Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

by Angela Duckworth

This is how experts practice: First, they set a stretch goal, zeroing in on just one narrow aspect of their overall performance. Rather than focus on what they already do well, experts strive to improve specific weaknesses. They intentionally seek out challenges they can’t yet meet.

Then, with undivided attention and great effort, experts strive to reach their stretch goal. Interestingly, many choose to do so while nobody’s watching.

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 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.

Without hesitation, I can tell you the answer: YES. Even the most complex and creative of human abilities can be broken down into its component skills, each of which can be practiced, practiced, practiced.

The roots of knowledge are bitter, but its fruits are sweet. This always struck him as deeply untrue: “Even when the learning is hard,” he writes, “it is not bitter when you feel that it is worth having, that you can master it, that practicing what you learned will express who you are and help you achieve what you desire.”

Do experts suffer, I wanted to know. Or are they ecstatic?

I’ve come to the following conclusion: Gritty people do more deliberate practice and experience more flow. There’s no contradiction here, for two reasons. First, deliberate practice is a behavior, and flow is an experience. Anders Ericsson is talking about what experts do; Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is talking about how experts feel. Second, you don’t have to be doing deliberate practice and experiencing flow at the same time. And, in fact, I think that for most experts, they rarely go together.

Currently, my view is that the primary motivation for doing effortful deliberate practice is to improve your skill. You’re concentrating one hundred percent, and you’ve deliberately set the level of challenge to exceed your current level of skill. You’re in “problem solving” mode, analyzing everything you do to bring it closer to the ideal—the goal you set at the beginning of the practice session. You’re getting feedback, and a lot of that feedback is about what you’re doing wrong, and you’re using that feedback to make adjustments and try again.

The motivation that predominates during flow, in contrast, is entirely different. The flow state is intrinsically pleasurable. You don’t care whether you’re improving some narrow aspect of your skill set. And though you’re concentrating one hundred percent, you’re not at all in “problem solving” mode. You’re not analyzing what you’re doing; you’re just doing. You’re getting feedback, but because the level of challenge just meets your current level of skill, that feedback is telling you that you’re doing a lot right. You feel like you’re in complete control, because you are. You’re floating. You lose track of time. No matter how fast you’re running or how intensely you’re thinking, when you’re in flow, everything feels effortless.

In other words, deliberate practice is for preparation, and flow...

Other than getting yourself a terrific coach, mentor, or teacher, how can you get the most out of deliberate practice and—because you’ve earned it—experience more flow? First, know the science. 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

We explained that no matter their initial talent, great performers in every domain improve through deliberate practice. We let students know that hidden behind every effortless performance on YouTube are hours and hours of unrecorded, invisible-to-outsiders, challenging, effortful, mistake-ridden practice. We told them that trying to do things they can’t yet do, failing, and learning what they need to do differently is exactly the way experts practice. We helped them understand that feelings of frustration aren’t necessarily a sign they’re on the wrong track. On the contrary, we told them that wishing they did things better is extremely common during learning.

Which leads to my second suggestion for getting the most out of deliberate practice: Make it a habit. By this I mean, figure out when and where you’re most comfortable doing deliberate practice. Once you’ve made your selection, do deliberate practice then and there every day. Why? Because routines are a godsend when it comes to doing something hard. A mountain of research studies, including a few of my own, show that when you have a habit of practicing at the same time and in the same place every day, you hardly have to think about getting started. You just do.

“What do these creators have in common?” you’ll find the answer right in the title: daily rituals. In their own particular way, all the experts in this book consistently put in hours and hours of solitary deliberate practice. They follow routines. They’re creatures of habit.

My third suggestion for getting the most out of deliberate practice is to change the way you experience it.

“It’s all about in-the-moment self-awareness without judgment,” he continued. “It’s about relieving yourself of the judgment that gets in the way of enjoying the challenge.”

Interest is one source of passion. Purpose—the intention to contribute to the well-being of others—is another. The mature passions of gritty people depend on both.

In my “grit lexicon,” therefore, purpose means “the intention to contribute to the well-being of others.”

In sharp contrast, you can see that grittier people are dramatically more motivated than others to seek a meaningful, other-centered life.

Yale management professor Amy Wrzesniewski has found that people have no trouble at all telling her which of the three bricklayers they identify with. In about equal numbers, workers identify themselves as having: a job (“I view my job as just a necessity of life, much like breathing or sleeping”), a career (“I view my job primarily as a stepping-stone to other jobs”), or a calling (“My work is one of the most important things in my life”).

Amy’s conclusion is that it’s not that some kinds of occupations are necessarily jobs and others are careers and still others are callings. Instead, what matters is whether the person doing the work believes that laying down the next brick is just something that has to be done, or instead something that will lead to further personal success, or, finally, work that connects the individual to something far greater than the self. I agree. 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.

That’s also how people mistakenly think about interests, I pointed out. They don’t realize they need to play an active role in developing and deepening their interests.

