving that attentiveness to everyday details can spark innovation anywhere.

Manufacturing Creativity

When Achatz lost his sense of taste to tongue cancer, he had to redefine what it meant to create. His invention of “flavor bouncing”—mapping ingredients based on logic rather than taste—taught him that rigorous systems can replace raw inspiration. Creativity, he realized, thrives under structure, not chaos. This philosophy connects to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s stance that understanding rules allows you to break them effectively (“Art is beautiful because it has rules,” Sorkin says). Similarly, showrunner Shonda Rhimes relies on long periods of mental incubation before writing scripts—proof that creative magic often happens when the conscious mind rests.

Failing into Success

True originality, Pompliano writes, is messy. She compares creative pioneers to “chefs,” using Tim Urban’s analogy of recipe inventors versus cooks who follow them. Ed Catmull at Pixar turns this into practice by embracing spectacular failure; if your idea can be explained in an elevator pitch, Catmull warns, it’s probably not original. Taylor Swift’s misheard lyric (“Starbucks lovers”) and Christina Tosi’s baking “flops” both illustrate that imperfection often produces memorability. As Catmull says, the only real failure is the one you don’t learn from.

In essence, creativity demands deliberate curiosity, systematic thinking, and tolerance for embarrassment. When you connect ideas others miss, impose discipline on your process, and see failure as data instead of defeat, you don’t just create—you invent. You become an idea manufacturer instead of a passive consumer of inspiration.

If creativity demands curiosity, resilience demands courage. In this part, Pompliano profiles a diverse cast—from Navy SEAL David Goggins to ultra-runner Courtney Dauwalter and writer Cheryl Strayed—to illustrate that toughness isn’t genetic. It’s a mindset refined through what she calls manufactured hardship and controlled suffering.

Building Your Mental Arsenal

For Goggins, a man who went from 300-pound pest exterminator to completing three Navy SEAL Hell Weeks, pain became a classroom. His “40% Rule” asserts that when you feel finished, you’re only 40% done—an antidote to the mind’s self-imposed governor. The “accountability mirror” and daily discomfort rituals strengthen self-trust through honest reflection and incremental courage. By facing truth rather than soothing insecurity, Goggins shows that endurance begins with emotional honesty.

Personifying Pain

Ultra-endurance athletes Amelia Boone and Courtney Dauwalter practice a surprising mental skill: befriending pain. Boone talks to aching body parts as teammates; Dauwalter visualizes her “pain cave,” a mental space she explores instead of resists. Pompliano frames this as a lesson in cognitive reframing—if you make pain a guide rather than an enemy, it loses dominance over you. Holocaust survivor Edith Eger echoes this lesson, teaching that “suffering is universal but victimhood is optional.” You cannot control adversity, but you can control the story you tell about it.

Creating an Alter Ego

The chapter ends with identity alchemy. Goggins becomes “Goggins,” Beyoncé becomes “Sasha Fierce,” and Kobe Bryant becomes the “Black Mamba.” Psychological research backs this “self-distancing” technique: viewing yourself in the third person improves emotional regulation and performance. Wrongfully imprisoned Anthony Ray Hinton did something similar, imagining himself as a world traveler while trapped in solitary confinement. These alter egos aren’t masks—they’re catalysts that merge over time into your truer, stronger self.

You become tough not by suppressing emotion but by training it—turning fear into clarity, pain into partnership, identity into evolution. Pompliano’s message: life will test you regardless. You may as well practice now.

No genius thrives in isolation. In this section, Pompliano explores the science and art of relationships, arguing that trust compounds like interest and every interaction either deposits or withdraws from that balance. Drawing from authors, psychologists, and entrepreneurs, she outlines how connection, conflict, and consistency create relational genius.

The Compound Interest of Trust

Psychotherapist Esther Perel calls trust the “solid ground” of any bond. LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman formalizes it as consistency plus time. Compounding trust echoes investor principles from Naval Ravikant and Charlie Munger: repeat reliable actions, and relationships—like portfolios—grow exponentially. Shopify’s Tobi Lütke visualizes this as a “trust battery” that charges or drains with every encounter. In practice, it means showing up and following through, repeatedly, until reliability becomes identity.

