Grit by Angela Duckworth

Grit

• Grit is defined as hard working toward a specific direction.

• Talent is defined as natural capabilities to overcome obstacles.

• Those with more grit are often more successful at completing long-term goals than those who only rely on talent. Test scores measure talent, not grit.

• Achievement is made by using your skills. Skill is made by using your talent. The more time and focus put into both achieve greatness.

• Grit is passion and perseverance combined.

• Passion is consistency, not intensity. Another way to describe passion is sustained endurance. Passion is working on the same problem, or maintaining the same field of problems.

• Perseverance is following through and finishing set goals.

• Grit has a hierarchy. At the top is a life philosophy or a set goal. The goal or philosophy is set “just because” it’s worth doing to the individual. Every other goal is a means to get to the top, and may be added onto, adapted, amended, or halted if a better path is shown for the top goal or if circumstances force change. If a lower-level goal does not get reached, it’s not that big of a deal as long as the more important ones are.

• With competing hierarchies, progress retards and clouds the vision of what’s most important.

• With no mid-level goals to get to the top, the top goal is never reached, and disappointment follows.

• Grit can both be inherited and learned. Like any other trait, there is no one gene that determines grit or how natural you are at sticking to tasks. However, grit can be influenced by parents, coaches, teachers, etc or it can be self-taught.

Grit from the inside

• Interest. Interest in a goal or subject is required before it turns into passion. Interest is natural and it helps people survive because we are not naturally born knowing how to do everything. Interest cannot be forced, it must be cultivated and deepened. After this deep cultivation of interest, it can become mastery. Mastery is often mundane tasks done over long periods of time. Without interest in the topic, and support from others, sustained endurance is not likely to reach the level of mastery.

• Deliberate Practice. Deliberate practice is intentional. It’s pinpointing a specific weakness and improving it. Then, once that goal is reached, a new goal is set and repeated. Pinpointing weaknesses is not beating yourself up, but rather objective critique and feedback. There are the laws to deliberate practice:

1. Defining a specific goal that stretches current skills and abilities

2. Putting full/concentrated effort into that goal

3. Obtaining informative and immediate feedback on performance

4. Reflection on performance

5. Refinement of technique

6. Repeat

• Purpose. Purpose is feeling like you’re personally helping other people through your work or art. Purpose is often found only after following self-interested motivations (like playing football for fun can lead to the desire to coach). Purpose and passion are not the same; you can have one or the other or neither, but both are needed to sustain grit. Purpose helps one get through hard challenges with their goals. Pleasure is instant gratification and will not sustain grit. However, pleasure in doses can help recharge your motivation.

• Hope. Hope is gained by reward from efforts. By being objective about situations, one can analyze what can be done about a situation, work towards it, then master it. Hope is gained by mastering small things and receiving the benefits from that. There are two mindsets that either influence hope or stifle it.

1. Fixed mindset- Change is impossible or limited.

2. Growth mindset- Change is possible when certain conditions are met (that’s why it is important to know what the conditions are).

Grit from the outside

• Parenting/Teaching Grit. Two dynamics must be met for parents or anyone to teach grit: Discipline and Support. Discipline requires your kids to meet a certain standard(like not giving up when things get tough). Support is helping them reach a standard they’ve set for themselves (like when they go after something). Children (or people) often don’t know what’s best for them and need someone to show them. When there’s an imbalance of these two attributes, the parents become tyrannical, absent, or permissive.

• Extracurricular Activities. Studies are showing that those who have been involved in more than one extracurricular activity for more than two years tend to have more grit. It is inconclusive wether or not gritty people have extracurricular activities, or extracurricular activities foster gritty people. (For example, you could be lazy, then you could get a bad job, then you’re encouraged to keep being lazy. Or you could work hard, then get a job that rewards that hard work, then keep working hard) However, EC activities are both fun and challenging allowing one to foster one’s interests and capacity to stretch himself. The author has 3 rules with ECA’s.

1. Everyone in her family has to do a hard thing.

2. They can quit after its season or a natural stopping point is over (like after the marathon or after the season or after the play).

3. They can pick the hard thing.

4. (For her high school kids) Must commit to it for at least 2 years.

• Gritty Environments- Culture is a uniformed understanding of how and why people do things. If you want to develop grit, surround yourself in a gritty culture. Humans want to fit in, so it’s easy for us to conform to cultures when we join them. Our choices are made by adding cost and subtracting benefit, or they are made from what we identify with (like our top goal, or life philosophy). Cost/benefit decisions aren’t always made for long-term goals like identity decisions are. This is important because in joining a culture you share a certain identity. Good leaders of Gritty environments teach that identity clearly, so that its message is adapted into action, and that the students know that message was taught with respect. Respect starts from the top down. A good coach can turn around a bad culture or a plateaued student.

• Grit is important in obtaining high-level goals, but it’s not as important as character.