Grit. Book Summary
The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Angela Duckworth
Publisher: Vermilion; 10 edition (4 May 2017)
About the author:
Dr Angela Duckworth is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is an expert in non-IQ competencies, including grit and self-control and the founder of the Character Lab (an institution that promotes the growth of Grit in American culture). In fact, she has pioneered the science of grit. Her expertise has been called on by the White House and the World Bank as well as national sports teams and leading CEOs. Over 16 million people have viewed her TED talk on grit (check it out here)
About the book:
Grit is the secret ingredient of success. It allows people to do what they love, find purpose in life and most importantly stick with it over a long period of time to truly flourish. In this great book, Dr Duckworth connects her research to many other positive psychology luminaries (ranging from Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to Anders Ericsson, Gabrielle Oettingen and Carol Dweck). She also shares loads of inspiring stories about grit paragons while walking us through the key aspects of grit and teaching us how we can cultivate grit in our lives and in the lives of those we love and lead.
Key ideas from the book:
What Grit is and why it matters
Angela’s research on the power of grit begins at West Point where new cadets are put through a gruelling summer welcome called Beast Barracks. Or, just Beast.
For two months, these cadets (who spent the better part of two years trying to get into West Point) are put through a super challenging initiation designed to help them “make the transition from new cadet to Soldier.”
And loads of cadets quit during those seven weeks. Military scientists had been trying to predict who would drop out for decades. They couldn’t figure it out. Although their “Whole Candidate Score” did predict who would do well over the four years at West Point, it didn’t predict who would actually graduate.
And here comes Angela Duckworth with her Grit Scale (10 questions test – take it here). This simple test provided the most accurate prediction of who would make it through.
As Angela says:
“Half of the questions were about perseverance. They asked how much you agree with statements like ‘I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge’ and ‘I finish whatever I begin.’ The other half of the questions were about passion. They asked whether your ‘interests change from year to year’ and the extent to which you ‘have been obsessed with a certain idea or project for a short time but later lost interest.’”
Passion + Perseverance = GRIT
Talent matters, but effort counts twice:
“I have been working on a theory of the psychology of achievement since Marty scolded me for not having one. I have pages and pages of diagrams, filling more than a dozen lab notebooks. After more than a decade of thinking about it, sometimes alone, and sometimes in partnership with close colleagues, I finally published an article in which I lay down two simple equations that explain how you get from talent to achievement.
Here they are:
talent x effort = skill
skill x effort = achievement
Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them. Of course, your opportunities—for example, having a great teacher—matter tremendously, too, and maybe more than anything about the individual. 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.
Still, I think it’s useful. What this theory says is that when you consider individuals in identical circumstances, what each achieves depends on just two things, talent and effort. Talent—how fast we can improve a skill—absolutely matters. But effort factors into the calculations twice, not once. Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill productive.”
The amount of effort we put into cultivating our talent = our skills. The amount of effort we put into giving our skills to the world = our achievement. A simple equation which says a LOT about the psychology of achievement. You see, effort counts twice.
Angela supports her idea with loads of research (read the book for the inspirational stories). Simultaneously, she gives loads of interesting examples, when the remarkable power of effort is often discovered by people who fight to overcome a lack of talent.
For example, Dr Duckworth quotes Will Smith a few times in the book. He says:
“I’ve never really viewed myself as particularly talented… Where I excel is ridiculous, sickening work ethic.”
And:
“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.”
Angela says that you can grow grit “from the inside out” (interest + practice + purpose +hope) or “from the outside in” (interaction with other people like parents, teachers, friends and culture).
Gritty passion:
“What I mean by a 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. Each day, you wake up thinking of the questions you fell asleep thinking about. You are, in a sense, pointing in the same direction, ever eager to take even the smallest step forward than to take a step to the side, toward some other destination. At the extreme, one might call your focus obsessive. Most of your actions derive their significance from their allegiance to your ultimate concern, your life philosophy. You have your priorities in order.”
Paragons of Grit have their true passion to which they are committed over a long period of time. Their passion is more like a compass, which guides them through the entire life. It’s not like a firework passion, which comes and goes. Gritty people have a top-level goal (life purpose, mission), and it drives all their goals (like a cascade).
“Passion for your work is a little bit of discovery, followed by a lot of development, and then a lifetime of deepening”
So grit is about “staying in love” with what you do (with your passion) and not just about “falling in love”.
If you are struggling with defining your compass passion, you must begin at the beginning: discovery.
“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? If you find it hard to answer these questions, try recalling your teen years, the stage of life at which vocational interests commonly sprout. As soon as you have even a general direction in mind, you must trigger your nascent interests. Do this by going out into the world and doing something.”
Grow your grit:
“In fact, when people drop out of things, they do so for a reason. Actually, they do so for different reasons. Any of the following four thoughts might go through your head right before you quit what you’re doing:
‘I’m bored.’
