Grit

Grit
By Angela Duckworth
Read in 6th Grade
Haven't you always wondered how "geniuses" became who they are? Angela Duckworth, a pioneering psychologist, explains the true secret behind outstanding achievement - and it's not talent. She says that the one thing all geniuses have is grit. They work and persevere towards their goal against all odds. She has created a scale for measuring these factors into your overall grit. The remainder of the book is devoted to showing how to grow your grittiness.

Edit 2020:

"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. We may not admit to others this bias for naturals; we may not even admit it to ourselves. But the bias is evident in the choices we make" (25).

"Hiring McKinsey meant hiring the very 'best and brightest' - as if being the brightest also made us the best" (29).

"If the story ended then, it might not be about grit. But here's what happened next. Scott kept up - and even increased - his practicing" (33).

"It is as if talent were some invisible 'substance behind the surface reality of performance, which finally distinguishes the best among our athletes'" (37).

"Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them" (42).

"George and his team considered that staying on the treadmill was also a function of how physically fit these men were in their youth, and that this finding merely indicated that physical health predicted later physiological well-being. However, they found that adjusting for baseline physical fitness "had little effect on the correlation of running time with mental health" (47).

"Without effort, your talent is nothing more than unmet potential. Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn't. With effort, talent becomes skill and, at the very same time, effort makes skill productive" (51).

"...passion as a compass - that thing that takes you some time to build, tinker with, and finally get right, and that then guides you on your long and winding road to where, ultimately, you want to be" (60).

"What I mean by passion is not just that you have something you care about. What I mean is that you care about the same ultimate goal in an abiding, loyal, steady way. You are not capricious...At one extreme, one might call your focus obsessive...You have your priorities in order" (64).

"...what definitely set apart the eminent from the rest of humanity were a cluster of four indicators. Notably, these also distinguished the First Ten from the Last Ten - the super-eminent from the merely eminent. Cox grouped these together and called them 'persistence of motive'" (77).

"Likewise, traits like honesty and generosity, and yes, grit, are genetically influenced and, in addition, influenced by experience...Nature matters, and so does nurture" (80).

"First: grit, talent, and all other psychological traits relevant to success in life are influenced by genes and also by experience. Second: there's no single gene for grit, or indeed any other psychological trait" (82).

"My own experience, and the stories of grit paragons like Jeff Gettleman and Bob Mankoff suggest that, indeed, grit grows as we figure out our life philosophy, learn to dust ourselves off after rejection and disappointment, and learn to tell the difference between low-level goals that should be abandoned quickly and higher-level goals that demand more tenacity" (86).

"...these new scientific findings affirm commencement speech wisdom: the "casting vote" for how well we can expect to do in any endeavor is 'desire and passion, the strength of [our] interest" (98).

"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" (100).

"...passion for your work is a little bit of discovery, followed by a lot of development, and then a lifetime of deepening" (103).

"Encouragement in the early years is crucial because beginners are still figuring out whether they want to commit or cut bait. Accordingly, Bloom and his research team found that the best mentors at this stage were especially warm and supportive..." (107).

"The key...is that novelty for the beginner comes in one form, and novelty for the expert in another. For the beginner, novelty is anything that hasn't been encountered before. For the expert, novelty is nuance (114).

"Likewise, in all 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..." (118).

"...experts practice differently. Unlike most of use, experts are logging thousands upon thousands of hours of what Ericsson calls deliberate practice" (120).

"In my 'grit lexicon', therefore, purpose means 'the intention to contribute to the well-being of others'" (146).

"...those who do are significantly grittier than those who feel that 'job' or 'career' more aptly describes their work. Those fortunate people who do see their work as a calling - as opposed to a job or a career - reliably say 'my work makes the world a better place'" (150).

"How you see your work is more important than your job title. And this means that you can go from job to career to calling - all without changing your occupation" (152).

"...the concepts of grit and purpose might, in principle, seem to conflict. How is it possible to stay narrowly focused on your own top-level goal while also having the peripheral vision to worry about anyone else?...you can want to be a top dog and, at the same time, be driven to help others" (159).

"Grit depends on a different kind of hope. It rests on the expectation that our own efforts can improve the future" (169).

"A young child's instinct to copy adults is very strong. In a classic psychology experiment conducted more than fifty years ago at Stanford University, for example, preschoolers watched adults play with a variety of toys and then were given the opportunity to play with the toys themselves...in many cases so closely imitating...adults they'd seen earlier that researchers described their behavior as virtual 'carbon copies'" (215).

"...not all children with psychologically wise parents will grow up to be gritty, because not all psychologically wise parents model grittiness. Though they may be both supportive and demanding, upper-right-quadrant moms and dads may or may not show passion and perseverance for long-term goals" (216).

"...Cody was asked what he had to say to listeners struggling to overcome similar life circumstances. 'Stay positive,' Cody said. 'Go past those negative beliefs in what's possible and impossible and just give it a try'" (222).

"...follow-through in high school extracurriculars predicted graduating from college with academic honors better than any variable. Likewise, follow-through was the single best predictor of holding an appointed or elected leadership position in young adulthood...follow-through predicted notable accomplishments for a young adult in all domains, from the arts and writing to entrepreneurism and community service" (229).

"...following through on our commitments while we grow up both requires grit and, at the same time, builds it. One reason I think so is that, in general, the situations to which people gravitate tend to enhance the very characteristics that brought us there in the first place" (233).

"...there is a worrisome correlation between family income and Grit Grid scores. On average, Grit Grid scores for the high school seniors in our sample who qualified for federally subsidized meals were a full point lower than those for students who were more privileged" (237).

"...the association between working hard and reward can be learned. Bob will go further and say that without directly experiencing the connection between effort and reward, animals, whether they're rats or people, defaults to laziness. Calorie-burning effort is, after all, something evolution has shaped us to avoid whenever possible" (240).

"'I will tell you that we're looking for great competitors. That's really where it starts. And that's the guys that really have grit. The mindset that they're going to succeed, that they've got something to prove. They're resilient, they're not going to be deterred, you know, by challenges and hurdles and things...'" (243).

"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 people in your organization to be grittier, create a gritty culture" (245).

"'There's another kind of leadership. I call it a developmental model. The standards are exactly the same - high - but in one case, you use fear to get your subordinates to achieve those standards. And in the other case, you lead from the front'" (259).

"...like every other negative experience, and every positive one, 'it becomes a part of you. I'm not going to ignore it. I'm going to face it. And when it bubbles up, I'm going to think about it and get on with it. And use it. Use it!'" (268).

"The first is that you can grow your grit...On your own, you can grow grit 'from the inside out': You can cultivate your interests. You can develop a habit of daily challenge-exceeding-skill practice. You can connect your work to a purpose beyond yourself. And you can learn to hope when all seems lost. You can also grow your grit 'from the outside in.' Parents, coaches, teachers, bosses, mentors, friends - developing your personal grit depends critically on other people" (269).

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