Listening as a Superpower

Pompliano reframes listening as an active skill, borrowing from FBI negotiator Chris Voss. His “mirror and label” method—repeating words to draw out emotion—allows conflict resolution even under pressure. Using mirroring, empathy, and tone modulation (his “late-night FM DJ voice”), Voss diffused life-or-death standoffs; you can use these same tools to navigate workplace or domestic disputes. Genuine curiosity, Pompliano reminds, is “a hack for emotional control.”

The Magic Ratios of Love

John Gottman’s research shows that happy couples sustain a “5:1 ratio” of positive to negative interactions. Small gestures—a smile, nod, or joke like Sara Blakely and Jesse Itzler’s “argument slow dance”—can tip the balance toward harmony. Gottman also emphasizes answering emotional “bids,” the tiny attempts partners make to connect (“Look at that car!”). Relationship mastery, Pompliano concludes, looks less like grand romance and more like steady maintenance—the daily deposits that keep the trust battery full.

Whether leading a team or building a partnership, your success depends on nourishing relationships that multiply mutual trust. Consistency, empathy, and gentle humor compound much faster than you think.

Stories don’t just entertain—they determine how we remember, decide, and connect. Pompliano argues that storytelling is the ultimate thinking tool. Drawing from therapist-author Lori Gottlieb, playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda, and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, she shows that reframing your inner narrative changes both identity and influence.

Editing the Story You Tell Yourself

We are all unreliable narrators of our own lives. Gottlieb teaches that the way you interpret experience determines what you become. Her patients’ anxieties often originate not from events but from mis-edited stories. The fix? Rewrite the plot from another character’s perspective. This “narrative reframing” lets you see blind spots and escape self-made prisons. (This parallels narrative therapy in psychology and Viktor Frankl’s concept of finding meaning through story.)

Conflict and Intent: The DNA of Narrative

Aaron Sorkin distills storytelling into two ingredients: conflict and intent. Somebody wants something, and something stands in their way. Great stories, like The Social Network, thrive because their protagonists collide with obstacles that expose desire. The same tense structure fuels persuasion—entrepreneurs, managers, or partners can all craft narratives that show friction resolved by purpose. As Pompliano notes, “Use ‘but,’ ‘except,’ or ‘and then’—those words create tension—and you create story.”

Finding the Extraordinary in the Mundane

Pompliano’s journalism professor once told her: “No one is boring—you just haven’t asked the right questions.” This insight became the heart of her philosophy and connects to Humans of New York creator Brandon Stanton’s work. The ability to transform ordinary lives into unforgettable narratives, as Gay Talese did with “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” demonstrates that the extraordinary always hides in plain sight. Curiosity and presence—not fame—make a story memorable.

Learning to tell better stories means becoming both editor and protagonist of your own life. Change the frame, and you not only reshape perception—you rewrite destiny.

Leadership, for Pompliano, is not about visibility but service and systems. She uncovers how remarkable leaders—from Daniel Ek at Spotify to Mark Bertolini at Aetna—achieved impact by flipping hierarchies, thinking in processes, and ultimately disappearing into the success of others.

Inverting the Pyramid

Daniel Ek’s Spotify embodies servant leadership. By inverting the “leadership pyramid,” Ek sees himself not as a boss at the top but as support at the bottom, empowering teams to act autonomously. This hands-off structure birthed the wildly successful “Discover Weekly,” an innovation Ek himself doubted. Restaurateur Danny Meyer’s “bottom-up management” philosophy echoes this: create a culture where mistakes lead to learning, not fear. When leaders stop hoarding authority, they unlock collective creativity.

Systematizing Your Life

Shopify’s Tobi Lütke and Spanx founder Sara Blakely treat systems as scaffolding for genius. Lütke color-codes his calendar and automates repetitive tasks; Blakely “buckets” days by focus, dedicating time blocks to specific functions. Systems-thinking reframes success as process mastery, not goal achievement. Olympian coach Bob Bowman explains this mindset to swimmers: “Don’t look at the scoreboard; play the next play.” Results arise naturally from strong mechanisms.

The Power of Invisible Leadership

Former Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini articulates four tiers of leadership rooted in Taoist principles. The highest level, he says, is invisibility: when an organization runs so well that people say, “We did it ourselves.” Bertolini’s own transformation—from corporate “Darth Vader” to mindful servant—demonstrates that empathy and awareness rebuild trust faster than authority ever could. True leaders, from Bernard Arnault to Brunello Cucinelli, understand when to remove themselves from the spotlight so their teams can shine.

