Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

by Angela Duckworth

If grit can grow, how does that happen? I get emails and letters almost every day from people who wish they had more grit. They lament that they never stuck with anything in order to get really good at it. They feel they’ve squandered their talents. They desperately want a long-term goal, and they want to pursue that goal with passion and perseverance. But they don’t know where to begin. A good place to start is to understand where you are today. If you’re not as gritty as you want to be, ask yourself why. The most obvious answer people come up with goes something like this: “I guess I’m just lazy.” Here’s another: “I’m just a flake.” Or: “I’m congenitally incapable of sticking with things.” All of these answers, I think, are wrong. 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, singularly important aim that guides almost everything else they do, the very gritty tend not to utt...