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‘Grit,’ by Angela Duckworth

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By Judith Shulevitz

• May 4, 2016

GRIT The Power of Passion and Perseverance By Angela Duckworth Illustrated. 333 pp. Scribner. $28.

Grit: The word has mouth feel. It sounds like something John Wayne would chaw on. Who wouldn’t want grit? Wusses. ­Forget ’em.

Angela Duckworth, the psychologist who has made “grit” the reigning buzzword in education-policy circles, would surely recoil at any association between it and Wayne’s outmoded machismo. Duckworth is a scholar you have to take seriously. She has been featured in two best-­selling books (“How Children Succeed,” by Paul Tough, and “The Power of Habit,” by Charles Duhigg), consulted by the White House and awarded the MacArthur “genius” fellowship for her work on this obviously desirable trait. At the University of Pennsylvania’s Duckworth Lab, grit is gender-neutral. It’s self-control and stick-to-it-iveness. The two big ideas about grit that have made Duckworth famous are first, that it predicts success more reliably than talent or I.Q.; and second, that anyone, man or woman, adult or child, can learn to be gritty.

Nonetheless, the word has a cowboy kick, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It harks back to America’s pioneering days. It took grit to light out for the territory, as Huck Finn might have said. The notion that talent is born, not made, is the modern-day version of the caste system those Americans were fleeing. The cult of genius reinforces passivity and dampens ambition. “If we think of genius as something magical, we are not obliged to compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking,” Nietzsche wrote in a passage quoted by Duckworth in her new book, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.”

Grit, on the other hand, is egalitarian, or at least a less class-based indicator of future accomplishment than aptitude. Measurable intelligence owes something to genetic endowment but also depends heavily on environmental inputs, such as the number of words spoken to a child by her caregivers. The development of grit does not rely quite so much on culturally specific prompts. Moreover, grit appears to be a better engine of social mobility.

Giving character training to the underprivileged will not level America’s increasingly Dickensian inequalities, of course, but Duckworth’s ideas about the cultivation of tenacity have clearly changed some lives for the better. Duckworth has worked closely with influential figures in the ­education-reform movement, like the founders of the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) charter school network, which now has 183 schools in 20 states. She helped them devise the tough-love or “no excuses” pedagogical approach increasingly common among charter schools, which holds students to high standards and employs stern disciplinary methods meant to cultivate good habits. Thanks to her, social and emotional education appears on public school lesson plans throughout the country. There’s even a movement to test schools on how well they teach these noncognitive skills, as they’re called, although it must be said that Duckworth strongly opposes this. She argues that any test of character worth giving is too subjective to standardize, and too easy to game.

In this book, Duckworth, whose TED talk has been viewed more than eight million times, brings her lessons to the reading public. My guess is you’ll find “Grit” in the business section of your local bookstore. As marketing strategies go, it’s not a bad one, although the conventions of the self-help genre do require Duckworth to boil down her provocative and original hypotheses to some rather trite-sounding formulas.

If this book were a Power Point presentation, as it surely has been, the best slide would be the two equations that offer a simple proof for why grit trumps talent: Talent × effort = skill. Skill × effort = achievement. In other words, “Effort counts twice.” My grandfather, an immigrant, knew this. He would have called grit Sitzfleisch. (Malcolm Gladwell, in his best-selling “Outliers,” called it the “10,000-hour rule.”) Moreover, you don’t just need Sitzfleisch. You need focused Sitzfleisch. Thirteen-year-old Kerry Close logged more than 3,000 hours of practice to become the National Spelling Bee champion, but that wasn’t the reason she won. Close’s competitive edge came from her fearless approach to practicing. At her tender age, she had the guts to identify and fix her mistakes, over and over again.

I’m a person who takes to her bed when forced to confront her own failures, so I was daunted by Close and the other indefatigable people — “grit paragons” — profiled by Duckworth: West Point cadets who endure a grueling rite of initiation; a woman who overcame cerebral palsy to become one of the most successful comics in Britain. I got the lowest possible score on Duckworth’s Grit Scale, and dropped right onto my fainting couch. But there is hope for me yet. Duckworth offers what amounts to a four-step program, the last step of which is to overcome pessimism by cultivating what her fellow psychologist Carol Dweck calls a “growth mind-set.” I just have to complete Steps 1 through 3 first: (1) identify a burning interest; (2) practice it a lot; and (3) develop a sense of higher purpose, by which Duckworth means I must believe that my passion will improve the world.

Step 3 strikes me as the least plausible of the four, even though Duckworth offers evidence that people who think their pursuits contribute to the well-­being of others are more likely to meet their “top-level goals.” Success is heartwarming, but does not always make the world a better place. One paragon of ­“purpose-driven grit” is Kat Cole, the child of a cash-strapped single mother, who rose from a waitressing gig at Hooters to become president of the Cinnabon bakery chain. Cole’s Horatio ­Algeresque tale may inspire readers, but her philosophy of giving back will not awaken anybody’s altruistic instincts. “If I could help companies, I could help brands,” she asserts. “If I could help brands, I could help communities and countries.” This is corporate sloganeering, not an ethical stance. At 880 calories and 36 grams of fat apiece, Cinnabon buns help no one.

The feebleness of this example ­exposes a flaw in this book and, to a lesser degree, in Duckworth’s doctrine: A focus on grit decouples character education from moral development. Duckworth never questions the values of a society geared toward winning, nor does she address the systemic barriers to success. She is aware of the problem, and includes the necessary to-be-sure paragraph. “Opportunities — for example, having a great coach or teacher — matter tremendously,” she writes. “My theory doesn’t address these outside ­forces, nor does it include luck. It’s about the psychology of achievement, but because psychology isn’t all that matters, it’s incomplete.” She concludes with a section praising the writer and MacArthur fellow ­Ta‑Nehisi Coates for being “especially gritty,” though I wonder how Coates, who has written extensively about structural racism in America, might feel about being used to exemplify her up-by-the-bootstraps ethos.

You can’t blame Duckworth for how people apply her ideas, but she’s not shy about reducing them to nostrums that may trickle down in problematic ways. On the one hand, some of the “no excuses” charter schools that her research helped to shape have raised math and literacy scores among minority and poor students. On the other hand, a growing number of scholars as well as former teachers at those schools report that some of the schools, at least, feel more like prisons than houses of learning. Schools that prize self-­regulation over self-expression may lift a number of children out of poverty, but may also train them to act constrained and overly deferential — “worker-learners,” as the ethnographer Joanne W. Golann calls them. Meanwhile, schools for more affluent children encourage intellectual curiosity, independent reasoning and creativity. Ask yourself which institutions are more likely to turn out leaders. Perhaps an approach to character training that’s less hard-edge — dare I say, less John Wayne-ish? — and more willing to cast a critical eye on the peculiarly American cult of individual ascendancy could instill grit while challenging social inequality, rather than inadvertently reproducing it.

Judith Shulevitz, a contributing opinion writer at The Times, is the author of “The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time.”

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Book Review: Grit by Angela Duckworth

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you.  Please read  full disclosure  for more information.

• Title:  Grit
• Sub-title:  The Power of Passion and Perseverance
• Author:  Angela Duckworth
• About the author:  Angela Duckworth is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow. She began he career as a consultant at McKinsey before she tried out teaching. Her hypothesis was that the real determining factor of success wasn’t talent but a mix of resilience and single-mindedness. Her work went on to prove this theory.
• Published:  2018
• Link to book

HIGH-LEVEL SUMMARY

Author Angela Duckworth wrote this book to summarize everything she has learned about grit. Grit is a trait that can be described as having a combination of passion and perseverance to push through obstacles, remain single-minded in a pursuit, and achieve success.

Angela grew up with a father that talked a lot about talent and genius. He believed having or not having either would determine what Angela could eventually achieve. Angela didn’t fall into this fixed mindset and went on to become a MacArthur Fellow.

She was successful by most standards. She worked as a consultant at McKinsey before taking a stab at teaching. Then she went on to become a professor and research her theory.

Her theory revolved around grit being a differentiator between those who have success and those who don’t.

In this book, you’ll learn about what really drives success.  Grit  is broken into three parts:

• What Grit is and Why It Matters
• Growing Grit From the Inside Out
• Growing Grit From the Outside In

Additional topics covered include:

• Why showing up matters
• The distraction of talent
• Why effort counts twice
• How grit can grow
• How interest, practice, purpose, and hope play a role
• Parenting and grit
• The importance of culture and grit

RECOMMENDATION

Grit is a highly coveted characteristic. If you want to become grittier or even just understand how grit works, then this book is for you. Angela Duckworth explains how this trait is the differentiator in successful individuals.

Grit can be applied to all areas of your life and career so I would emphatically recommend this book to everyone. It is an easy and fascinating read that you will zoom through in no time.

TOP 35 TAKEAWAYS

 In no particular order

1.  After interviewing leaders in business, art, athletics, journalism, academia, medicine, and law, she asked: Who are the people at the very top of your field? What are they like? What do you think makes them special? They were constantly driven to improve and never satisfied. Why were the highly accomplished so dogged in their pursuits? In a very real sense, they were satisfied being unsatisfied. Each was chasing something of unparalleled interest and importance, and it was the chase—as much as the capture—that was gratifying.

2.  No matter the domain, the highly successful had a kind of ferocious determination that played out in two ways. First, these exemplars were unusually resilient and hardworking. Second, they knew in a very, very deep way what it was they wanted. They not only had determination, but they also had direction. It was this combination of passion and perseverance that made high achievers special. In a word, they had grit.

3.  Adults who’d earned an MBA, PhD, MD, JD, or another graduate degree were grittier than those who’d only graduated from four-year colleges. SAT scores and grit were, in fact, inversely correlated. Students in that select sample who had higher SAT scores were, on average, just slightly less gritty than their peers.

4.  Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.

5.  Outliers, Galton concluded, are remarkable in three ways: they demonstrate unusual “ability” in combination with exceptional “zeal” and “the capacity for hard labor.”

6.  There is a gap, James declared, between potential and its actualization. “the human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum.”

7.  The “naturalness bias” is a hidden prejudice against those who’ve achieved what they have because they worked for it, and a hidden preference for those whom we think arrived at their place in life because they’re naturally talented.

8.  “In the most general sense, talent is the sum of a person’s abilities—his or her intrinsic gifts, skills, knowledge, experience, intelligence, judgment, attitude, character, and drive.

9.  According to The War for Talent, the companies that excel are those that aggressively promote the most talented employees while just as aggressively culling the least talented. In such companies, huge disparities in salary are not only justified but desirable. Why? Because a competitive, winner-take-all environment encourages the most talented to stick around and the least talented to find alternative employment.

10.  A few years ago, I read a study of competitive swimmers titled “The Mundanity of Excellence.” The title of the article encapsulates its major conclusion: the most dazzling human achievements are, in fact, the aggregate of countless individual elements, each of which is, in a sense, ordinary. “Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. The fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all together, produce excellence.

11.  “Our vanity, our self-love, promotes the cult of the genius,” Nietzsche said. “For if we think of genius as something magical, we are not obliged to compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking. . . . To call someone ‘divine’ means: ‘here there is no need to compete.’ ”

12.  Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them. Talent—how fast we improve in skill—absolutely matters. But effort factors into the calculations twice, not once. Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill productive.

13.  Even more than the effort a gritty person puts in on a single day, what matters is that they wake up the next day, and the next, ready to get on that treadmill and keep going.

14.  “The separation of talent and skill,” Will Smith points out, “is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams, who want to do things. Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.”

15.  At the bottom of this hierarchy are our most concrete and specific goals—the tasks we have on our short-term to-do list: These low-level goals exist merely as means to ends. In contrast, the higher the goal in this hierarchy, the more abstract, general, and important it is. Grit is about holding the same top-level goal for a very long time. In very gritty people, most mid-level and low-level goals are, in some way or another, related to that ultimate goal.

16.  Any successful person has to decide what to do in part by deciding what not to do. When you have to divide your actions among a number of very different high-level career goals, you’re extremely conflicted. So, to Buffett’s three-step exercise in prioritizing, I would add an additional step: Ask yourself, To what extent do these goals serve a common purpose?

17.  Cox concluded that “high but not the highest intelligence, combined with the greatest degree of persistence, will achieve greater eminence than the highest degree of intelligence with somewhat less persistence.”

18.  Together, the research reveals the psychological assets that mature paragons of grit have in common. There are four. First comes interest. Next comes the capacity to practice. Third is purpose. And, finally, hope.

19.  I asked Hester what she’s learned from talking to more than two hundred “mega successful” people, as she described them during our conversation. “One thing that comes up time and time again is: ‘I love what I do.’

20.  Within the last decade or so, scientists who study interests have arrived at a definitive answer. First, research shows that people are enormously more satisfied with their jobs when they do something that fits their personal interests. Second, people perform better at work when what they do interests them. So matching your job to what captures your attention and imagination is a good idea. It may not guarantee happiness and success, but it sure helps the odds.

21.  When I first started interviewing grit paragons, I assumed they’d all have stories about the singular moment when, suddenly, they’d discovered their God-given passion. One moment, you have no idea what to do with your time on earth. And the next, it’s all clear—you know exactly who you were meant to be. But, in fact, most grit paragons I’ve interviewed told me they spent years exploring several different interests, and the one that eventually came to occupy all of their waking (and some sleeping) thoughts wasn’t recognizably their life’s destiny on first acquaintance.

22.  Second, interests are not discovered through introspection. Instead, interests are triggered by interactions with the outside world. The process of interest discovery can be messy, serendipitous, and inefficient.

23.  Kaizen is Japanese for resisting the plateau of arrested development. Its literal translation is: “continuous improvement.” Likewise, in her interviews with “mega successful” people, journalist Hester Lacey has noticed that all of them demonstrate a striking desire to excel beyond their already remarkable level of expertise: “

24.  Unlike most of us, experts are logging thousands upon thousands of hours of what Ericsson calls deliberate practice. This is how experts practice: First, they set a stretch goal, zeroing in on just one narrow aspect of their overall performance. Then, with undivided attention and great effort, experts strive to reach their stretch goal. As soon as possible, experts hungrily seek feedback on how they did. Then experts do it all over again, and again, and again. Until they have finally mastered what they set out to do. Until what was a struggle before is now fluent and flawless. Until conscious incompetence becomes unconscious competence. And . . . then what? What follows mastery of a stretch goal? Then experts start all over again with a new stretch goal. One by one, these subtle refinements add up to dazzling mastery.

