Review: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Author: Angela Duckworth
“To be gritty is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. To be gritty is to hold fast to an interesting and purposeful goal. To be gritty is to invest, day after week after year, in challenging practice. To be gritty is to fall down seven times, and rise eight.”
Intro
Angela Duckworth defines grit not as “genius” but rather a combination of passion & long-term perseverance. She uses study after study to show how grit leads to success much more than talent or natural ability does.
The following is the result of her research of the “psychological assets that mature paragons of grit have in common”:
First comes interest. Passion begins with intrinsically enjoying the what you do. Every gritty person I’ve studied can point to aspects of their work they enjoy less than others, and most have to put up with at least one or two chores they don’t enjoy at all. Nevertheless, they’re captivated by the endeavor as a whole. With enduring fascination and childlike curiosity, they practically shout out, “I love what I do!”
Next comes the capacity to practice. One form of perseverance is the daily discipline of trying to do things better than we did yesterday. So, 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. You must zero in on your weaknesses, and you must do so over and over again, for hours a day, week after month after year. To be gritty is to resist complacency. “Whatever it takes, I want to improve!” is a refrain of all paragons of grit, no matter how excellent they already are.
Third is purpose. What ripens passion is the conviction that your work matters. For most people, interest without purpose is nearly impossible to sustain for a lifetime. It is therefore imperative that you identify your work as both personally interesting and, at the same time, integrally connected to the well-being of others. For a few, a sense of purpose dawns early, but for many, the motivation to serve others heightens after the development of interest and years of disciplined practice. Regardless, fully mature exemplars of grit invariably tell me, “My work is important — both to me and to others.”
And, finally, hope. Hope is a rising-to-the-occasion kind of perseverance. In this book, I discuss it after interest, practice, and purpose — but hope does not define the last stage of grit. It defines every stage. From the very beginning to the very end, it is inestimably important to learn to keep going even when things are difficult, even when we have doubts. At various points, in big ways and small, we get knocked down. If we stay down, grit loses. If we get up, grit prevails.
She says that these psychological assets are not things you have or don’t have. They are all learnable. That’s what the latter three quarters of her book is about.
“Language is one way to cultivate hope. But modeling a growth mindset — demonstrating by our actions that we truly believe people can learn to learn — may be even more important.”
Ratings (1–5)
- Likelihood of recommending a friend to read? 📚📚📚📚📚
- Likelihood of recommending a friend to purchase? 💰💰💰💰
- Positive Influence: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Time to read (more stars is more time): 🕒🕒
- How related to business? 🕴️🕴️🕴️🕴️
“Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.”
Two or Three Favorite Things
In Grit, Duckworth shares a study looking at why one person would grow up to be an optimist & another to be a pessimist.
The study worked with a group of middle school students. It looked for “helpless” students who they thought struggled due to their lack of intellectual ability and not for a lack of effort.
Her hypothesis was that their “core beliefs about success and learning” made them pessimistic, not their past failures.
In the study, she divided those same kids into two groups. They assigned half to a “success-only” program. They would praise the kids for doing well no matter how many math problems they completed. They did this each day over the course of several weeks.
The other half they assigned to an “attribution retraining program”. The students solved math problems as well. Sometimes, they told the students that they hadn’t solved enough problems and that they should have tried harder.
Afterwards, they gave both groups some easy and hard problems to solve. If only prior failures determined motivation, than being in the “success-only” program would increase motivation. Otherwise, the other program would be more effective.
What Carol found is that the children in the success only program gave up just as easily after encountering very difficult problems as they had before training. In sharp contrast, children in the attribution-retraining program tried harder after encountering difficulty. It seems as though they’d learned to interpret failure as a cue to try harder rather than as confirmation that they lacked the ability to succeed.
Another important thing that I liked is the way Duckworth said gritty people should look at goals. When to quit versus when to stick with a goal is a key attribute of gritty people (see our book review of The Dip by Seth Godin for more about the topic of when to stick versus when to quit).
We should look at goals in a hierarchy.
Higher-level goals are more abstract. They are the things you long to achieve. The highest goal IS the end goal, desire or purpose
The lower a goal is in the hierarchy means the more it is a means to an end. Since it’s not the end goal, it is a more flexible goal. The goal’s value is in its effectiveness in moving you towards the higher-level goal.
If the lower-level goals are not moving us towards the higher-level goals then we can change them.
The highest-level goal is what we’ve determined is most important, our purpose. It is the goal we should never give up on and always have in mind when working towards our other goals.
I loved this part as it shows there are appropriate times for quitting. But when and what we quit is the difference in being gritty versus not being gritty.
“Gritty people do more deliberate practice and experience more flow.”
One last thing Duckworth talks about is how deliberate practice is a huge part of developing grit.
We show grit by deliberate practice.
We grow our passion & purpose by developing our knowledge & skills through deliberate practice.
Deliberate practice increases our ability to experience flow — a joyful state of intense focus on what we’re doing.
“Deliberate practice is a behavior, and flow is an experience”
The first (practice) is what experts do, the second (flow) is what experts feel.
It’s certainly a motivation to excel at something, but it’s also a guide on how to get there!
“(H)ere’s what science has to say: passion for your work is a little bit of discovery, followed by a lot of development, and then a lifetime of deepening.”
Personal Impact
I felt like this book was very impactful. Duckworth simplified the message, shared many examples, and showed the way to grow and cultivate grit.
The book increased my hope that I can become more gritty and to reach my most important goals. That hope by itself increases my grittiness a touch.
There was so much meat in this book. Each chapter had me thinking and reflecting about the value and necessity of trying again.
As parents and teachers, we need to encourage effort and perseverance through setbacks and failures. Praising isn’t enough. That’s sort of the “everyone gets a trophy” culture.
The book contains a great section on parenting, teaching and developing a culture of grit.
Final Thoughts
What an interesting book!
It wasn’t hard to read and the thesis is fascinating.
I liked how Duckworth says that grit isn’t morality. We can use it to be successful in good or evil endeavors.
But success requires grit.
Grit goes hand-in-hand with a growth mindset.
A fixed mindset leads to giving-up.
A growth mindset leads to one believing he or she can improve things and get better.
Duckworth’s concludes that it’s grit and a growth-mindset that determines success. Not talent or IQ.
Read this book! It will help you recognize and value more highly grit. It will also help you learn to grow it from the inside-out.
I absolutely love what I do….It’s amazing to me how many people I know who’re well into their forties and haven’t really committed to anything. They don’t know what they’re missing.