‘The effort isn’t worth it.’
‘This isn’t important to me.’
‘I can’t do this, so I might as well give up.’
There’s nothing wrong—morally or otherwise—with thoughts like these. As I tried to show in this chapter, paragons of grit quit goals, too. But the higher the level of the goal in question, the more stubborn they are about seeing it through. Most important, paragons of grit don’t swap compasses: when it comes to the one, a singularly important aim that guides almost everything else they do, the very gritty tend not to utter the statements above. … Together, the research reveals the psychological assets that mature paragons of grit have in common. There are four. They counter each of the buzz-killers listed above, and they tend to develop, over the years, in a particular order.”
People do quit things. But the grittiest people don’t quit the compass-driven top-level goals. And that makes them gritty.
Here are the four psychological assets we can cultivate to get our grit on (inside out approach):
Interest + Practice + Purpose + Hope
Interest:
To discover your true passion, you need to develop your interests first. You need to have a strong internal motivation. Something that really fires you up. You will not put the sustained effort if you’re interested in something just a little bit or just because someone else wants you to do it. And it all starts with interacting with the outside world – start experimenting with things and find your interest triggers. You would also need a crew of encouraging supporters (parents, teachers, coaches, peers), who would provide ongoing stimulation and feedback.
Angela also shares a message for all the parents:
“Before hard work comes play. 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. Of course, developing an interest requires time and energy, and yes, some discipline and sacrifice. But at this earliest stage, novices aren’t obsessed with getting better. They’re not thinking years and years into the future. They don’t know what their top-level, life-orienting goal will be. More than anything else, they’re having fun.”
And remember, studies show that children with a greater level of autonomy have a high level of intrinsic motivation and more likely to develop their interests into a compass passion.
Practice:
As you can imagine, just passion is not enough. You need to roll your sleeves up and do the work. Angela talks about Anders Ericsson’s research on deliberate practise (and she also integrates it with Csikszentmihalyi’s work on Flow). She points out that one key aspect of perseverance is the ability to discipline ourselves to show up every single day with an attitude of “Whatever it takes, I want to improve!’”. Gritty people do more deliberate practise and experience more flow. Deliberate practice is a habit.
If you wonder what the essential requirements for the deliberate practice are, here they are: a clearly defined stretch goal, full concentration and effort, immediate and informative feedback, repetition with reflection and refinement.
Purpose:
If you want to turn your passion into a real success and build a sustainable grit, you need to have a real purpose. And it should be bigger than yourself:
“While interest is crucial to sustaining passion over the long-term, so, too, is the desire to connect with and help others.”
And it’s never too early or late to begin cultivating a sense of purpose. You can start with thinking about how the work you’re already doing can positively contribute to society. Or think about how, in small but meaningful ways, you can change your current work to enhance its connection to your core values.
Hope:
Grit depends on the expectation that your future will be better then your present and that you have the power to make it so if you put the required effort. It’s the “rising-to-the-occasion” kind of perseverance in which we know that we can achieve what we set out to do. Gritty people are optimists (here Duckworth links to Martin Seligman’s research). Also Angela integrates this idea with the growth mindset research: want more hope and grit? Cultivate growth mindset!
Parenting for Grit
“Indeed, over the past forty years, study after carefully designed study has found that the children of psychologically wise parents fare better than children raised in any other kind of household.
In one of Larry’s studies, for example, about ten thousand American teenagers completed questionnaires about their parents’ behavior. Regardless of gender, ethnicity, social class, or parents’ marital status, teens with warm, respectful, and demanding parents earned higher grades in school, were more self-reliant, suffered from less anxiety and depression, and were less likely to engage in delinquent behavior.”
Earlier in the book Angela defines her top goal as “Use psychological science to help kids thrive.” She says that grit starts with parenting, and research totally supports this idea. Gritty people have parents with Wise parenting style.
Wise Parents are both warm and demanding. They have high standards and total support. They are “accurate judges of the psychological needs of their children. They appreciate that children need love, limits, and latitude to reach their full potential. Their authority is based on knowledge and wisdom, rather than power.”
At the same time, if you are really serious about cultivating grit in your kids, you must be a grit role model for them. ☺
As part of their Wise Parenting practice, Angela and her family have what she calls “The Hard Thing Rule”. In short, everyone in the family picks something challenging that they’re committed to mastering (parents and kids). Then, the rules are:
- Everyone needs to deliberately practice daily.
- You have to finish what you start. You can quit but not until the “natural stopping point” (e.g. end of the season, tuition payment is up, etc.) —no quitting on a bad day mid-way through.
- You pick your hard thing—you need to be intrinsically interested in it!
3 actions for you:
- Grit comes from passion – what is your “compass” passion? How can you help your children to develop interests?
- Become a gritty parent – grow your grit from inside out and model grit to your children (e.g. try “The hard thing rule”)
- Cultivate growth mindset