25.  Ericsson generally finds that deliberate practice is experienced as supremely effortful. he points out that even world-class performers at the peak of their careers can only handle a maximum of one hour of deliberate practice before needing a break, and in total, can only do about three to five hours of deliberate practice per day.

26.  Each of the basic requirements of deliberate practice is unremarkable: A clearly defined stretch goal • Full concentration and effort • Immediate and informative feedback • Repetition with reflection and refinement. Which leads to my second suggestion for getting the most out of deliberate practice: Make it a habit.

27.  At its core, the idea of purpose is the idea that what we do matters to people other than ourselves. Consider the parable of the bricklayers: Three bricklayers are asked: “What are you doing?” The first says, “I am laying bricks.” The second says, “I am building a church.” And the third says, “I am building the house of God.” The first bricklayer has a job. The second has a career. The third has a calling. In the parable of the bricklayers, everyone has the same occupation, but their subjective experience—how they themselves viewed their work—couldn’t be more different.

28.  One kind of hope is the expectation that tomorrow will be better than today. Grit depends on a different kind of hope. The hope that gritty people have has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with getting up again.

29.  Optimists, Marty soon discovered, are just as likely to encounter bad events as pessimists. Where they diverge is in their explanations: optimists habitually search for temporary and specific causes of their suffering, whereas pessimists assume permanent and pervasive causes are to blame.

30.  If you have a growth mindset, you’re more likely to do well in school, enjoy better emotional and physical health, and have stronger, more positive social relationships with other people. We’ve found that students with a growth mindset are significantly grittier than students with a fixed mindset.

31.  The scientific research is very clear that experiencing trauma without control can be debilitating. But I also worry about people who cruise through life, friction-free, for a long, long time before encountering their first real failure. They have so little practice falling and getting up again. They have so many reasons to stick with a fixed mindset. I see a lot of invisibly vulnerable high-achievers stumble in young adulthood and struggle to get up again. I call them the “fragile perfects.”

32.  There are countless research studies showing that kids who are more involved in extracurriculars fare better on just about every conceivable metric—they earn better grades, have higher self-esteem, are less likely to get in trouble and so forth.

33.  My best guess is that following through on our commitments while we grow up both requires grit and, at the same time, builds it.

34.  The bottom line on culture and grit is: If you want to be grittier, find a gritty culture and join it. If you’re a leader, and you want the people in your organization to be grittier, create a gritty culture. “So it seems to me,” Dan concluded, “that there’s a hard way to get grit and an easy way. The hard way is to do it by yourself. The easy way is to use conformity—the basic human drive to fit.”

35.  To be gritty is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. To be gritty is to hold fast to an interesting and purposeful goal. To be gritty is to invest, day after week after year, in challenging practice. To be gritty is to fall down seven times, and rise eight.

WHAT I LIKED

Comprehensive coverage of grit

The book is divided into three parts:

I feel that Angela covered the topic of grit pretty comprehensively. In part one, she introduces grit and talks about its importance. Once the reader is all hyped up about grit, she explains how the reader can generate it internally and externally.

Research and stories show grit as the common denominator in many cases

The book is filled with research and stories that all show grit as a common denominator. The author talks about Westpoint cadets, musicians, athletes, Ivy League students, and corporate professionals. You see how grit played a factor in some succeeding and some failing.

I thought the research and stories made it apparent how grit can impact a multitude of areas in one’s life.

Book explains how to generate grit internally and externally

Above, I mentioned how Angela shows you how you can generate grit internally and how you can generate it externally. I enjoyed this layout. She gives you the tools you need to build grit. Some people thrive on solving things internally and others thrive with help from external forces.

This book caters to both audiences.

BENEFITS TO YOUR LIFE AND CAREER

Understanding of the real trait you need to succeed

Individuals who are on the pursuit of success frequently analyze those who have had it. They look at them and try to pick apart why they have achieved so much. Odds are that they have a strong level of grit and single-minded focus on their goal.

That’s what Angela Duckworth points out in her book. With the awareness of how important this trait is, you can learn to develop it and use it to lead you to success.

Become mentally strong and overcome any obstacle

By building grit, you’ll naturally become mentally strong. In life, you will have highs and lows. You need mental strength to help get you through those low points. With grit, you’ll be able to withstand the storms and overcome any obstacle.

Know the importance of surrounding yourself with quality individuals

The latter chapters of the book deal with building grit from the outside in. Angela talks about her time with Seattle football coach Pete Carroll. She spent time with him and the team and saw how he created this gritty culture that every bought into.

She also shared quotes from a swim coach basically saying “the best way to become a good swimmer is to join a good swim team.”

By the end of the book, you’ll understand the importance of surrounding yourself with quality individuals. When you join a group that is gritty and always pushing themselves, you’ll want to do the same. It’s human nature to conform. You wouldn’t want to be the odd one out and risk being excluded from the tribe.

11 ACTIONS YOU SHOULD TAKE

1.  Learn to love the chase as much as the capture. Loving the pursuit of something will get you through the tough times that that pursuit will have.

2.  Develop the “capacity for hard labor” by learning to do hard things. By seeking out hard things, your comfort zone will grow.

3.  Avoid the “naturalness bias” when looking at the achievements of others. Understand what type of work they put in and for how long.

4.  Don’t just put in a large amount of effort in a single day. You need to show up the next day, and the next day, and the next. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.

5.  Look at your goals in a hierarchy. The top-level goal is your main over-arching goal that is important to you. The bottom-level goals exist as a means to an end. These goals will help you accomplish your mid-level goals. Then your mid-level goals will help you achieve your top-level goals. Your low-level and mid-level goals should be somewhat related to your ultimate goal. The more unified, aligned, and coordinated our goal hierarchies, the better.

6.  Develop these traits: 1) Degree to which he works with distant objects in view (as opposed to living from hand to mouth). Active preparation for later life. Working toward a definite goal. 2) Tendency not to abandon tasks from mere changeability. Not seeking something fresh because of novelty. Not “looking for a change.” 3) Degree of strength of will or perseverance. Quiet determination to stick to a course once decided upon. 4) Tendency not to abandon tasks in the face of obstacles. Perseverance, tenacity, doggedness.

7.  Develop a daily discipline of trying to do things better than you did yesterday.

8.  Experiment and find out what it is that you love to do; what it is that you’re interested in. Knowing what you want to do with your life does not happen in a singular moment. Ask yourself a few simple questions: What do I like to think about? Where does my mind wander? What do I really care about? What matters most to me? How do I enjoy spending my time? And, in contrast, what do I find absolutely unbearable?

9.  Practice deliberate practice. Give undivided attention and great effort. Seek feedback, adapt, and practice more. Work until a struggle is fluent and flawless. Measure your practice by how much your skill improved, not by how much time has passed.

10.  Avoid becoming a “fragile perfect.” These are people who cruise through life, friction-free, for a long, long time before encountering their first real failure. They have so little practice falling and getting up again. They tend to have a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset.

11.  Find a group that has a gritty culture. When you join that group, you’ll naturally want to conform, which will result in you becoming grittier.

Grit  can be found on Amazon at  this link here  if you are interested in reading.

About Post Author

Brandon Hill

I’m Brandon Hill with Bizness Professionals. We serve content to help young professionals develop personally, professionally, and financially. Well-rounded improvement is a theme we live by. As such, this website will cover a variety of topics aimed to help you have a successful life and career.

See author's posts

I'm Brandon Hill with Bizness Professionals. We serve content to help young professionals develop personally, professionally, and financially. Well-rounded improvement is a theme we live by. As such, this website will cover a variety of topics aimed to help you have a successful life and career.

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May 10, 2016

Review of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Grit is a lucid, informative and entertaining review of the latest research on grit and how it can be developed

By Scott Barry Kaufman

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

Angela Duckworth's long-awaited book Grit  has finally arrived! It's getting great reviews (e.g., NY Times ), and it has set off hugely important debates in education  and in scientific circles . 

Make no doubt: Grit is  great . It's   a lucid, informative, and entertaining review of the research Angela has assiduously conducted over the past decade or so. The book also includes suggestions on how to develop grit, and how we can help support grit in others. There are few people who wouldn't learn something from this book.

Angela herself is one of the grittiest individuals I've ever met. Her office is literally two doors down from mine, and there is so much intense energy  coming out of that wing of the Positive Psychology Center  that sometimes I need to close the door to my office just so I can breathe a little! Angela is constantly (and I mean constantly) thinking of better ways of measuring and developing grit and character in children. I consider Angela a valued friend and colleague , and I think she's a tremendous scientist and person.

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing . By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

Since the release of Grit , I've been reflecting a lot on the research, the book, and its impact on society. Below I will offer my thoughts, in the spirit of advancing the debate and research on this very important topic.

In this standardized testing culture, Grit is a good reminder that an exclusive focus on ability and potential can distract us from the importance of other variables important for success. 

It's rather troubling to me, however, how the media and the publicity machine behind Grit  has framed Angela's research. Grit is often treated as the 'anti-IQ', like there is some sort of competition between grit and talent, a tension between the two. For instance, I've seen quite a few articles that basically say that " grit is the true secret to success ", and " forget talent, success comes from grit ".

Wait, what? That's not what I read in the book. In Grit,  Angela makes clear that talent exists (defining talent as the rate in which a person learns with effort), but argues that "a focus on talent distracts us from something that is at least as important, and that is effort". Also, Angela mentions the importance of cultivating other character strengths (e.g., humility, social intelligence, kindness, etc.) for success in life.

What's more-- and I hate to break it to you-- there is no secret to success! I mean, come on: If the secret is that we have to work really, really hard, day in and day out, year after painstaking year, to get what we want out of life-- well, that doesn't sound like a great secret to me! If there were a secret to success, I'd want it to be a really awesome shortcut, something like Gosh, if I just believe I can do it, then that's all it takes . Now that would be a truly awesome secret!

Another criticism I have of the reception to the book is that people are treating the idea of grit likes it's brand new. As though no one ever in the history of psychology has studied things like passion, perseverance, hope, etc. This is a real shame, because there are so many other researchers who have worked tirelessly to advance our scientific knowledge of the many topics that are covered in Grit .

Just to name a few, Brent Roberts has done a lot of work on "conscientiousness",  Robert Vallerand has down a lot to advance our understanding of passion (both its "harmonious" and "obsessive" forms), Shane Lopez has done great deal of research on hope, and creativity researchers Joseph Renzulli and E. Paul Torrance have long discussed the importance of characteristics such as "task commitment" and "persistence".

To be fair, Angela is very good about citing other researchers in her journal articles . My concern is that by the media presenting Angela's work as though she invented the ideas of perseverance, passion and hope in psychology, the hard work of other researchers, will be left in the shadows. 

What about some of the recent criticisms of grit research that have been leveled by fellow researchers? Here, too, I have some reflections.

One criticism of Angela's research is that the grit construct doesn't add much value in the psychological literature above the personality trait "conscientiousness" which has already been extensively studied. Indeed,  one  large-scale recent study recently found among a group of 4,642 British 16-year olds that grit added little prediction of academic achievement (using standardized test scores) above and beyond the effects of conscientiousness. 

Angela has responded to this study by pointing out that standardized test scores aren't the only indicator of academic achievement. For instance, her work has shown that self-control is a better predictor of GPA than standardized achievement test scores. Also, Angela has argued  that grit is more important for outcomes requiring 'showing up' (e.g., school attendance). (Listen to our podcast chat where she responds to these critiques.)

I think these are good points, but I would not be too quick to dismiss the findings of the British study, for another-- often unmentioned-- reason. The fact of the matter is that the dominant paradigm of testing in the United States (and many places abroad) is standardized testing. For better or worse (mostly worse!), this is how kids are being tested day in and day out. And when it comes to performing well on these tests, we cannot ignore the impact of IQ. In my own research , I've found that whatever is in common among IQ tests is nearly identical to what's in common among tests of standardized achievement. These results suggest that our most dominant paradigm of testing in the country privileges a particular kind of mind, and doesn't give people with other kinds of minds and ways of achieving success (e.g., grit!) as much of a chance to succeed. Viewed in this way, Angela and I are totally on the same page. But it also acknowledges the importance of IQ-type skills on being able to display your intelligence in this standards-based, on-the-spot testing culture.

Now, what about the criticism that grit has little predictive value on academic success above and beyond conscientiousness? Well, I'd like to emphasize that there are many different ways of defining academic success! We are such an achievement-focused culture. Even Carol Dweck's seminal growth mindset theory often focuses on learning that you can grow on tests . As I've argued recently, it might be time for a personal growth mindset theory , in which there is a shift away from accomplishing set goals to helping each individual grow as a whole person. I could see grit playing less of a role under this model of education.

What about beyond school? I hope we can all agree that there is more to life than school! What happens when we look at a bigger picture? After all, I think this is really Angela's point: that grit has the greatest predictive validity when you look at people over the long run of life. What does the research say about that ?

As  Brent Roberts  has pointed out, grit is closely tied to "industriousness", an aspect of the well-studied personality trait "conscientiousness".  Tests of industriousness  include items such as "I carry out my plans" and "I finish what I start". My colleagues and I looked at the cognitive and personality predictors of lifelong creative achievement and found no correlation between industriousness and creative achievement. Instead, we found that openness to experience -- which includes characteristics such as curiosity, imagination, and intellectual and artistic interests-- was the best predictor of life-long creative achievement.

So does this mean that grit doesn't predict life-long achievement? Not so fast. All our study suggests is that industriousness doesn't predict creative achievement. Maybe there is something more to grit than industriousness. Looking at the  grit scale , you can certainly see some items that look very similar to industriousness, such as "I finish whatever I begin" and "My interests don't change from year to year". Angela classifies these sort of items as measuring "passion" in her book, and in her research papers she calls it "consistency of interests". 

But there's another dimension on the grit scale: perseverance . When you look at these items, you start to see clearer divergence from the standard industriousness items. For instance, perseverance is measured with items items as "I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge", and "setbacks don't discourage me". These kind of items have a different flavor to them. They are not just about consistency, but they have much more of a resiliency flavor to them. 

