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Is it about building character skills, like how often do you take initiative to ask questions? Do you react to what enters your field of vision, or are you proactive in seeking new knowledge, skills and perspectives? Do you focus on feeding your ego or fueling your growth?

Perfectionism

Unlocking hidden potential is not about the pursuit of perfection. Be disciplined in deciding when to push for the best and when to settle for good enough. Don't obsess by details and to find the right solution on tiny problems that don't matter. Find the right problems to solve instead.

Passion

Although it takes deliberate practice to achieve greater things, we shouldn't drill so hard that we drive the joy out of the activity and turn it into an obsessive slog. Persistence is more likely to translate into performance when passion is present.

Breaks

Take breaks. They help you unlock fresh ideas, deepen your learning and sustain your harmonious passion. Even micro-breaks of five to ten minutes are enough to reduce fatigue and raise energy.

Side hustle

When asking people what it takes to achieve greater things, one of the most common answers is that you need to be laser focused and single-minded in your dedication. Get in early, go home late. Put your hobbies away. But the evidence tells a different story. Hobbies or a side hustle can be a source of energy - if they are in a different area from your job.

Learn from experts?

Do we learn more from experts? If you are taking a new road, the best experts are often the worst guides. One reason is the distance they have traveled - they have come too far to remember what it's like being in your shoes.

You need to make experts' implicit knowledge explicit. Ask them to retrace their route. Get them to drop pins - the key landmarks and turning points from their climbs, the crossroads they faced, skills they sought out, advice they took or ignored, or changes they made.

A sense of progress

The strongest known force in daily motivation is a sense of progress. Achieving this doesn't require huge gains. Fuel can come from small wins. With a few small wins, you start to gain speed.

A rocky start followed by later success

It's a mistake to judge people solely by the heights they have reached. We need to consider how steep their slope was, how far they have climbed, and how they have grown along the way. Early failure and a rocky start followed by later success is a mark of hidden potential. The key question is not how long people have done a job. Find out what they have learned and how well they can learn to do a job.

Read

A love of reading often begins at home. If we want our kids to enjoy reading, we need to make books part of their lives. That involves talking about books during meals and car rides, visiting libraries or bookstores, giving books as gifts, and letting them see us read. 

Children pay attention to our attention: where we focus tells them what we value.

"Hidden Potential" by Adam Grant