Leadership genius is paradoxical: the less you demand credit, the more influence you wield. Systems and service—not charisma—sustain greatness.

Pompliano reframes risk-taking as a science of preparation rather than a gamble. Using tales of astronauts, athletes, and entrepreneurs, she shows that confidence in chaos grows from competence and perspective. Her message is empowering: becoming a “risk technician”—not a thrill-seeker—is the hallmark of hidden genius.

Competence Breeds Calm

Astronaut Chris Hadfield, big-wave surfer Garrett McNamara, and freediver Alexey Molchanov all model calm in crisis. Hadfield’s antidote to fear—“prepare for the worst through make-believe scenarios”—demonstrates that rehearsal breeds rationality. Molchanov’s three-step relaxation method (check breathing, reframe fear as challenge, focus on one task) turns pressure into poise. Fear, Pompliano concludes, is not the absence of courage—it’s the absence of readiness.

Calculating Smart vs. Stupid Risk

Entrepreneur Jim Koch distinguishes between actions that are scary and those that are dangerous. Leaving a secure job to start a brewery was scary but not dangerous to his soul; staying in a stagnant career, however, was dangerous. Similarly, Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg evaluates risk by reversibility: make reversible decisions quickly and irreversible ones deliberately. Simple heuristics like these recalibrate intuition toward rational courage.

Accepting the Dark Side

Pompliano warns that control is an illusion. Mountaineer Conrad Anker’s survival when partners perished in an avalanche underscores risk’s chaotic nature. Success, she writes, lies in humility—knowing luck’s role. (Economist Nassim Taleb might call this “antifragile thinking.”) Taking small, frequent risks instead of monumental leaps—what astronaut Franklin Chang Díaz describes as “small steps, lots of them”—builds adaptability without destruction.

Mastering risk means learning when to leap, when to prepare, and when to pause. The bravest decision often isn’t the riskiest one—it’s the most informed.

The most successful thinkers, Pompliano argues, are humble skeptics. They protect their mental clarity the way athletes protect their bodies. This chapter, featuring Charlie Munger, Julia Galef, and Anthony Bourdain, reveals how curiosity, intellectual humility, and independent thinking serve as the brain’s immune system against misinformation and cognitive bias.

Fighting Blind Belief

The NXIVM cult scandal, as told through survivor Sarah Edmondson, illustrates how intelligent people fall prey to manipulative systems. Pompliano uses this story to highlight belief’s contagious nature—our tendency to cling to tribe over truth. Daniel Dennett calls it “belief in belief.” Economist Philip Tetlock’s “fox vs. hedgehog” experiment reveals that open-minded “foxes” (those using multiple perspectives) forecast far better than rigid “hedgehogs.” Flexibility, not conviction, is the signature of sharp thinkers.

Adopting the Scout Mindset

Rationalist Julia Galef’s metaphor contrasts the defensive soldier mindset (argue to win) with the scout mindset (seek truth). Scouts welcome discomfort and revise maps when new terrain appears. This can be practiced by celebrating objectivity over victory, picturing beliefs outside your body, and asking regularly, “What would change my mind?” Intellectual confidence stems from continual recalibration, not rigidity.

Thinking for Yourself

Pompliano shares her personal evolution—from conformity-seeking immigrant child to independent writer—illustrating Paul Graham’s spectrum from passively to aggressively independent-minded. True freedom starts with questioning the “software running in your head,” as Neil deGrasse Tyson says. Applying Bayes’ Rule to beliefs—updating probabilities when new evidence arises—keeps your mental code flexible. As psychologist Annie Duke adds, bias is like contagion: avoid “groupthink infection” by forming opinions privately before discussion.

Clear thinking isn’t about being certain—it’s about being corrigible. As Munger puts it, “I’m not entitled to an opinion until I can state the arguments against it better than my opponents.”

At a world obsessed with followers, Pompliano proposes a radical shift: don’t chase audiences, build communities. Through stories from Lady Gaga to Brandon Stanton of Humans of New York, she shows that meaningful tribes grow through empathy, authenticity, and shared purpose, not scale.