What happens when we look at the relationship between perseverance and life-long achievement? Here we see something different. Consider a recent study by Abedrahman Abuhassan and Timothy Bates conducted on a sample of 494 participants with a wide age range. They found that the consistency of interests items from the grit scale fit really well under the conscientiousness framework. However, there was indeed something special about perseverance (or "elbow greese", as the researchers referred to it). Critically, the researchers found that perseverance was the most important factor in predicting long-term achievement , even though it wasn't important for predicting high school GPA. In contrast, consistency of interests was more important in predicting GPA. 

These findings support the notion that there is indeed something unique about the grit construct above and beyond the already well-studied personality domain of conscientiousness. Additionally, I think these findings, combined with my own study, point out something interesting about real-life creativity: creativity requires both perseverance and openness to experience. Consistency of interests may be really important for doing well in school, but real-life creators are characterized by their constant trial-and-error and versatility. There is a plethora of research in the creativity literature suggesting that creativity involves a combination of broad interests and lots and lots of persistence. 

Tellingly, in a recent pilot study I conducted with Angela and Evan Nesterak , we looked at a group of 300 participants (with a wide age range) and found that both curiosity and perseverance were strongly positively correlated with creative achievement across the arts and sciences, whereas consistency of interests was negatively correlated with creative achievement. 

To my mind, it seems like there is a distinction between consistency of interests and having a passion for a particular area of interest. I think one can score low in a general tendency to remain consistent in all of one's interests, but nevertheless remain highly consistent in one particular, purposeful activity. Indeed, I've discussed this with Angela and she agrees that future iterations of the grit scale might benefit from better distinguishing between consistency of more superficial interests and more purposeful and meaningful "north star" passions.

Along similar lines, in another study I conducted with Magda Grohman  and colleagues, we found that scores on the grit scale did not predict creativity among a sample of young adults. However, we found that teacher ratings of passion and perseverance did predict various indicators of creativity. We argue that the way teachers and everyday people intuitively conceptualize passion may be different than how passion is measured on the grit scale. This might be a promising line of future research on grit.

Finally, I've been reflecting a lot lately on the narratives we tell ourselves, and the multiply determined sources of human achievement. In Grit , Angela rightfully argues that by focusing on talent, we ignore the importance of other factors important for success, such as grit. But this has me thinking: couldn't one make the opposite argument--  that by focusing on grit, we ignore the importance of talent?

Let me illustrate with a deeply personal story . To make a long story short, I had so many ear infections as a child, I developed a learning disability called central auditory processing disorder . It made it very hard for me to process information in real time. People thought I was stupid. I was bullied a lot. I was forced to repeat third grade and join special education. I remained in special education until 9th grade, when a teacher encouraged me to take more challenging classes and see what I truly capable of achieving.

This moment changed my life. I experimented with so many different things, including the cello. I fell in love with the cello so much that I practiced (under the mentoring of my grandfather, who was a cellist with the Philadelphia Orchestra) as much as 8 hours a day over the summer. By senior year I ended up second cellist in the high school orchestra, and won the all-music department award. I also caught up academically, and became college bound. This required massive catching up, taking summer classes and studying like crazy. Thinking this would all pay off, I applied to Carnegie Mellon University as a cognitive science major, with the desire to study human intelligence. I was rejected. Most likely, my SAT scores weren't high enough to study human intelligence (how ironic!). Undeterred, I applied to the Opera program (which valued musical ability more than SAT scores), and was accepted. Once I got to CMU, I eventually switched my major to psychology, and the rest is history.

Now, how should I think about the cause of my success? In Angela's book, my story is told as a paragon of grit. Make no doubt: grit played a HUGE part of my success. I did work immensely hard. I resonate so much with Angela's work because I personally lived it. I know firsthand how far grit can take you, and how much perseverance can defy the odds. Indeed, I wrote my book Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined in 2013 because I wanted to raise awareness of the value of characteristics other than IQ for success in life. In addition to grit, I also talked about the importance of engagement, inspiration, imagination, daydreaming, and creativity.

In an interesting twist of fate, just last week, Linda Silverman, an expert on "giftedness" sent me an email out of the blue. She is head of the Gifted Development Center , and for the past 36 years (as long as I've been alive!) the center has assessed children's intellectual capacities using a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. In her email, she said she read my book and watched my videos and her and her team all believe that I am "exceptionally gifted" (IQ > 160). What's more, she says she thinks I'm the poster boy for " twice-exceptional " children: those who simultaneously have a learning disability but who are also highly intelligent.

Yikes! What to make of this new information!? This puts the narrative I've constructed about my life into disarray. Which is it: Am I the kid who defied my low intelligence through my grit and hard work? Or did I have genuine intelligence, that was suppressed and underappreciated due to my learning disability? What's the truth?

Then it got me thinking. Is it possible that it is all true-- that I was a very gritty, intellectual, and creative kid with a learning disability? And if so, why is it not polite in society to mention intelligence? Why do I somehow think I would get more applause if I presented the narrative as though I was an ungifted kid with a heck of a lot of grit than a "gifted" kid who relied on grit to show people what I was truly capable of achieving? Why does it personally make me feel much more uncomfortable saying that I am intelligent than saying I am gritty? Aren't they both aspects of who I am? Aren't both intelligence and grit equally influenced by genes (and both perhaps equally as malleable)? Aren't we all a complex mix of characteristics and traits? I have so many questions.

Whatever the truth (and the truth is always a mix of perspectives), the more I think about all of the research, and my own experiences, the more convinced I become that the study of human possibility is one of the most important areas in all of psychology. Like Angela, I have devoted my life to using science to help people (especially children) flourish. I thank Angela for writing a book that brings this discussion so out in the open, that makes it so accessible, that educators and public policy makers can't help but notice it.

But we can't stop here. We must continue doing the science, and looking at all of the character traits and opportunities available to people, to get this right. Every person's future is at stake.

I end with a picture of me and Angela at her book release party here in Philadelphia:

Come to the world's first ever festival of positive education  this summer [see here ].

Apply to be a part of the grit and imagination symposium this summer [see here ]! The Relay Graduate School of Education,  Character Lab , and the  Imagination Institute  are partnering to put on a three-day summer institute for K-12 educators called  Grit + Imagination: An Educator Summit in Honor of Jack Templeton.  Join researchers and educators from across the country to learn what character-focused teaching and learning can be, why it is important, and how to implement research-informed strategies with your K-12 students. During this summit, educators will deepen their understanding of grit and imagination through presentations from world-renowned researchers. They will also have the opportunity to refine approaches for developing these competencies in their students. We are looking for strong educators currently working with K-12 students who are excited to learn about and practice strategies for teaching and developing students' character. Our aim is to help educators ignite character-based instruction in classrooms and beyond.  We have a limited number of spots available, so we encourage all interested candidates to  APPLY NOW ! We will accept applications until Wednesday, May 25th.

• Print Issue

August 2018

Book Review: Grit by Angela Duckworth

by Matthew S. Miller

Books , Christian Thought , & Contemporary Christianity

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance . By Angela Duckworth. Scribner, 2016. 352 pp.

The genre of personal success literature has grown crowded and fiercely competitive in the three decades since Steven Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989). But Angela Duckworth has recently separated herself from the pack with her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (2016), which has been hailed by coaches, journalists, and especially educators as a breakthrough work. With an impressive background as a global management consultant, inner-city teacher, and now research psychologist, Duckworth—a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania—seems to have discovered the key ingredient to success in any endeavor. And contrary to what many think, that key ingredient is not talent.

Duckworth’s book surveys a range of challenging endeavors, from West Point’s seven-week “Beast Barracks”—“the most physically and emotionally demanding part of your four years at West Point”—to the slow process of writing and rewriting novels (she interviews John Irving), with swimming, piano, and spelling bees in between. 1 Across the board, Duckworth finds that those who excel display a combination of passion and perseverance that she calls “grit.” 2 “Many of us, it seems, quit what we start far too early and far too often.” 3 The “gritty” stick to what they’ve begun, improving through deliberate practice, often advancing beyond others who are more innately talented in the same area.

What makes one person “grittier” than another? Duckworth identifies several components. The first is a great passion for something. “Grit is about working on something you care about so much that you’re willing to stay loyal to it.” 4 When that “something you care about so much” can lay claim to and orient every aspect of your life, all the better. “Fortunate indeed are those who have a top-level goal so consequential to the world that it imbues everything they do, no matter how small or tedious, with significance.” 5

Speaking of the small and tedious, the second component of perseverance is a tolerance for the mundane. Duckworth references a study of competitive swimmers titled “The Mundanity of Excellence.” “The most dazzling human achievements are, in fact, the aggregate of countless individual elements, each of which, in a sense, ordinary,” she summarizes. In other words, the races are flashy, but the hours of daily practice are not.

Third, there is a connection to like-minded community. The research is clear: “If you want to be grittier, find a gritty culture and join it.” 6 Duckworth quotes a sociologist who confesses: “Speaking for myself, I don’t have that much self-discipline. But if I’m surrounded by people who are writing articles and giving lectures and working hard, I tend to fall in line.” 7

Finally, and very significantly, there is a willingness to encounter failure. This may sound strange, but remember that through practice we learn to do things that we are currently unable to do. For a while, you couldn’t get the flip turn, you couldn’t balance the equation, you always misspelled the word, you felt lost and exposed by the challenge. Duckworth reminds us that

learning from mistakes is something babies and toddlers don’t mind at all. . . . Watch a baby struggle to sit up, or a toddler learn to walk: you’ll see one error after another, failure after failure, a lot of challenge exceeding skill, a lot of concentration, a lot of feedback. . . . Very young children don’t seem tortured while they’re trying to do things they can’t yet do. 8

But as we grow older, “something changes.” 9 Rather than embracing failure as part of the learning process, we begin to think failure is bad and associate it with shame. The upshot of this is we begin to play things very safe, and thus we protect ourselves by avoiding the challenges that would call forth our best effort. In this vein, Duckworth emphasizes that achievement in math has far less to do with talent than with a willingness to keep practicing the problems and concepts one struggles to understand.

Parents and educators have been particularly drawn to Grit for its gem of good news: while birth and circumstance seem to play a role in grit, each of grit’s ingredients can, indeed, be cultivated. Thus, through deliberate structure and well-chosen words, parents and educators can enhance the grit of a child. For example, there’s a world of difference between saying, “This is hard; don’t feel bad if you can’t do it,” and, “This is hard; don’t feel bad if you can’t do it yet .” 10

For the Christian, all of this is well and good, similar to the counsel one finds in the Old Testament Wisdom Literature and New Testament imperatives. You may have been thinking of Proverbs 24:16: “The righteous falls seven times and rises again,” or Galatians 6:9: “Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” The Scriptures likewise encourage us to cultivate a tolerance for the mundane (1 Thess. 4:11) , connect with a community of the wise (Prov. 13:20) , and make the most of what we’ve been given (Luke 12:48) . But the cultivation and exercise of “grit,” such as Duckworth commends, will mislead us if we do not keep in mind two other significant words that begin with the same letter: grace and glory.

As Christians, we exist to display not how much we can accomplish ourselves but how much we can receive from the Lord. We begin by receiving a new status— being declared righteous before the Judge and adopted as children of the Father, based on no merit seen or foreseen in us but instead based on the work Christ accomplished in His own life and death for us. Accordingly, our identity is found not in what we build but in the One to whom we belong. As Douglas F. Kelly frequently taught his seminary students, “Who you are is not the most important thing about you— whose you are is far more important.”

With this freely given status, we grow by abiding in Christ and in the power of His Spirit within us, being reminded daily of Jesus’ words: “ Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5, emphasis added) . I love how Sinclair Ferguson opens his recent book on the Christian life: “This is not so much a ‘how to’ book as ‘how God does it’ one.” 11 The Apostle Paul, a “gritty” man if ever there were one, put it this way: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain” (1 Cor. 15:10) .

Second, the whole genre of personal success literature tends to orient us toward our own glory. There’s nothing wrong per se with seeking to be grittier in the face of challenges, more effective with time, or more capable with responsibilities and opportunities. In fact, the church today often plays it safe and would do well to imbibe more of the spirit of William Carey, who said, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” But “for God” are the critical words. Any lesser goal, even that of “human flourishing,” falls disastrously short.

Detached from the ultimate goal of bringing glory to God, the pursuit of maximizing our own capacities leads to two things. First, by pointing us in the wrong direction, it distances us from God. Second, by orienting us toward goals that cannot comprehend the whole of our lives, it inevitably pulls our lives apart. On this note, Duckworth confesses that she has trouble reconciling her two great passions: the one, as a professional, to “use psychological science to help kids thrive”; the other, as a parent, to be “the best mother I can be to my two daughters.” 12 “Having two ‘ultimate concerns’ isn’t easy,’” she admits. Indeed it isn’t, because when it comes to “ultimate concerns,” we were made to have only one.

Francis Schaeffer helpfully distinguishes between the true integration point of life—God Himself—and false integration points—whether they be pleasure, knowledge, or accomplishment. “False integration points may seem satisfactory,” he writes, “only to end in that which is insufficient, with bits and pieces of the total man left out.” Made by God in His image and for His glory, we cannot serve any lesser goal with our lives—however noble that lesser goal may be—without experiencing the restlessness of conflicting pulls (between parenting and work, for instance). “In all these false integration points, there will be a chastising by my loving Father in the present life,” Schaeffer writes, “because he loves me, and he wants to bring me to himself .” 13

I close by returning to a line from Grit filled with longing: “Fortunate indeed are those who have a top-level goal so consequential to the world that it imbues everything they do, no matter how small or tedious, with significance.” 14 This is precisely what the Christian enjoys. Writing to the Colossians, Paul commends a top-level goal that imbues everything they do with significance: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ” (Col. 3:23–24) .

Grit is good, and more grit is better, but only if it’s grounded in grace and comprehended by the only goal that makes room for all that we do and all that we are—to bring glory to God Himself.

• Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion ad Perseverance (New York: Scribner, 2016), 4. ↩︎
• Duckworth, Grit , 8 ↩︎
• Duckworth, Grit , 50. ↩︎
• Duckworth, Grit , 54. ↩︎
• Duckworth, Grit , 149. ↩︎
• Duckworth, Grit , 245. ↩︎
• Duckworth, Grit , 247. ↩︎
• Duckworth, Grit , 141. ↩︎
• Duckworth, Grit , 182. ↩︎
• Sinclair Ferguson, Devoted to God: Blueprints for Sanctification (2016), x. ↩︎
• Duckworth, Grit , 65–66. ↩︎
• Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality: How to Live for Jesus Moment by Moment , 128. Emphasis mine. ↩︎

Rev. Matthew S. Miller is the director of the C.S. Lewis Institute Greenville in Greenville, S.C., and a teaching elder in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. He is translator of Pierre Courthial’s A New Day of Small Beginnings and The Bible: The Sacred Text of the Covenant .