“A calling is not some fully formed thing that you find,” she tells advice seekers. “It’s much more dynamic. 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.”

Adam’s research demonstrates that leaders and employees who keep both personal and prosocial interests in mind do better in the long run than those who are 100 percent selfishly motivated.

Purpose requires a second revelation: “I personally can make a difference.” This conviction, this intention to take action, he says, is why it’s so important to have observed a role model enact purpose in their own life. “You have to believe that your efforts will not be in vain.”

Whatever your age, it’s never too early or late to begin cultivating a sense of purpose. I have three recommendations, each borrowed from one of the purpose researchers mentioned in this chapter. David Yeager recommends reflecting on how the work you’re already doing can make a positive contribution to society.

Amy Wrzesniewski recommends thinking about how, in small but meaningful ways, you can change your current work to enhance its connection to your core values.

Finally, Bill Damon recommends finding inspiration in a purposeful role model.

“Why do you care about poor kids? They’re not family! You don’t even know them!” I now realize why. All my life, I’d seen what one person—my mother—could do to help many others. I’d witnessed the power of purpose.

One kind of hope is the expectation that tomorrow will be better than today. It’s the kind of hope that has us yearning for sunnier weather, or a smoother path ahead. It comes without the burden of responsibility. The onus is on the universe to make things better.

Grit depends on a different kind of hope. It rests on the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future. I have a feeling tomorrow will be better is different from I resolve to make tomorrow better. The hope that gritty people have has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with getting up again.

This seminal experiment proved for the first time that it isn’t suffering that leads to hopelessness. It’s suffering you think you can’t control.

It was those resilient dogs that led Marty to study the analogous I won’t quit response to adversity in people. 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.

If you’re a pessimist, you might say, I screw up everything. Or: I’m a loser. These explanations are all permanent; there’s not much you can do to change them. They’re also pervasive; they’re likely to influence lots of life situations, not just your job performance. Permanent and pervasive explanations for adversity turn minor complications into major catastrophes. They make it seem logical to give up. If, on the other hand, 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. Or as Henry Ford is often quoted as saying, “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t—you’re right.”

I like to think of a growth mindset this way: Some of us believe, deep down, that people really can change. These growth-oriented people assume that it’s possible, for example, to get smarter if you’re given the right opportunities and support and if you try hard enough and if you believe you can do it.

Undermines Growth Mindset and Grit Promotes Growth Mindset and Grit “You’re a natural! I love that.” “You’re a learner! I love that.” “Well, at least you tried!” “That didn’t work. Let’s talk about how you approached it and what might work better.” “Great job! You’re so talented!” “Great job! What’s one thing that could have been even better?” “This is hard. Don’t feel bad if you can’t do it.” “This is hard. Don’t feel bad if you can’t do it yet.” “Maybe this just isn’t your strength. Don’t worry—you have other things to contribute.”I “I have high standards. I’m holding you to them because I know we can reach them together.”

My guess is that no matter how much you embrace the idea of growth mindset, you often default to a fixed mindset.

But we’re human. So, more often than we’d like, we get frustrated. We show our impatience. In judging the person’s abilities, we allow a flicker of doubt to distract us momentarily from the more important task of what they could do next to improve.

The reality is that most people have an inner fixed-mindset pessimist in them right alongside their inner growth-mindset optimist. Recognizing this is important because it’s easy to make the mistake of changing what we say without changing our body language, facial expressions, and behavior.

Ultimately, adopting a gritty perspective involves recognizing that people get better at things—they grow. Just as we want to cultivate the ability to get up off the floor when life has knocked us down, we want to give those around us the benefit of the doubt when something they’ve tried isn’t a raging success. There’s always tomorrow.

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.

My recommendation for teaching yourself hope is to take each step in the sequence above and ask, What can I do to boost this one? My first suggestion in that regard is to update your beliefs about intelligence and talent.

Carol also explains that the brain is remarkably adaptive. Like a muscle that gets stronger with use, the brain changes itself when you struggle to master a new challenge. In fact, there’s never a time in life when the brain is completely “fixed.” Instead, all our lives, our neurons retain the potential to grow new connections with one another and to strengthen the ones we already have. What’s more, throughout adulthood, we maintain the ability to grow myelin, a sort of insulating sheath that protects neurons and speeds signals traveling between them.

The point is that you can, in fact, modify your self-talk, and you can learn to not let it interfere with you moving toward your goals. With practice and guidance, you can change the way you think, feel, and, most important, act when the going gets rough.

Cody had these final words: “You don’t need to be a parent to make a difference in someone’s life. If you just care about them and get to know what’s going on, you can make an impact. Try to understand what’s going on in their life and help them through that. That’s something I experienced firsthand. It made the difference.”

A hard thing is something that requires daily deliberate practice.

This brings me to the second part of the Hard Thing Rule: 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. You must, at least for the interval to which you’ve committed yourself, finish whatever you begin. 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. You can’t quit on a bad day.