Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

by Angela Duckworth

I didn’t dwell on it. I knew it was done. I knew I had to focus on what to do next.

basically tried to figure out, you know, what I did wrong. What I needed to do differently.”

less convinced that talent was destiny and more and more intrigued by the returns generated by effort.

it’s worth pausing to consider Darwin’s opinion on the determinants of achievement—that is, his belief that zeal and hard work are ultimately more important than intellectual ability.

By shining our spotlight on talent, we risk leaving everything else in the shadows. We inadvertently send the message that these other factors—including grit—don’t matter as much as they really do.

the most dazzling human achievements are, in fact, the aggregate of countless individual elements, each of which is, in a sense, ordinary.

mythologizing natural talent lets us all off the hook.

they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.”

It soon became clear that doing one thing better and better might be more satisfying than staying an amateur at many different things:

Absolute focus on a single task yields far better results.

If in the course of asking yourself these “Why?” questions your answer is simply “Just because!” then you know you’ve gotten to the top of a goal hierarchy.

What I mean by passion is not just that you have something you care about. What I mean is that you care about that same ultimate goal in an abiding, loyal, steady way.

Any successful person has to decide what to do in part by deciding what not to do.

Lectures don’t have half the effect of consequences.

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.

The four psychological assets of interest, practice, purpose, and hope are not You have it or you don’t commodities.

Hester Lacey.

Try and read articles by her.

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

interests are not discovered through introspection. Instead, interests are triggered by interactions with the outside world.

Jeff Bezos has observed, “One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves.”

the initial triggering of a new interest must be followed by subsequent encounters that retrigger your attention—again and again and again.

interests thrive when there is a crew of encouraging supporters, including parents, teachers, coaches, and peers.

reality is that our early interests are fragile, vaguely defined, and in need of energetic, years-long cultivation and refinement.

the grittier an individual is, the fewer career changes they’re likely to make.

The individual could be searching for his or her aha moment through all the tumbling.

The really crucial insight of Ericsson’s research, though, is not that experts log more hours of practice. Rather, it’s that experts practice differently.

the amount of time musicians devote to practicing alone is a much better predictor of how quickly they develop than time spent practicing with other musicians.

more common sequence is to start out with a relatively self-oriented interest,

then learn self-disciplined practice, and, finally, integrate that work with an other-centered purpose.

that beyond-the-call-of-duty performance led to an invitation to help open international locations, which led to a corporate executive position, and so on.

you’re an optimist, you might say, I mismanaged my time. Or: I didn’t work efficiently because of distractions. These explanations are all temporary and specific; their “fixability” motivates you to start clearing them away as problems.

When you keep searching for ways to change your situation for the better, you stand a chance of finding them. When you stop searching, assuming they can’t be found, you guarantee they won’t.

I like to think of a growth mindset this way: Some of us believe, deep down, that people really can change.

adopting a gritty perspective involves recognizing that people get better at things—they grow.

update your beliefs about intelligence and talent.

practice optimistic self-talk.

Ask for a helping hand.