Covering topics including Books , Christian Thought , & Contemporary Christianity .

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THE POWER OF PASSION AND PERSEVERANCE

by Angela Duckworth ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 3, 2016

Not your grandpa’s self-help book, but Duckworth’s text is oddly encouraging, exhorting us to do better by trying harder,...

Gumption: it’s not just for readers of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , as this debut book, blending anecdote and science, statistic and yarn, capably illustrates.

If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? It could be, to trust MacArthur fellow Duckworth, that you’re just not working hard enough—which is to say, you just don’t have enough grit. That old-fashioned term, appropriated by a newfangled scholar, is meant to combine the notions of passion, persistence, and hard work in more or less equal measure. That passion, Duckworth argues, “begins with intrinsically enjoying what you do.” Self-confidence figures into the equation, the assuredness that you have the ability to do what you do with at least some measure of success; but then, the ability to cope with failure, dust yourself off, and try again comes into play as well. Duckworth makes great effort to downplay any idea of innate talent in favor of improvement and mastery that come from digging in and doing it. “If we overemphasize talent,” she urges, “we underemphasize everything else.” In the nature vs. nurture controversy, the author sides with nurture, and there’s more than a little of the tiger mom in the prescriptions she dispenses for education. But on that note, she writes, teachers who are demanding may “produce measurable year-to-year gains in the academic skills of their students.” But throw a little love, supportiveness, and respect into the mix, and you build better people. For Duckworth, there should be no trophies for just showing up. When she writes of hard work in building the “gritty person,” she means  hard  work, as evidenced by her close study of West Pointers during their first and worst year, when 20 percent of the students drop out in a cohort carefully selected for their ability to stay on task until the task is done.

Pub Date: May 3, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-5011-1110-5

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: March 7, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016

PSYCHOLOGY | BUSINESS | SELF-HELP | MOTIVATIONAL & PERSONAL SUCCESS | GENERAL BUSINESS

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THE CULTURE MAP

Breaking through the invisible boundaries of global business.

by Erin Meyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 27, 2014

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.

“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.

Pub Date: May 27, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014

BUSINESS | PSYCHOLOGY

GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty , 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | GENERAL BUSINESS | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | BUSINESS | PUBLIC POLICY | ISSUES & CONTROVERSIES | ECONOMICS

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• Philanthropy News Digest

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

The 10,000-hour rule popularized by New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers  is just another way to say practice makes perfect. But what makes us want to continue practicing? In Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance , MacArthur Fellow and University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth makes the case for understanding personal achievement through the lens of "grit." Yes, intelligence matters, Duckworth argues, but follow-through and tenacity are just as, if not more, important.

With Gladwell-esque verve, Duckworth, a former management consultant at McKinsey who left the firm to teach seventh-grade math in a New York City public school, combines engaging stories with the latest research in her discipline, positive psychology, to explain why achievement should be understood more as a function of continuous effort rather than natural ability, all the while maintaining the reader-friendly language and cadence of pop science.

Duckworth's big idea is based on her graduate work, which she distills into two equations: talent x effort = skill and skill x effort = achievement . "Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort," she writes. "Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them." While she acknowledges that her framework overlooks the role of luck and opportunities provided by nurturing relationships, be it a coach, parent, or mentor, her point is straightforward: concentrated long-term effort is a key ingredient in achieving any goal. "With effort, talent becomes skill and, at the very same time, effort makes skill productive ."

So what is grit? Using stories from the NFL, journalism, Wall Street, and even cartooning, Duckworth argues that grit isn't just about working incredibly hard (although that's important); it's about "working on something you care about so much that you're willing to stay loyal to it." Think you've got passion and perseverance? Duckworth includes a "Grit Scale" to help readers calculate just how gritty they are. If you don't score well, despair not. You can change, she says — "grittiness" can be improved.

The "life-organizing goal" that drives Duckworth's work is to "use psychological science to help kids thrive." Her core thesis is that grit can be developed "from the inside out" — through the discovery of a passion or purpose, dedicated hours of practice, and the belief that our efforts will help create a better future — as well as "from the outside in" — through supportive and demanding parenting, immersion in enriching extracurricular activities, and exposure to a culture of excellence.

Of course, given that economic, educational, and cultural resources are not equitably distributed in society, there's an obvious flaw in Duckworth's promotion of "growing grit" as a solution to systemic educational challenges. And while she admits that social biases and structural impediments can deter even the grittiest students, she really doesn't have an answer as to how those challenges might be addressed.

Reflecting on a conversation with Harvard's dean of admissions, she writes that she was "surprised...how much he worried about the kids who'd been denied the opportunity to practice grit in extracurricular activities." And citing research from political scientist Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone and Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis , she acknowledges that the lack of access to pay-to-play activities such as travel sports and private music lessons limits poor kids' ability to develop grit in a structured way. This leads her to conclude that "there is a worrisome correlation between family income and Grit Grid scores."

Despite this admission, and perhaps due to the constraints of her field, Duckworth does not explore how privilege and structural exclusion — be it racial, social, or economic — limits her theory. For example, she doesn't address the possibility that a disadvantaged student might be told that she lacks grit when, in fact, what she really lacks is the opportunity provided, as Geoffrey Canada puts, by "a decent childhood." And even if that student is told she can improve her grittiness, there are often systemic forces at work that impede the kind of success Duckworth admires. In other words, a focus on developing grit, while important, needs to be accompanied by concrete policies aimed at building a more equitable society.

Another problematic aspect of Duckworth's narrative is her focus on people whom she calls "grit paragons." Generally famous, these are people who stuck with their goal until they reached the top of their profession. But in defining success in terms of rarified careers, Duckworth does her theory of grit a disservice — and, in turn, undercuts its power. Surely, people who have weathered economic hardship by working three jobs, who sent loved ones off to serve their country, or who have dealt with other life challenges while holding a family together embody the value of sustained focus and hard work every bit as much as Duckworth's so-called paragons.

Like any broad theory, Duckworth's focus on the power of passion and perseverance has its limitations. But that doesn't mean the book is without merit — far from it. Grit is readable, the stories in it are engaging, and the frameworks Duckworth lays out are interesting, even helpful. She deftly weaves her own life and research into the book — experiences ranging from dealing with a demanding father, to receiving difficult feedback on her less-than-stellar initial attempts to deliver her 2013-TED Talk , to the many hours she spent interviewing National Spelling Bee champs and West Point cadets. Her ability to make academic research both accessible and engaging to a lay audience is a valuable, if all-too-rare, skill. Ultimately, Duckworth leaves us with the powerful message: "To be gritty is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. To be gritty is to hold fast to an interesting and purposeful goal....To be gritty is to fall down seven times, and rise eight." 

Yet, as a society, we need to acknowledge that individual stick-to-itiveness, focus, and long-term goal setting are just part of the puzzle. While we can't lose sight of the fact that too many people are denied the opportunities to achieve, we should not despair. Instead, with a more honest, inclusive conversation about the structural impediments to achievement and, yes, a little communal grit, we might just be able to build a more equitable world, one full of opportunities for everyone to achieve. It's too important not to try.  

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Book Review: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Grit is 349 pages long. Duckworth arranged the thirteen chapters into three major parts. These parts include:

What Grit Is and Why It Matters

Growing grit from the inside out, growing grit from the outside in.

Duckworth also included an Afterword that included the seven most common questions that she is regularly asked. She also provided a recommended reading list focused on developing a growth mindset.

While conducting research at West Point, Duckworth developed an assessment that measured Grit. Grit is a combination of passion and perseverance (p. 8). She was able to predict with great accuracy who would stick it out in West Point and who would drop out.

Over the course of her research, she learned that grit had no relationship with talent. This not only was evident to her experiences at West Point but also in other fields such as academics, sales, and even the spelling bee. Those who consistently practiced and prepared could overtake someone who was talented. However, talent should not be disregarded because it is important.

“Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them” (Duckworth, 2016, p. 42). Effort is a force multiplier. As I look back on my life, I realize I would have been extremely good if I simply put in the time and effort consistently. I merely dabble at activities thus I never become good. I just don’t stick to the activities.

Duckworth shared here Grit Scale. I took the assessment and it is sad to say that I am not very gritty. Perhaps it is the goals I set or don’t set. Duckworth pointed out that lifelong goals are important to grit. One must be committed to the goals they set. She devoted a chapter to goals and subgoals.

One of the findings that I found interesting is that people become grittier as they age or become more mature.

Duckworth discovered that there are four psychological elements that relate to grit. She devoted a chapter to each of these elements. These are

People who are interested in and passionate about something will tend to stick with it longer. I am sure that we all recognize this in ourselves. When we love doing something, we get lost in it. It is easy to do something we enjoy.

Practice is another element closely tied to grittiness. One must define goals with a purpose. It not just a matter of practicing, although that will result in improvement over time. It is more a matter of practice with a purpose. The goal is to achieve fluency. It was a matter of getting into the flow. “Gritty people do more deliberate practice and experience more flow” (Duckworth, 2016, p. 131). Practice is hard but it can be a positive experience. Duckworth shared ample strategies for making practice more beneficial.

If your activity also benefits others, you will typically see higher levels of grittiness. In other words, your activity should have a purpose that helps others. It is the difference between having a job, a career, and a calling.

This last element focused on hope. Interestingly, it had more to do with control. Someone who was in control of their mindset and circumstances knew they could control the outcome. Duckworth tapped into Carol Dweck’s growth mindset research. Those with a growth mindset experienced more success because they knew they were in control of their outcomes. It is important to know how to overcome adversity.

The last part of the book focused on helping others develop grit. Duckworth approached the topic from different perspectives such as what parents could do to develop grit in their child to what high-performing organizations could do. Developing the right culture is essential for grit to take hold. Throughout these last chapters, Duckworth shared strategies for developing grit.

Final Thoughts

Throughout the book, Duckworth provided a wealth of research that was weaved into interesting stories. This definitely held my interest throughout the book.

I would definitely recommend reading Grit if you find yourself giving up too early. There are certainly lessons that you can employ to develop more grit.

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Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of Grit from the world's leading experts.

Benjamin Spall [Question: What five books would you recommend to youngsters interested in your professional path?] [...] Grit by Angela Duckworth (Source)

Bogdan Lucaciu Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance - it was frustrating to read: “Where was this book 20 years ago!?” (Source)

Stephen Lew When asked what books he would recommend to youngsters interested in his professional path, Stephen mentioned Grit. (Source)

Sujan Patel Put aside your insecurities over any lack of talent and ability you might feel, and pick up Angela Duckworth's book Grit. Instead of focusing on the idea that there’s a big secret behind outstanding achievement, Duckworth touts the importance of blending passion and relentless persistence, otherwise known as grit. Duckworth herself is the daughter of scientists who frequently told her she lacked genius. Her book shows how everyday people, from cadets at West Point to finalists in National Spelling Bees, have actually succeeded through sheer passion and persistence. The trick is finding your... (Source)

Dan Rockwell Recommends this book

Anu Hariharan Recommends this book

Pierrette Abeel Recommends this book

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Albert Wenger Recommends this book

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• #11 in Abduction
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• #76 in Business
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• #73 in Business Management
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• #38 in Career Guide
• #24 in Coaching
• #9 in Cognitive Psychology
• #64 in Counseling
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• #15 in Doctor
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• #18 in Financial Management
• #14 in Finding Yourself
• #40 in Game Changer
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• #17 in How Things Work
• #50 in How To
• #65 in Human Brain
• #32 in Human Nature
• #19 in Human Physiology
• #17 in Human Resources
• #48 in Influential
• #38 in Inspiration
• #79 in Knowledge
• #40 in Leadership
• #35 in Learning
• #50 in Life
• #48 in Lifestyle
• #14 in Linkedin
• #44 in Mafia
• #53 in Medical
• #42 in Mind
• #18 in Mindset
• #44 in Motivational
• #47 in Parenting
• #23 in Personal Development
• #51 in Personal Finance
• #22 in Personal Growth
• #22 in Personality
• #62 in Popular Science
• #26 in Power
• #28 in Productivity
• #24 in Psychology
• #39 in Reference
• #32 in Research
• #63 in Science
• #27 in Science and Math
• #25 in Self Development
• #40 in Self Discovery
• #25 in Self-Awareness
• #32 in Self-Help
• #24 in Self-Improvement
• #22 in Social Psychology
• #35 in Social Sciences
• #62 in Startup
• #33 in Stoicism
• #23 in Success
• #39 in Teacher
• #34 in Teaching
• #48 in Thinking
• #43 in Wealth
• #35 in Wellness

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The Limits of “Grit”

By David Denby

Angela Duckworth, in her best-selling book, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” celebrates a man whom she calls a “grit paragon”: Pete Carroll, the coach of the Seattle Seahawks, who led the team to a Super Bowl victory in 2014. It seems that Carroll had seen Duckworth’s TED talk nine months earlier and got in touch, eager to reassure her that building grit was exactly what the Seahawks culture was all about. Two years later, Duckworth visited the Seahawks training camp. She lectured to the team’s players and coaching staff. The subject was . . . grit. Duckworth was impressed by the Seahawks, and she quotes sentiments that are characteristic of the Carroll ethos: “Compete in everything you do. You’re a Seahawk 24-7. Finish strong. Positive self-talk. Team first.” Since the team trains ferociously all the time—going all out, for instance, in bone-crunching intra-squad practice sessions—this conversation may not have been entirely necessary.

Duckworth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, finds grit in the best possible places. Her grit obsession, as she recounts, began at least a decade earlier. As a graduate student, she visited West Point, where each year twelve hundred new cadets go through a gruelling seven-week training regimen (“Beast Barracks”) before entering freshman year. Most make it through, though some do not. Why not? Duckworth could make some guesses. In this same period, eager to find out what made top people successful, she was interviewing “leaders in business, art, athletics, journalism, academia, medicine and law.” She discovered that “the highly successful had a kind of ferocious determination that played out in two ways. First, these exemplars were unusually resilient and hardworking. Second, they knew in a very, very deep way what they wanted.”