Loneliness vs. Connection

Loneliness, Pompliano explains, is a modern epidemic amplified by digital connection. The antidote isn’t solitude avoidance but purpose. As neuroscientist John Cacioppo found, loneliness correlates not with being alone but with feeling misunderstood. Connecting through service, as ex-NFL player Ryan Leaf discovered while teaching inmates to read, restores meaning. Psychologist Bryan Stevenson’s advice—“Get proximate to suffering”—echoes this: community grows where empathy replaces judgment.

From Audience to Community

Author Chris Brogan distinguishes audiences (chairs facing forward) from communities (chairs facing each other). Lady Gaga’s “First 50” strategy, Taylor Swift’s secret sessions, and Pompliano’s own reader meetups show that intimacy scales better than marketing. Overserve, build goodwill, and create serendipity—the formula for belonging. When people feel seen, they stop being followers and start being co-creators.

Empathy at Scale

Stanton’s viral Tanqueray story, which raised millions from strangers for a former burlesque dancer’s medical care, proved that digital empathy can be tangible. Similarly, Christina Tosi’s public apology for Milk Bar’s controversial “Crack Pie” name shows that humility strengthens loyalty. Ron Finley, the “gangster gardener” who transformed food deserts into community gardens, embodies how anger channeled into creation becomes service. Unity, Pompliano reminds us, begins with curiosity: seeing others not as data points, but as mirrors.

When you create spaces that encourage connection over consumption, you build not only audiences but allies—and, ultimately, movements.

We are what we consume—not just in nutrition but information. Pompliano’s “content diet” philosophy is straightforward yet transformative: upgrade your mental software by choosing what you read, watch, and absorb as carefully as what you eat. Cognitive health, she argues, is the foundation of creative and emotional genius.

Upgrading Mental Software

Elon Musk compares minds to computers: hardware is intellect, software is belief systems. Most people run outdated mental code. Columnist David Brooks’s “theory of maximum taste” supports this—your mental quality is defined by the best content you habitually consume. Reading deeply instead of scrolling aimlessly expands intellectual capacity just as strength training grows muscle.

Conducting a Content Audit

Pompliano challenges readers to audit their media habits: What do you read daily? Who shapes your thinking? Replace algorithmic noise with long-form depth, meaningful podcasts, and real conversations. Malcolm Gladwell advises following intellectual “rabbit holes”—wandering library aisles, tracing footnotes, exploring serendipity—to rediscover curiosity. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness practice complements this by training attention, the gatekeeper of all good input.

Choosing What to Inject into Your Mind

Author Tara Westover’s memoir Educated embodies Pompliano’s idea of mental reprogramming. Taught to distrust education, Westover replaced inherited beliefs with evidence, rewriting her cognitive code. Holocaust survivor Edith Eger captured the essence of this mindset when she told her daughter on the train to Auschwitz: “No one can take away what you put in your own mind.” Curating mental nutrition is thus an act of freedom.

Strategic consumption sharpens creativity, empathy, and judgment. Every tweet, article, or book either nourishes or malnourishes your hidden genius—choose accordingly.

The book concludes with a profound provocation: success is personal. Pompliano argues that discovering your hidden genius means rejecting inherited metrics—money, fame, titles—and building a life measured by meaning, autonomy, and authenticity.

Rejecting Labels

Army veteran Noah Galloway rejected his “wounded veteran” label after losing limbs, redefining himself through fitness and purpose. Similarly, author Robert Hoge reclaimed “ugly” to tell his story, proving that labels only trap those who accept them. The first step toward genius, Pompliano writes, is seeing curiosity as greater than categorization: ask before assuming, and you gain a bigger world.

Knowing Who You Are (and Aren’t)

MMA champion Francis Ngannou’s journey—from Cameroonian sand miner to world titleholder—teaches that identity solidifies through contrast. Knowing who you’re not (his violent father’s example) helps define who you will become. Matthew McConaughey’s “identity elimination diet” applies the same principle: remove what doesn’t align, and your purpose emerges.

Betting on Yourself

Pompliano’s own leap—from Fortune journalist to full-time entrepreneur—catalyzed her thesis. Drawing on Anna Quindlen’s speech about success “on your own terms,” she concludes that autonomy is the ultimate creative act. Success, then, isn’t an award but alignment: when your everyday actions mirror your internal definition of meaning.

The hidden genius each person seeks is not rare—it’s hidden beneath conformity, fear, and noise. Once you claim authorship of your identity, you stop living someone else’s story and start writing your own.