How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most: An Author Talk with Adam Alter

Join us as we chat online with New York Times bestselling author Adam Alter about his new book Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most. 

Almost everyone feels stuck in some way. Whether you’re muddling through a midlife crisis, wrestling with writer’s block, trapped in a thankless job, or trying to remedy a fraying friendship, the resulting emotion is usually a mix of anxiety, uncertainty, fear, anger, and numbness. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Anatomy of a Breakthrough is the roadmap we all need to escape our inertia and flourish in the face of friction.

The solution to becoming unstuck rests on a process that Alter calls a friction audit—a systematic procedure that uncovers why a person or organization is stuck and then suggests a path to progress. The friction audit states that people and organizations get unstuck when they overcome three sources of friction: HEART (unhelpful emotions); HEAD (unhelpful patterns of thought); and HABIT (unhelpful behaviors).

Artfully weaving together scientific studies, anecdotes, and interviews, Alter teaches us that getting stuck is a feature rather than a glitch on the road to thriving, but with the right tweaks and corrections, we can reach even our loftiest targets.