Thus armed, Duckworth returned to West Point, a couple of years later, with something called the Grit Scale, a written survey that she asked a fresh batch of cadets to administer to themselves. The survey measured their degree of identification with such statements as “Setbacks don’t discourage me. I don’t give up easily” and “My interests change from year to year.” All the statements were essentially a way of measuring perseverance and passion (by which she means stick-to-itiveness—i.e., perseverance again). The cadets who took the survey were then assigned a grit score. At the end of Barracks Beast, Duckworth was pleased with the results. Seventy-one cadets had dropped out, and “grit turned out to be an astoundingly reliable predictor of who made it through and who did not.”

A happy experimental result, I suppose, but one can’t suppress certain doubts about it. Cadets may drop out of a gruelling training period for many reasons—emotional, physical, even moral, in the sense that they are angered by pain administered as an entry test. To call all the possible reasons simply an absence of grit can be true in no more than the most general way. (Perhaps, in this environment, it took grit to withdraw.) And, even if we agree that, broadly speaking, the survivors had more grit, how do we apply this lesson to the rest of life? To get into West Point in the first place, you must have good grades, athletic ability, and leadership qualities; you might say that the cadets already had grit. The survivors have extra grit, I guess. But how much can be gleaned from the endurance of eighteen-year-olds through seven weeks of torment? The cadets are admirable, of course, but they are way off the charts compared with the rest of us; their experience may be of limited use.

Other social scientists, looking at the West Point situation and many others that Duckworth considers, might have called grit an “independent variable”—one possible factor in a given experimental situation affecting many other factors. But Duckworth decided that grit is the single trait in our complex and wavering nature which accounts for success; grit is the strong current of will that flows through genetic inheritance and the existential muddle of temperament, choice, contingency—everything that makes life life. In recent years, Duckworth has tested all kinds of people on the Grit Scale, and in her book she writes about many other high achievers whom she interviewed or studied from afar—Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon; Will Shortz, the Times crossword-puzzle editor; Jamie Dimon, of JPMorgan Chase; Francesca Martinez, the British woman with cerebral palsy who became a famous standup comic; the women’s soccer team at the University of North Carolina. They all have grit.

I’m not sure what we’re learning from any of this. There may be a few champions who get by purely on talent, luck, or family wealth, but we can assume—can’t we?—that most highly successful people are resilient and persevering. It would be news if they weren’t . Grit can  be partly inferred from their success itself, which is, of course, what drew Duckworth to these people in the first place. There are no mediocre or moderately successful people in her book, and she has little interest in the myriad ways we hamper ourselves—failure, in this account, is simply owing to a lack of grit.

Tautology haunts the shape of these fervent lessons. “Grittier spellers practiced more than less gritty spellers,” Duckworth assures us. Well, yes. She is looking for winners, and winners of a certain sort: survivors in highly competitive activities in which a single physical, mental, or technical skill can be cultivated through relentless practice. As examples, however, instances of success in soccer, spelling bees, and crossword-puzzle design suffer from the same weakness as success during Barracks Beast—they may not offer much help to people engaged in work that demands more diffuse or improvisatory skills. In many careers, you can grind away for years and get nowhere if you aren’t adaptable, creative, alert. In modern offices, many people work in teams, present ideas to a group, move from one project to another. Grit may be beside the point.

Even so, “Grit” is a pop-psych smash. More than eight million people saw Duckworth’s TED talk before the book came out. Duckworth is in demand in many places as a motivational speaker. But if she were merely battling Norman Vincent Peale for control of the airport book racks, and Tony Robbins for YouTube dominance, her success wouldn’t matter very much. Duckworth’s work, however, has been playing very well with a second audience: a variety of education reformers who have seized on “grit” as a quality that can be located and developed in children, especially in poor children. Some public schools are now altering their curricula to teach grit and other gritty character traits. In California, a few schools are actually grading kids on grit; the practice is widespread in the trendsetting charter-school chain KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program). The standardized-testing agencies that administer the National Assessment of Educational Progress ( NAEP ) and the Program for International Student Assessment ( PISA ) are moving toward the inclusion of character assessment as a measure of student performance. Duckworth, to her credit, has argued against tying such scores to the evaluation of teachers and the funding of schools, but that development may be inevitable.

This snowballing effect among school reformers can’t be understood without recognizing a daunting truth: We don’t know how to educate poor children in this country. (Our prosperous students do fine on international tests.) George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind program and President Obama’s Race to the Top incentives were designed to raise test scores in general, and in particular to close the gap between affluent and poor children, but neither program, putting it mildly, has succeeded. Despite some success at individual schools, there has been little over-all improvement in the scores of poor children. The gap between white and minority children has actually increased in recent years.

For children, the situation has grown worse as we’ve slackened our efforts to fight poverty. In 1966, when Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty initiatives were a major national priority, the poverty rate among American children was eighteen per cent. Now it is twenty-two per cent. If we suffer from a grit deficiency in this country, it shows up in our unwillingness to face what is obviously true—that poverty is the real cause of failing schools.

In this context, grit appears as a new hope. As the federal programs stalled, psychologists, neuroscientists, pediatricians, education reformers, and journalists began looking at the lives of children in a different way. Their central finding: non-cognitive skills play just as great a role as talent and native intelligence (I.Q.) in the academic and social success of children, and maybe even a greater role. In brief, we are obsessed with talent, but we should also be obsessed with effort. Duckworth is both benefitting from this line of thought and expanding it herself. The finding about non-cognitive skills is being treated as a revelation, and maybe it should be; among other things, it opens possible avenues for action. Could cultivating grit and other character traits be the cure, the silver bullet that ends low performance?

Reading Paul Tough’s new book, “Helping Children Succeed” (a sequel to the acclaimed “How Children Succeed,” from 2012), should give pause to the more extravagant hopes. Tough, a journalist who studies poverty and child development, begins with the inevitable bad news: prosperous children who are read to, talked to, and educated in many ways by their caregivers come to school way ahead of poor children, especially children who grow up amid noise, violence, and unending stress and uncertainty. Kids from harsh environments can be badly hurt before they leave infancy. This is a matter of correlation, not causation. Poverty in itself doesn’t create troubled children; the quality of parenting and household atmosphere is what matters. (Presumably, tumultuous middle-class and wealthy families might produce the same stress in infants.) According to Tough’s researchers, about ten to fifteen per cent of poor children develop behavior problems because of “high levels of toxic stress.” The roots are of two kinds: a baby experiencing constant anxiety can wind up producing high levels of the hormone cortisol, which could lead to a compromised immune system, and also to a stress-response system that is over-prepared to fight back. Tough puts it this way:

Small setbacks feel like crushing defeats; tiny slights turn into serious confrontations. In school, a highly sensitive stress-response system constantly on the lookout for threats can produce patterns of behavior that are self-defeating: fighting, talking back, acting up in class, and also, more subtly, going through each day perpetually wary of connection with peers and resistant to outreach from teachers and other adults.

Experiencing undue stress as an infant may also damage the development of the prefrontal cortex, hampering the set of skills known as executive functions, which comprise working memory, self-regulation, and cognitive flexibility. Tough, citing several neuroscientists, calls these skills “the developmental building blocks—the neurological infrastructure—underpinning noncognitive abilities like resilience and perseverance.”

Or, in Duckworth’s language, grit. Which is a bitter pill to swallow. According to neuroscientists and pediatricians, grit may be out of reach for some kids all through childhood, and perhaps beyond. Jack Shonkoff, the director of Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child, put it this way to Tough:

If you haven’t in your early years been growing up in an environment of responsive relationships that has buffered you from excessive stress activation, then if, in tenth-grade math class, you’re not showing grit and motivation, it may not be a matter of you just not sucking it up enough. A lot of it has to do with problems of focusing attention, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. And you may not have developed those capacities because of what happened to you early in life.

In this light, Duckworth’s work regarding poor children becomes irrelevant or even unwittingly abrasive. In effect, the children are being held responsible for their environment; low character scores become an accusation against poor kids that they cannot possibly answer.

Tough mixes hard truths and hopefulness, and he details a variety of interventions that have shown success in overcoming early problems: home visits to hard-pressed families by trained professionals, who urge parents to play more with their infants, talk to them, and read to them; training programs for child-care providers; an outfit called Educare, which runs intense pre-K centers in which babies are treated with affectionate warmth and enfolded in a reassuring structure; and much more. And Tough offers limited proof that early stress can be overcome and that kids who get care when they are still very young can enter kindergarten at the same level as better-off kids.

All these programs, as Tough admits, are tentative and currently very expensive. But they suggest the way to go. At the moment, our national priorities are askew. (According to the nonprofit Child Trends, the U.S. spends a fraction of what other prosperous countries spend on children living in poverty, and, over all, just 0.7 per cent of its G.D.P. on benefits for families.) The evidence suggests that we should be directing our resources at infant nutrition, baby colleges for parents, much stronger and more inclusive pre-K, and everything else that helps parents and improves the environment for infants. The Nobel-laureate economist James J. Heckman has even insisted, in his pamphlet-length book “Giving Kids a Fair Chance” (2013), that piling resources into early childhood would save money. The costs of so many later programs and interventions—centers for adolescent kids with troubles, juvenile courts, prisons, job-training programs, health costs in general—would decline if we could get our children into kindergarten in better shape and, consequently, workers into the job market better able to compete. In this political season, there has been much hard-blowing talk of “revolution,” but helping poor children would be the real thing.

Let us assume for a moment that the revolution happens: assistance rushes in to help and repair the children badly hurt by undue stress, and kids arrive at kindergarten ready to learn. Will we still want lessons in grit taught to children in public school? Duckworth’s work with the KIPP charter chain suggests how things might go.

Duckworth was working with children herself when she changed her mind about what made them succeed. Born in 1970 to Chinese immigrants, she earned degrees at Harvard and Oxford and worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company before admirably deciding, at the age of twenty-seven, to teach seventh-grade math in New York public schools. As she recounts in “Grit,” she realized that her most hard-working students outpaced the ones who seemed naturally gifted at math. She quit teaching and, at the age of thirty-two, entered the Ph.D. program in psychology at Penn. She became a disciple of Martin Seligman, who had developed the concept of “learned optimism,” the notion that we can talk ourselves into better performance by retraining our pessimism—seeing individual defeats as temporary, local, and reversible, not as proof of an inborn incapacity. Depression, in this account, is not implacable and organic; it’s a negative way of looking at one’s life.

Working under Seligman’s sponsorship, Duckworth developed her Grit Scale in 2004, applying it at West Point, and, in the next year, linked up with two educators, Dave Levin, the co-founder of KIPP , and Dominic Randolph, the headmaster of Riverdale Country School, a private school in the Bronx. The two men make an odd couple: KIPP ’s students are overwhelmingly inner-city minority kids; Riverdale’s are overwhelmingly affluent and white. But both men were interested in promoting the character component of education. The two educators and Duckworth boiled down a long list of character traits—what they called virtues—into a master list of seven that could be quantified and graded in schools. Grit, of course, is one; the others are self-control (both academic and social), zest, optimism, social intelligence, gratitude, and curiosity.

Now, there’s something very odd about this list. There’s nothing in it about honesty or courage; nothing about integrity, kindliness, responsibility for others. The list is innocent of ethics, any notion of moral development, any mention of the behaviors by which character has traditionally been marked. Levin, Randolph, and Duckworth would seem to be preparing children for personal success only—doing well at school, getting into college, getting a job, especially a corporate job where such docility as is suggested by these approved traits (gratitude?) would be much appreciated by managers. Putting it politically, the “character” inculcated in students by Levin, Randolph, and Duckworth is perfectly suited to producing corporate drones in a capitalist economy. Putting it morally and existentially, the list is timid and empty. The creativity and wildness that were once our grace to imagine as part of human existence would be extinguished by strict adherence to these instrumentalist guidelines.

Grading students according to the character list has become integral to education at the KIPP chain, which has now grown to more than a hundred and eighty schools, and defenders would say it’s integral as well to KIPP ’s success. KIPP ’s students get higher scores on standardized tests than students in regular public schools and, down the line, graduate from college at a much higher rate. But success comes at a price: students and their families must abide by rigid academic and behavioral expectations, and the attrition rate for KIPP ’s students, in some schools, can be startlingly high. (See a new book by the education researcher and writer Samuel Abrams, “Education and the Commercial Mindset,” for the details.) Students enter KIPP by lottery. Among them, there may be gifted children who simply don’t respond to this kind of conditioning, children whose potential can’t be expressed through such narrow notions of character and success. They are likely to get spun out of the KIPP system. Then there are children from families too troubled to enter the lottery for admission in the first place. Absent my hoped-for revolution, they will get lost in the public-school system, condemned, perhaps, for a lack of grit that they cannot be responsible for.

Not just Duckworth’s research but the entire process feels tautological: we will decide what elements of “character” are essential to success, and we will inculcate these attributes in children, measuring and grading the children accordingly, and shutting down, as collateral damage, many other attributes of character and many children as well. Among other things, we will give up the sentimental notion that one of the cardinal functions of education is to bring out the individual nature of every child.

Can so narrow an ideal of character flourish in a society as abundantly and variously gifted as our own? Duckworth’s view of life is devoted exclusively to doing, at the expense of being. She seems indifferent to originality or creativity or even simple thoughtfulness. We must all gear up, for grit is a cause, an imp of force. “At various points, in big ways and small, we get knocked down. If we stay down, grit loses. If we get up, grit prevails.” Through much of “Grit,” she gives the impression that quitting any activity before achieving mastery is a cop-out. (“How many of us vow to knit sweaters for all our friends but only manage half a sleeve before putting down the needles? Ditto for home vegetable gardens, compost bins, and diets.”) But what is the value of these projects? Surely some things are more worth pursuing than others. If grit mania really flowers, one can imagine a mass of grimly determined people exhausting themselves and everyone around them with obsessional devotion to semi-worthless tasks—a race of American squares, anxious, compulsive, and constrained. They can never try hard enough.

Duckworth’s single-mindedness could pose something of a danger to the literal-minded. Young people who stick to their obsessions could wind up out on a limb, without a market for their skills. Spelling ability is nice, if somewhat less useful than, say, the ability to make a mixed drink—a Negroni, a Tom Collins. But what do you do with it? Are the thirteen-year-old champion spellers going to go through life spelling out difficult words to astonished listeners? I realize, of course, that persistence in childhood may pay off years later in some unrelated activity. But I’m an owlish enough parent to insist that the champion spellers might have spent their time reading something good—or interacting with other kids. And what if a child has only moderate talent for her particular passion? Mike Egan, a former member of the United States Marine Band, wrote a letter to the Times Book Review in response to Judith Shulevitz’s review of Duckworth’s book. “Anyone who would tell a child that the only thing standing between him or her and world-class achievement is sufficient work,” Egan wrote, “ought to be jailed for child abuse.”

Duckworth not only ignores the actual market for skills and talents, she barely acknowledges that success has more than a casual relation to family income. After all, few of us can stick to a passion year after year that doesn’t pay off—not without serious support. Speaking for myself, the most important element in my social capital as an upper-middle-class New York guy was, indeed, capital—my parents carried me for a number of years as I fumbled my way to a career as a journalist and critic. Did I have grit? I suppose so, but their support made persistence possible.

After many examples of success, Duckworth announces a theory: “Talent x effort = skill. Skill x effort = achievement.” It’s hardly E=mc 2 . It’s hardly a theory at all—it’s more like a pop way of formalizing commonplace observation and single-mindedness. Compare Duckworth’s book in this respect with Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers.” Gladwell also traced the backgrounds of extraordinarily accomplished people—the computer geniuses Bill Gates and Bill Joy, business tycoons, top lawyers in New York, and so on. And Gladwell discovered that, yes, his world-beaters devoted years to learning and to practice: ten thousand hours , he says, is the rough amount of time it takes for talented people to become masters.

Yet, if perseverance is central to Gladwell’s outliers, it’s hardly the sole reason for their success. Family background, opportunity, culture, landing at the right place at the right time, the over-all state of the economy—all these elements, operating at once, allow some talented people to do much better than other talented people. Gladwell provides the history and context of successful lives. Duckworth—indifferent to class, race, history, society, culture—strips success of its human reality, and her single-minded theory may explain very little. Is there any good football team, for instance, that doesn’t believe in endless practice, endurance, overcoming pain and exhaustion? All professional football teams train hard, so grit can’t be the necessary explanation for the Seahawks’ success. Pete Carroll and his coaches must be bringing other qualities, other strategies, to the field. Observing those special qualities is where actual understanding might begin.

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By David Remnick

By Rebecca Mead

Book Review: “Grit”

Book: Grit  by Angela Duckworth Reviewer: Bobby Powers

My Thoughts: 8 of 10 Angela Duckworth made quite a splash with her first book.  Grit presents a strong argument against talent reigning supreme in the workplace. Duckworth's research compellingly posits that grit—which she defines as passion plus perseverance—is a better predictor of future success than talent. I was inclined to buy into that concept before reading Grit , and Duckworth pushed me over the edge. This book is especially influential for anyone in a hiring role, where tradeoffs often must be made between raw talent and resume strength versus work ethic and perseverance. If this topic interests you, I'd recommend also checking out Duckworth's TED talk, which you can find at the bottom of this review.

Takeaways from the Book

Grit and why it matters.

• “In sum, no matter the domain, the highly successful had a kind of ferocious determination that played out in two ways. First, these exemplars were unusually resilient and hardworking. Second, they knew in a very, very deep way what it was they wanted. They not only had determination, they had  direction . It was this combination of passion and perseverance that made high achievers special. In a word, they had grit. ”
• “What we accomplish in the marathon of life depends tremendously on our grit—our passion and perseverance for long-term goals. An obsession with talent distracts us from that simple truth.”
• “Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.”
• “Not a day goes by that I don’t read or hear the word  talent …It seems that when anyone accomplishes a feat worth writing about, we rush to anoint that individual as extraordinarily ‘talented.’”
• “If we overemphasize talent, we underemphasize everything else.”
• “Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”

Talent Is Not Enough

• “The human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses poses of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum…The plain fact remains that men the world over possess amounts of resource, which only very exceptional individuals push to their extremes of use.” -William James
• "Our vanity, our self-love, promotes the cult of the genius. For if we think of genius as something magical, we are not obliged to compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking…To call someone ‘divine’ means: ‘here there is no need to compete.’” -Frederich Nietzsche
• “In other words, mythologizing natural talent lets us all off the hook. It lets us relax into the status quo.”
• “I’ve never really viewed myself as particularly talented. Where I excel is ridiculous, sickening work ethic.” -Will Smith
• “The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is: I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be outworked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me. You might be all of those things. You got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple.” -Will Smith

Continuous Improvement

• “As soon as possible, experts hungrily seek feedback on how they did. Necessarily, much of that feedback is negative. This means that experts are more interested in what they did  wrong —so they can fix it—than what they did  right . The active processing of this feedback is as essential as its immediacy.”
• “And after feedback, then what? Then experts do it over again, and again, and again. Until they have finally mastered what they set out to do. Until what was a struggle before is now fluent and flawless. Until conscious incompetence become unconscious competence.”
• “In her interviews with ‘mega successful’ people, journalist Hester Lacey has noticed that all of them demonstrate a striking desire to excel beyond their already remarkable level of expertise…'It’s a persistent desire to do better,’ Hester explained. ‘It’s the opposite of being complacent. But it’s a positive state of mind, not a negative one. It’s not looking backward with dissatisfaction. It’s looking  forward  and wanting to grow.’”

Deliberate Practice

• “After you’ve discovered and developed interest in a particular area, you must devote yourself to the sort of focused, full-hearted, challenge-exceeding-skill practice that leads to mastery. You must zero in on your weaknesses, and you must do so over and over again, for hours a day, week after month after year.”
• “The really crucial insight of (Anders) Ericsson’s research, though, is  not  that experts log more hours of practice. Rather, it’s that experts practice  differently . Unlike most of us, experts are logging thousands upon thousands of hours of what Ericsson calls  deliberate practice .”
• A clearly-defined stretch goal
• Full concentration and effort
• Immediate and informative feedback
• Repetition with reflection and refinement

• Purpose = “The intention to contribute to the well-being of others”
• “While interest is crucial to sustaining passion over the long-term, so, too, is the desire to connect with and help others.”
• The Parable of the Bricklayers:  “Three bricklayers are asked: ‘What are you doing?’ The first says, ‘I am laying bricks.’ The second says, ‘I am building a church.’ And the third says, ‘I am building the house of God.’ The first bricklayer has a job. The second has a career. The third has a calling.”
• "Whatever you do, whether you’re a janitor or the CEO—you can continually look at what you do and ask how it connects to other people, how it connects to the bigger picture, how it can be an expression of your deepest values.”

Fixed vs. Growth Mindset

• Those with a fixed mindset interpret setbacks as evidence that they don’t have the “right stuff”—they are lacking talent and they’re not good enough. They believe that intelligence is largely immutable in each person and can’t change very much.
• Those with a growth mindset believe they can learn to do better. They recognize that although everyone begins with predilections to certain areas, intelligence and talent can be substantially changed with hard work.
• Praising talent reinforces the fixed mindset, whereas praising effort reinforces the growth mindset.
• “If you have a growth mindset, you’re more likely to do well in school, enjoy better emotional and physical health, and have stronger, more positive social relationships with other people.”
• "A fixed mindset about ability leads to pessimistic explanations of adversity, and that, in turn, leads to both giving up on challenges and avoiding them in the first place. In contrast, a growth mindset leads to optimistic ways of explaining adversity, and that, in turn, leads to perseverance and seeking out new challenges that will ultimately make you even stronger.”

Final Thoughts

• “Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in any one of those actions; only the fact that they are done concisely and correctly, and all together, produce excellence.” -Dan Chambliss
• Surround yourself with people of grit: “The thing is, when you go to a place where basically  everybody  you know is getting up at four in the morning to go to practice, that’s just what you do. It’s no big deal. It becomes a habit.”
• "We all face limits—not just in talent, but in opportunity. But more often than we think, our limits are self-imposed. We try, fail, and conclude we’ve bumped our heads against the ceiling of possibility. Or maybe after taking just a few steps we change direction. In either case, we never venture as far as we might have. To be gritty is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. To be gritty is to hold fast to an interesting and purposeful goal. To be gritty is to invest, day after week after year, in challenging practice. To be gritty is to fall down seven times, and rise eight."

Think you’d like this book?

Other books you may enjoy:.

• Mindset by Carol Dweck
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Other notable books by the author:

Angela Lee Duckworth: Grit: The power of passion and perseverance Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Lee Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school. She quickly realized that IQ wasn't the only thing separating the successful students from those who struggled. Here, she explains her theory of "grit" as a predictor of success.

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Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance Paperback – August 21, 2018

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• Reading age 5 years and up
• Print length 368 pages
• Language English
• Dimensions 5.5 x 1.1 x 8.38 inches
• Publisher Scribner
• Publication date August 21, 2018
• ISBN-10 1501111116
• ISBN-13 978-1501111112
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner; Reprint edition (August 21, 2018)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1501111116
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1501111112
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 5 years and up
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.2 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.1 x 8.38 inches
• #8 in Cognitive Psychology (Books)
• #59 in Motivational Self-Help (Books)
• #71 in Personal Transformation Self-Help

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About the author

Angela duckworth.

Dr Angela Duckworth is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and an associate professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is an expert in non-IQ competencies, including grit and self-control. A highly sought-after international speaker, her TED talk on grit has been viewed by over 10 million people.

Duckworth’s hypothesis that the real guarantor of success may not be inborn talent but a special blend of resilience and single-mindedness grew out of her upbringing: as a child her scientist father lovingly bemoaned the fact his daughter was ‘no genius’. Duckworth was determined to prove him wrong and spent her youth smashing through every academic barrier. As an adult she became focused on proving her theory and to find out if grit can be learned or cultivated. It was out of this that she created her own Character Lab at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance [Book Review]

Ethan Demme · December 10, 2018 · Leave a Comment

In her groundbreaking book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance , Angela Duckworth – a psychology professor and 2013 MacArthur Fellow – introduces us to David. She recounts how while taking a freshman high school algebra course, David’s first math test came back with a D. In her interview with David, she asked him how he dealt with that disappointing result. He said: “I did feel bad – I did – but I didn’t dwell on it. I knew it was done. I knew I had to focus on what to do next. So I went to my teacher and asked for help. I basically tried to figure out, you know, what I did wrong. What I needed to do differently.” Duckworth reports that “by senior year, David was taking the harder of Lowell’s two honors calculus courses.”

David’s story might seem rather surprising. Duckworth observes that “conventional wisdom says that math is a subject in which the more talented students are expected to excel, leaving classmates who are simply ‘not math people’ behind.” While we tend to think of riding a bike as something anyone can learn with dedication, effort, and time, we are also used to thinking that math comes naturally to those who are good at it, and that if it doesn’t come naturally, it cannot be learned. But the more Duckworth paid attention to both her teaching and the research she was conducting, the more she realized that talent isn’t a good guide and that instead it was an attitude of grit and a willingness to grow that predicted student success. Duckworth says that initially she too had been “distracted by talent” but she slowly learned that “aptitude did not guarantee achievement.” She further writes that “during the next several years of teaching, I grew less and less convinced that talent was destiny and more and more intrigued by the returns generated by effort.”

Duckworth is quick to stress that “talent – how fast we improve in skill – absolutely matters.” But she also points out that “effort factors into the calculations twice , not once. Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill productive .” Duckworth says talent can be a helpful boost at the beginning of the learning process, but she also notes that the best way to develop any skill is to focus on practicing at the edges of current ability, and that means embracing failure. Duckworth also warns about the danger of overemphasizing talent because it can easily lead to a fixed mindset, the kind of mindset that says “I’m not a math person so I can’t learn this” rather than allowing a growth mindset that says “I don’t know how to do this yet, but I can learn!” (You can read more about the difference between these two mindsets by reading this article .)

It isn’t just in the discipline of mathematics that grit matters. Duckworth reports on her research on competitive spellers, “Measurements of grit taken months before the final competition predicted how well spellers would eventually perform. Put simply, grittier kids went further in competition. How did they do it? By studying many more hours and, also, by competing in more spelling bees.” Duckworth also studied the military students at West Point to answer the question, “what matters for making it through Beast,” the grueling program that separates West Point grads from the dropouts. She found that the answer to that question is “not your SAT scores, not your high school rank, not your leadership experience, not your athletic ability.” Instead, “what matters is grit.”

Parenting for Grit

Duckworth devotes a whole section of her book to providing ideas for parents who want to cultivate grittiness in their children. “First and foremost,” she stresses, “there’s no either/or trade-off between supportive parenting and demanding parenting.” She notes that “it’s a common misunderstanding to think of ‘tough love’ as a carefully struck balance between affection and respect on the one hand, and firmly enforced expectations on the other” and argues that “in actuality, there’s no reason you can’t do both.”

Another piece of advice to parents is to encourage their children to play. She writes, “before those who’ve yet to fix on a passion are ready to spend hours a day diligently honing skills, they must goof around, triggering and retriggering interest.” One way to help children in this process is to encourage them to sign up for extracurriculars and also pushing them to stick with their chosen activity. Duckworth writes, “If I could wave a magic wand, I’d have all the children in the world engage in at least one extracurricular activity of their choice, and as for those in high school, I’d require that they stick with at least one activity for more than a year.” The reason for this this desire is her recognition that “kids thrive when they spend at least some part of their week doing hard things that interest them.”

The point about sticking with activities is crucial. Duckworth notes that passion has less to do with intensity and more to do with consistency: “Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.” In order to foster grit, the Duckworth family created the “The Hard Thing Rule” which has three parts:

1. Everyone – including Mom and Dad – has to do a hard thing, something that “requires daily deliberate practice.” 2. “You can quit. But you can’t quit until the season is over, the tuition payment is up, or some other ‘natural’ stopping point has arrived…In other words, you can’t quit on a day when your teacher yells at you, or you lose a race, or you have to miss a sleepover because of a recital the next morning.” 3. “ You get to pick your hard thing. Nobody picks it for you because, after all, it would make no sense to do a hard thing you’re not even vaguely interested in.”

Earlier in the review, I mentioned the problem of fixed mindsets. Duckworth cautions parents that “children develop more of a fixed mindset when their parents react to mistakes as though they’re harmful and problematic.” She instead recommends that parents try to model “emotion-free mistake making.” For example, she shares about a technique where teachers “commit an error on purpose and then lets students see them say, with a smile, ‘Oh, gosh, I thought there were five blocks in this pile! Let me count again! … Great I learned I need to touch each block as I count!” If you’re anything like me, daily life provides plenty of opportunities for me to own up to honest mistakes and model a growth mindset. (For more tips on cultivating a growth mindset in yourself and your children, check out this article.)

While Duckworth believes that grit is essential for success, she thinks there are other traits that need to be cultivated alongside grit. She writes, “In assessing grit along with other virtues, I find three reliable clusters. I refer to them as intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intellectual dimensions of character. You could also call them strengths of will, heart, and mind.”

1. Intrapersonal character: this cluster includes grit as well as “self-control, particularly as it relates to resisting temptations like texting and video games.” 2. Interpersonal character: “includes gratitude, social intelligence, and self-control over emotions like anger. These virtues help you get along with – and provide assistance to – other people.” 3. Intellectual character: “includes virtues like curiosity and zest. These encourage active and open engagement with the world of ideas.”

(As a brief aside, Duckworth’s cluster of virtues is very similar to the skillsets commended by Joseph E. Aoun, president of Northeastern University, in his book on robot-proofing education. )

Finally, Duckworth warns that while grit is good, too much effort without enough rest can lead to burnout. She explains that the cardinal feature of burnout is “the feeling of exhaustion” usually accompanied by “depersonalization – the sense that you’re unconnected to the people you’re serving or working with – and also helplessness – the sense that no matter what you do or how hard you try, you’re not making progress.” The concern about burnout is real; we sometimes recommend our customers take a math break. Amanda Capps explains that a math break can be full break and other times it can mean “taking a break from the current curriculum and focusing more on math games, math apps, reading math-related literature, or reviewing concepts.” She notes that a math break “could also include applying math to real-world applications such as cooking, budgeting, or building that occur outside of a workbook!”

To conclude the review, I want to revisit the story of David. Remember that David was the high school freshman who got a “D” on his first math test, and who went on to take advanced math as a senior. As it turns out, David went on to earn a PhD in mechanical engineering and is now working at the Aerospace Corporation. Duckworth writes: “quite literally, the boy who was deemed ‘not ready’ for harder, faster math classes is now a ‘rocket scientist.’”

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Grit: Summary & Review

Grit is the combination of passion and perseverance and, author Angela Duckworth says, is the biggest predictor of achievement. Grit explains how you can find your passion and how you can increase your grit.

Bullet Summary

Part i: what gris is and why it matters, chapter 1: showing up, chapter 2: distracted by talent , chapter 3: effort counts twice , chapter 4: how gritty are you, chapter 5: grit grows, part ii growing grit from the inside out, chapter 6: (how to find your) interest, chapter 7: practice, chapter 8: purpose, chapter 9: hope, part iii – growing grit from outside in, chapter 10: parenting for grit,  chapter 11: the playing fields of grit, chapter 12: a culture of grit, chapter 13: conclusion, grit video summary, practical applications of grit, grit criticism, grit review.

Grit is a mix of passion and perseverance

• Grit matters more than talent in achieving success
• You can grow your grit
• Find an interest, develop it into a passion, and stick with it

Grit Summary

About The Author : Angela Duckworth is a psychology researcher, Oxford, and Harvard alumni, and psychology teacher at the University of Pennsylvania. She became popular because of her research on grit, perseverance, and achievement for which she also won a McArthur award. The concept of Grit and Duckworth’s research has been controversial.

Angela Duckworth begins Grit with a quick overview of the psychology of the highly successful.

She says that the most successful people:

• Have huge perseverance
• Never feel like they’re good enough, but are satisfied being unsatisfied
• Love the chase as much as the capture
• Have an enduring passion for carrying them through boring and painful times
• They know what they want: they have both determination and direction

And it’s that mix of passion and perseverance that Angela Duckworth calls Grit .

Grit Matters Most

Angela Duckworth studied the challenging Westpoint induction training.

She wanted to see what differentiated those who made it through from those who dropped out. And she found out that Grit was an astoundingly reliable predictor of who made it and who quit.

She ran the same study with sales representatives, a profession with a notoriously high turnover rate.

And again Grit was a huge predictor of who stayed and who quit. Grit mattered more than any other personal trait.

Grit was of course not the sole predictor of endurance.

In sales, for example, previous experience mattered; in school, a supportive teacher helped students make it through; and for the military, the physical fitness at the start of the training also made a difference.

But Grit was important to all of them and mattered even when the other predictors were absent.

Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another

Angela Duckworth says that in spite of the USA being a country where most people appreciate and idolize effort and hard work, often that’s more lip service than reality.

She says that, deep down, we all love “naturals” .

And experiments show that people would rather hire naturals and believe that naturals have higher chances of succeeding than hard workers, even when their skill set is completely the same.

The author says that it’s a bit like people saying they don’t care about physical attractiveness, but then we actually pick the cute partner to date when given the option.

Angela Duckworth says that talent is not a bad thing -of course, it isn’t- and, importantly, that we are not all equally talented. But the biggest reason why the preoccupation with talent is harmful is that we risk forgetting all the other important traits that matter, like Grit.

The author says that our human tendency when we look at someone highly skilled is to stare in awe and think it’s raw talent. “He’s naturally gifted”, we tell ourselves…

Angela Duckworth quotes Dan Chambliss when he says that, of course, not all of us will become Michael Phelps, but that the talent needed to succeed in swimming is lower than most people think. And, importantly, that greatness is doable .

As long as you understand that a high-level performance is backed by countless hours of mundane work behind the scenes.

I found it fascinating to read the reason why Angela Duckworth says we all love talent, and we all love talent because it lets us all off the hook . If the achievements of others are because of something magical, or because of some lucky mixture of genes, then we don’t need to compare ourselves to them.

They are the special ones and freaks of nature, and we are normal.

Angela Duckworth’s Achievement Equation

Talent x Effort = Skill → Skill x Effort = Achievement

Talent is how quickly your skill improves when you invest effort.

Achievement is when you take the required skills and use them. Notice that effort figures twice. First by building the skill, and second by deploying those skills until you achieve your goals and objectives.

The author recognizes that this equation is incomplete as it doesn’t include other important variables -ie.: a great coach- but adds that it’s still relevant to understand the importance of effort.

Will You Quit at the First Obstacle? Angela Duckworth says that many people often start things full of excitement, only to give up too soon when they encounter the real first obstacle.

We quit what we start way too early way too often.

But what really builds skills and leads to achievement is waking up day after day and staying at it.

Grit is about working on something you love so much that you simply want to keep at it. Grit is falling in love and staying in love .

The author then proposes a test to assess how gritty you are.

My Note: We all love tests with neat and defined results, but since it’s based on self-assessment of yourself I would recommend taking it with a pinch of salt (or not taking the test at all).

Grit has two components: passion and perseverance.

Angela Duckworth says that passion often gives us the idea of a quick infatuation, but in high achievers, passion is about consistency over a long period of time .

Grit is working on something you love so much that you simply want to keep at it

Grit & Goals

Grit means keeping the same end goal -which she calls a “life philosophy”- over a prolonged period of time.

Importantly, gritty people have related lower-level and mid-level goals supporting their life philosophy. Imagine a pyramid, with the lower-level goals all there in support of the top.

On the other hand, people lacking in grit tend to have goals that don’t align. And some other people have a big final goal but without any supporting mid-level and lower-level goals. The author calls it “positive fantasizing”.

You can, and sometimes should, swap or scrap lower-level goals if that makes sense in your circumstances. You should however strive to stay stubborn about your high-level goal.

Grit is falling in love and STAYING in love

Of course, the author had to touch on the all-encompassing question: is Grit a “given” or can we change it?

Grit & Genes

Angela Duckworth says that the short answer is that in part our Grit is genetically determined. But don’t start cheering or using that as an excuse yet.

All human traits are a mix of genes and experience and you can influence all of them. Even height, the stereotypical genetic trait, is more malleable by the environment than most people think.

The next paragraph teaches you how you can grow Grit, but I think it’s also interesting to take a look at inter-generational Grit.

Angela Duckworth says that the previous generations show more grit than millennials. She says this could be because of a different cultural environment, but also because millennials are younger today and Grit grows with age.

How To Grow Grit?

Angela Duckworth says most people quit because they:

• Don’t think it’s worthy
• Can’t see themselves ever making it.

She then says there are four specific psychological assets that the Grittiest people have and that serve to counter the forces that urge us to quit.

They are, in order:

• Interest : Passion starts with enjoying what we do. You don’t have to enjoy every single part, but you enjoy it overall
• Practice : You must devote yourself to improving in your focus area zeroing in on your weaknesses. “Whatever it takes I want to improve” is a common trait among gritty people
• Purpose : The conviction that your work matters, that it’s connected to the well-being of others. Interest without purpose is hard to sustain
• Hope : Hope encompasses all three stages and is what will keep you going when things are difficult and doubts arise

And the beautiful thing?

You can learn all four elements.

You can learn to become interested, you can build the habits of practice and discipline, you can develop a purpose and you can become a hopeful person.

Enthusiasm is common, endurance is rare

Angela Duckworth says that you don’t usually find your passion as if a bolt hit you from the sky.

From her interviews, most people found their passion by exploring many different interests they had.

Why It’s Hard to Find Our Passion

Barry Schwartz says that most people don’t stick to anything they are interested in because they have an overblown expectation of what it means to “find your passion”.

It’s a bit like a life partner, Barry says. Some dream of a knight on a white horse with a book-long list of qualities.

But in real life, nobody has a book-long list of qualities without some deficiencies here and there. And a related problem is the idea that falling in love should be sudden and swift to be “real”. But again, life is different, and love often grows.

To Find Your Passion try What You Life

To find your passion, try to go for something you believe you would like.

Don’t be afraid of guessing if you’re not sure, because there is definitely an element of randomness and trial and error. Sometimes it can also be difficult to predict what you will enjoy, and if you pick the wrong one, don’t be afraid of moving on.

It’s also important that you do what you like because you don’t find your passion through introspection but with first-hand experience.

In the beginning, our interests tend to be feeble and ill-defined, and indeed Angela Duckworth says that often the discovery of a life passion can even go unnoticed. That’s why it’s important to at least give a fair chance to any new endeavor we start.

Once you start finding a certain topic or activity interesting, it might happen that you want to try something. That’s because, the author says, our brain loves novelty. Before switching, see if you can deepen your interest instead.

And remember: if you want to stay engaged in anything for the long term, you have to learn to enjoy the nuances and details of your discipline.

Finally, I would also like to add that, as Angela Duckworth herself highlights, the people around us are important in whether we will take a liking to something or not. And early positive feedback serves to make us feel happy and confident we are indeed pursuing the right choice.

Finding Your Passion Step by Step

• Try different things which seem interesting to you;
• Pick one which is particularly interesting for you;
• Proactively develop that interest;
• Further, deepen it over a lifetime.

So, to be clear and for your complete understanding, it’s more about “developing” your passion than it is about “finding” your passion.

You don’t find your passion. You CHOOSE it and DEVELOP it

Experts don’t just practice more, but they practice differently.

Grit by Angela Duckworth talks at length about the concept of Deep Practice.

Deep practice means zeroing in on your weaknesses, focusing more on what you did wrong than on what you did well. And then fixing it.

Deliberate practice is exhausting. Many top performers can only handle one hour before taking a break, and no more than 3-5 hours per day.

To improve more quickly under deliberate practice, follow these steps:

• Set a precise stretch goal
• Focus 100% on it
• Get immediate and accurate feedback
• Repeat and refine

Fear of failure and of looking bad are the worst enemies of deliberate practice . It’s because since the core idea behind deliberate practice is to train based on mistakes outside of your comfort zone you simply can’t allow shame to hold you back.

Also check Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, largely based on beating shame and living fully.

Deliberate Practice VS Flow

Deliberate practice and flow are different.

Deliberate practice is a behavior and it’s more effortful and rarely as enjoyable as flow. It is planned and happens when you’re beyond your skill level. Your goal is to increase your skill and you are looking for problems to fix. Finally, deliberate practice is for preparation.

Flow  is a state instead and it can be more challenging to accurately plan. In flow, you’re not analyzing what you’re doing but simply doing it and you’re effortless. All the feedback you get is often great and not based on mistakes because your skill level is enough for the challenge. Flow is for performance.

Deliberate Practice for the Gritty

Gritty people do more deliberate practice and experience more flow.

Importantly, gritty people also experience deliberate practice as more enjoyable than less gritty ones.

But some high achievers hate the practice part but still maintain an overall passion for their sport. Some others go through hard practice for the pleasure of the final result (as Tim Grover explains in Relentless : these people are addicted to winning).

Overall, Angela Duckworth says there is not enough evidence to say whether or not deliberate practice can be perceived as enjoyable and effortless as flow. Her own experience says that deliberate practice can be gratifying, just in a different way than flow is.

Learning to Work Hard

I think a key nugget of information that might slip by since Angela Duckworth didn’t drill down on it is that the experience of working hard changes when the effort is rewarded. 

Therefore If you’re a parent it’s important that you reward your children for the effort. And if you’re an adult you reward yourself for your hard work as that will help you link pleasure -or at least a pleasurable follow-up- to hard work.

To get to know more about effective practice, I invite you to check out:

• The Talent Code

And for “flow”, go straight with the original work:

• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Performance

Angela Duckworth says that often gritty people have difficulty in putting into words what they feel about their purpose. But the key is that purpose is always connected to other people .

Their action can be driven for the sake of the sport, for the country, or for some specific person. Or, in general, for what we matter to others.

However, an altruistic principle is not a strict requirement for grittiness and it’s well possible to be a gritty villain.

The hope of gritty people has nothing to do with luck but has to do with getting up again and again after we fall down.

The author calls “hope” what to me seems “optimism”. She says that optimists are different in that they find explanations for their failures that are temporary and specific. Pessimists instead explain their failures with permanent and pervasive causes -ie.: “I’m a loser”, “I always mess things up”-.

She is right, and she is referring to Seligman’s groundbreaking studies of optimistic salespeople who outperformed pessimistic ones. Also, read:

• Learned Optimism
• Authentic Happiness

Duckworth also talks about Growth and Fixed mindset  and says that a Growth Mindset is strongly linked to higher levels of Grit ( read how to develop a growth mindset ).

Duckworth says that many of us often have a pessimist fixed mindset in us alongside the optimist growth mindset we profess.

Angela Duckworth says that a fixed mindset about your capabilities leads to a negative and pessimistic explanation of events, which in turn leads to both avoiding challenges and giving up early.

It makes sense. If you believe your capabilities are fixed, why would you go through challenges?

On the other hand, the author says, a growth mindset leads to optimistic self-talk and Grit in the face of challenges.

Grit is falling seven times and rising eight

Angela Duckworth says there is much research on parenting and some research on Grit , but no research on both of them.

The author says that authoritarian parents are demanding and unsupportive while permissive parents are supportive and undemanding. She recommends instead a middle way that takes the positives of both of them: demanding and supportive parenting.

And the best way to grow Grit in your children is to show grit yourself and then adopt a parenting style that encourages your children to emulate you.

Students who engage in extracurricular activities for longer than a year are more likely to graduate and do better in almost any measured trait from grades to self-esteem to employment after college.

The author recognizes the first doubt I had while reading that: is it sticking longer through extracurricular activities that helps, or are higher achievers simply more likely to stick longer to their chosen activity?

She says that the two aren’t mutually exclusive and that both factors -cultivation and selection- are at play.

Learned Industriousness

The association that working hard leads to reward can be learned.

Because when we don’t make that association, we tend to fall back to laziness. We human beings have a tendency to preserve energy as much as possible when we don’t see the point of action. And when we don’t make the association that working hard pays off then, guess what? We will not work hard.

The Hard Thing Rule

Angela Duckworth raises her children with the Hard Thing Rule.

The hard thing rule says that:

• Everyone in the family has to engage in an activity that requires deliberate practice
• Finish what you start: you can’t quit until the course ends, the season is over or something major happens
• You get to pick what you want to do
• Once in high school, the kids must commit for at least 2 years

If we don’t associate hard work to rewards, we won’t work hard

The culture we live in and with which we identify powerfully shape our behavior and, with time, our identity.

This is critical because our identity shapes our character and behavior.

Basically, sometimes we process information logically to reach a conclusion. But many other times we don’t deeply assess what are the benefits and drawbacks of our daily decisions, but simply revert to “who we are” and what people like us do.

This is important, Angela Duckworth says, because the results of long-lasting effort often take years to materialize.

And when we don’t have an identity to push us through we might simply be tempted to give up when the results are both uncertain and so far away.

You can grow Grit in two ways:

• From the inside out, by developing your interests into passion
• From outside in by immersing yourself in the kind of culture that promotes and foster grit.

The author also says Grit is of course not the only thing that matters in life. And if Duckworth had to choose for her children between goodness and Grit she’d choose goodness.

Angela Duckworth divides the major personality traits into three groups:

• Intra-personal (will)
• Interpersonal (heart)
• Intellectual dimension of character (mind).

Grit is part of the Intra-personal dimension, which also includes for example self-control, and this is the cluster that is most predictive of achievement.

For a healthy social life, though interpersonal traits are most important (check out this website’s course to take your social skills to the next level).

Here is a good video summary of Grit:

• Focus on growing gritty

Grit not only will make you more successful, but it will also make you a happier and prouder person. Once you rationally understand that, start making it your goal to be grittier. And be proud when you show Grit so that it will start becoming part of your identity.

• Associate hard words with results

You have to believe that results will come via hard work applied over a long period of time. This is a kind of mindset you have to develop and make yours. This is also connected to a Growth Mindset , which is the belief that with hard work you can improve yourself.

• Grit-tify your goals

Divide your goals into short-term, mid-term, and long term and make sure the shorter-term ones support your overarching goals (your life philosophy). That way it’s easier to know what you can change or quit while staying gritty with your overall goal.

• Choose gritty friends

The culture and the people around you influence you and do so powerfully. Hence, if your goal is to achieve something lofty, escape from the pot-smoking friends and join a group of highly driven men and women.

• Develop your passions

You don’t “find” your passions, you develop them.

“Grit ” as a psychological trait might not exist.

That’s a big statement, but it’s the main criticism leveled against Duckworth’s work, and it’s a valid one.

Grit is likely to be simply another definition of consciousness as measured in the Big Five personality traits.

You can read more here:

• Pop psychology myths list
• Self-help myths

This does not necessarily change much in what grit, or call it “tenacity” or “staying power” if you prefer, means to your success. However, it does, in my opinion, take away from the author’s personal reputation.

As Jordan Peterson, author of 12 Rules for Life says in this Quora answer , Duckworth never apologized for her (likely) mistake. That tells us a lot of what gritty people looking for success would do :). And here is a video of Peterson throwing a quick comment on that:

And it does cast a shadow of doubt upon Duckworth’s recipes on “how to increase grit”, which now basically rests on… Little science?

Personally, I believe in the validity of this grit and/or conscientiousness. And I also tend to believe in the validity of combining passion with perseverance to “deepen” your passion.

Because that’s precisely what I’ve done to launch ThePowerMoves.com

“ Grit ” is a wonderful book.

Duckworth might have made up the concept of “Grit”, but the book still beautifully sums up a lot of great psychology of success to teach readers what works, and what doesn’t.

What I loved the most is how useful it is to “find your passion”. This is one of the questions people ask the most, and Grit gives a detailed explanation of how to find and develop your passion.

Check out the best psychology books , or Get Grit on Amazon

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Lucio Buffalmano

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About The Book

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About The Author

Angela Duckworth, PhD, is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She has advised the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams, and Fortune 500 CEOs. She is also the founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help kids thrive. She completed her BA in neurobiology at Harvard, her MSc in neuroscience at Oxford, and her PhD in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.  Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance  is her first book and an instant  New York Times  bestseller.

Product Details

• Publisher: Scribner (August 21, 2018)
• Length: 368 pages
• ISBN13: 9781501111112

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Raves and Reviews

One of "The Hottest Spring Nonfiction Books" —The Wall Street Journal

“ Grit delves into the personal ingredients of great success. It’s worth reading…the gist is that talent and skill are less valuable than effort.” —Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New York Times

"It really isn't talent but practice—along with passion—that makes perfect, explains psychologist Duckworth in this illuminating book. Inspiration for non-geniuses everywhere." —People

“ Grit is a pop-psych smash.” —The New Yorker

“With Grit , Duckworth has now put out the definitive handbook for her theory of success. It parades from one essential topic to another on a float of common sense, tossing out scientific insights.” —Slate

"If you have recently bumped into that word, grit , Duckworth is the reason...In education and parenting circles, her research has provided a much needed antipode to hovering , by which children are systematically deprived of the opportunity to experience setbacks, much less overcome them...What sticks with you [in Grit ] are the testimonials, collected from sources as disparate as Will Smith, William James, and Jeff Bezos's mom, that relentlessly deflate the myth of the natural." —The Atlantic

"A fascinating tour of the psychological research on success...A great service of Ms. Duckworth's book is her down-to-earth definition of passion. To be gritty, an individual doesn't need to have an obsessive infatuation with a goal. Rather, he needs to show 'consistency over time.' The grittiest people have developed long-term goals and are constantly working toward them." —The Wall Street Journal

“Duckworth is the researcher most associated with the study and popularization of grit. And yet what I like about her new book, Grit, is the way she is pulling away from the narrow, joyless intonations of that word, and pointing us beyond the way many schools are now teaching it…Most important, she notes that the quality of our longing matters. Gritty people are resilient and hard working, sure. But they also, she writes, know in a very, very deep way what it is they want.” —David Brooks, New York Times

" Grit is packed with great lessons. The tools and gems I took from this book aided me in being able to handle the adversity of my career coming to an unexpected end and finding my passion in writing." —Chris Bosh, five-time NBA All Star

“[Have] no doubt: Grit is great. It's a lucid, informative, and entertaining review of the research Angela has assiduously conducted over the past decade or so. The book also includes suggestions on how to develop grit, and how we can help support grit in others. There are few people who wouldn't learn something from this book.” — Scientific American (blog)

"An informative and inspiring contribution to the literature of success." —Publishers Weekly

" Grit is a useful guide for parents or teachers looking for confirmation that passion and persistence matter, and for inspiring models of how to cultivate these important qualities." —The Washington Post

"[Blends] anecdote and science, statistic and yarn...Not your grandpa's self-help book, but Duckworth's text is oddly encouraging, exhorting us to do better by trying harder, and a pleasure to read." —Kirkus Reviews

"Engaging...With strong appeal for readers of Daniel H. Pink, Malcolm Gladwell, and Susan Cain, this is a must-have." —Booklist

“Imagine that: a Philadelphia psychology professor setting the education world on fire with a one-syllable noun that just happens to define the city she currently calls home….Her book gives cause for hope and an immediate path to action.” — Philly.com

“Psychologists have spent decades searching for the secret of success, but Angela Duckworth is the one who found it. In this smart and lively book, she not only tells us what it is, but also how to get it.” — Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness

“A robust and engaging read, as Duckworth intersperses her own research with stories from her Chinese-American background, as well as interviews with high achievers in sport, business and the military…[The book includes a] riveting section on raising gritty children. When Duckworth suggests trashing the common parenting line ‘That’s OK, you tried your best’ and replacing it with the demanding yet supportive ‘That didn’t work. Let’s talk about how you approached it and what might work better,’ she made me want to cheer.” —The Toronto Star

“A contemporary classic—a clarifying and deeply-researched book in the tradition of Stephen Covey and Carol Dweck. For anyone hoping to work smarter or live better, Grit is an essential—and perhaps life-changing—read.” —Daniel H. Pink, New York Times- bestselling author of When, Drive, and To Sell Is Human

“ Grit is a persuasive and fascinating response to the cult of IQ fundamentalism. Duckworth reminds us that it is character and perseverance that set the successful apart.” — Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers

"Angela Duckworth [is] the psychologist who has made 'grit' the reigning buzzword in education-policy circles...Duckworth's ideas about the cultivation of tenacity have clearly changed some lives for the better...In this book, Duckworth, whose TED talk has been viewed more than eight million times, brings her lessons to the reading public." —Judith Shulevitz, The New York Times Book Review

“Impressively fresh and original… Grit scrubs away preconceptions about how far our potential can take us.” — Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

“Fascinating. Angela Duckworth pulls together decades of psychological research, inspiring success stories from business and sports, and her own unique personal experience and distills it all into a set of practical strategies to make yourself and your children more motivated, more passionate, and more persistent at work and at school.” — Paul Tough, author of How Children Succeed

“This book will change your life. Fascinating, rigorous, and practical, Grit is destined to be a classic in the literature of success.” — Dan Heath, co-author of Made to Stick , Switch , and Decisive

“Utterly captivating, inspiring and original…Once you pick up Grit , you won't be able to tear yourself away.” — Amy Cuddy, Harvard Business School professor and author of Presence

“Enlightening… Grit teaches that life’s high peaks aren’t necessarily conquered by the naturally nimble but, rather, by those willing to endure, wait out the storm, and try again.” — Ed Viesturs, Seven-Time Climber of Mount Everest and author of No Shortcuts to the Top

“I kept wanting to read this book aloud—to my child, my husband, to everyone I care about. There are no shortcuts to greatness, it's true. But there is a roadmap, and you are holding it.” — Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way

“Readable, compelling and totally persuasive. The ideas in this book have the potential to transform education, management and the way its readers live. Angela Duckworth’s Grit is a national treasure.” — Lawrence H. Summers, Former Secretary of the Treasury and President Emeritus at Harvard University

“Masterful… Grit offers a truly sane perspective: that true success comes when we devote ourselves to endeavors that give us joy and purpose.” — Arianna Huffington, author of Thrive

“I’m convinced there are no more important qualities in striving for excellence than those that create true grit...I hope you enjoy the book as much as I did.” — Brad Stevens, Coach of the Boston Celtics

“Empowering…Angela Duckworth compels attention with her idea that regular individuals who exercise self-control and perseverance can reach as high as those who are naturally talented—that your mindset is as important as your mind.” — Soledad O’Brien, Chairman of Starfish MediaGroup and former co-anchor of CNN’s “American Morning”

“Invaluable…In a world where access to knowledge is unprecedented, this book describes the key trait of those who will optimally take advantage of it. Grit will inspire everyone who reads it to stick to something hard that they have a passion for.” — Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy

“A combination of rich science, compelling stories, crisp graceful prose, and appealingly personal examples…Without a doubt, this is the most transformative, eye-opening book I’ve read this year.” — Sonja Lyubomirsky, Professor, University of California, Riverside and author of The How of Happiness

“Incredibly important…There is deeply embodied grit, which is born of love, purpose, truth to one's core under ferocious heat, and a relentless passion for what can only be revealed on the razor’s edge; and there is the cool, patient, disciplined cultivation and study of resilience that can teach us all how to get there. Angela Duckworth's masterpiece straddles both worlds, offering a level of nuance that I haven’t read before.” — Josh Waitzkin, International Chess Master, Tai Chi Push Hands World Champion, and author of The Art of Learning

“A thoughtful and engaging exploration of what predicts success. Grit takes on widespread misconceptions and predictors of what makes us strive harder and push further…Duckworth’s own story, wound throughout her research, ends up demonstrating her theory best; passion and perseverance make up grit.” — Tory Burch, Chairman, CEO and Designer of Tory Burch

“I love an idea that challenges our conventional wisdom and 'grit' does just that! Put aside what you think you know about getting ahead and outlasting your competition, even if they are more talented. Getting smarter won't help you—sticking with it, will!” — Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last

“Profoundly important. For eons, we've been trapped inside the myth of innate talent. Angela Duckworth shines a bright light into a truer understanding of how we achieve. We owe her a great debt.” —David Shenk, author of The Genius in All of Us: New Insights into Genetics, Talent, and IQ

“An important book...In these pages, the leading scholarly expert on the power of grit (what my mom called 'stick-to-it-iveness') carries her message to a wider audience, using apt anecdotes and aphorisms to illustrate how we can usefully apply her insights to our own lives and those of our kids. ” —Robert D. Putnam, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard and author of Bowling Alone and Our Kids

“This book gets into your head, which is where it belongs…For educators who want our kids to succeed, this is an indispensable read.” — Joel Klein, former Chancellor, New York City public schools

“ Grit delivers! Angela Duckworth shares the stories, the science, and the positivity behind sustained success…A must-read.” — Barbara Fredrickson, author of Positivity and Love 2.0 and President of the International Positive Psychology Association

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