Grit

Key Concepts

Our culture typically values “natural” skill over grit

“The “naturalness bias” is a hidden prejudice against those who’ve achieved what they have because they worked for it, and a hidden preference for those whom we think arrived at their place in life because they’re naturally talented. We may not admit to others this bias for naturals; we may not even admit it to ourselves. But the bias is evident in the choices we make.” (p. 25)

“In my view, the biggest reason a preoccupation with talent can be harmful is simple: 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.” (p. 31)

...but grit is the behavior that leads most to success

Dan Chambliss: “Yes, but the main thing is that greatness is doable. Greatness is many, many individual feats, and each of them is doable.” (p. 38)

(p. 42)

“Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them.” (p. 42)

“talent x effort = skill” (p. 44)

“skill x effort = achievement” (p. 44)

The passion necessary to build great skill lasts over many years

Grit Scale

“If you scored high on passion, you probably scored high on perseverance, too. And vice versa. Still, I’ll take a guess that your perseverance score is a wee bit higher than your passion score. This isn’t true for all people, but it’s true for most people I’ve studied.” (p. 57)

“This consistent pattern—perseverance scores more often topping passion scores—is a clue that passion and perseverance aren’t exactly the same thing.” (p. 57)

“But the important thing is the idea itself: Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.” (p. 58)

“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. You are not capricious. Each day, you wake up thinking of the questions you fell asleep thinking about. You are, in a sense, pointing in the same direction, ever eager to take even the smallest step forward than to take a step to the side, toward some other destination. At the extreme, one might call your focus obsessive. Most of your actions derive their significance from their allegiance to your ultimate concern, your life philosophy. You have your priorities in order.” (p. 64)

“My own experience, and the stories of grit paragons like Jeff Gettleman and Bob Mankoff suggest that, indeed, grit grows as we figure out our life philosophy, learn to dust ourselves off after rejection and disappointment, and learn to tell the difference between low-level goals that should be abandoned quickly and higher-level goals that demand more tenacity.” (p. 86)

Psychological assets that gritty people have in common 

“Together, the research reveals the psychological assets that mature paragons of grit have in common. There are four.” (p. 91)

“First comes interest. Passion begins with intrinsically enjoying 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!’” (p. 91)

“Next comes the capacity to practice. One form of perseverance is the daily discipline of trying to do things better than we did yesterday.” (p. 91)

“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.” (p. 91)

“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.” (p. 91)

Finding one’s passion

“First, research shows that people are enormously more satisfied with their jobs when they do something that fits their personal interests.” (p. 97)

“Second, people perform better at work when what they do interests them.” (p. 97)

“That said, I don’t think most young people need encouragement to follow their passion. Most would do exactly that—in a heartbeat—if only they had a passion in the first place. If I’m ever invited to give a commencement speech, I’ll begin with the advice to foster a passion. And then I’ll spend the rest of my time trying to change young minds about how that actually happens.” (p. 99)

“...passion for your work is a little bit of discovery, followed by a lot of development, and then a lifetime of deepening.” (p. 103)

“Second, interests are not discovered through introspection. Instead, interests are triggered by interactions with the outside world. The process of interest discovery can be messy, serendipitous, and inefficient.” (p. 104)

“Third, what follows the initial discovery of an interest is a much lengthier and increasingly proactive period of interest development. Crucially, the initial triggering of a new interest must be followed by subsequent encounters that retrigger your attention—again and again and again.” (p. 104)

“Finally, interests thrive when there is a crew of encouraging supporters, including parents, teachers, coaches, and peers…. For one thing, they provide the ongoing stimulation and information that is essential to actually liking something more and more. Also—more obviously—positive feedback makes us feel happy, competent, and secure.” (p. 105)

“If you’d like to follow your passion but haven’t yet fostered one, you must begin at the beginning: discovery. Ask yourself a few simple questions: What do I like to think about? Where does my mind wander? What do I really care about? What matters most to me? How do I enjoy spending my time? And, in contrast, what do I find absolutely unbearable? If you find it hard to answer these questions, try recalling your teen years, the stage of life at which vocational interests commonly sprout.” (p. 114)

Experts build their skills through deliberate practice

“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. Unlike most of us, experts are logging thousands upon thousands of hours of what Ericsson calls deliberate practice.” (p. 120)

“This is how experts practice: (p. 121)

• “First, they set a stretch goal, zeroing in on just one narrow aspect of their overall performance.” (p. 121)

• “Then, with undivided attention and great effort, experts strive to reach their stretch goal. Interestingly, many choose to do so while nobody’s watching.” (p. 121)

• “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.” (p. 122)

• “Then experts start all over again with a new stretch goal.” (p. 123)

Having a purpose supports grit

“In other words, the 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. The psychologist Benjamin Bloom was among the first to notice this three-phase progression.” (p. 143)

“In my “grit lexicon,” therefore, purpose means “the intention to contribute to the well-being of others.”” (p. 146)

“In sharp contrast, you can see that grittier people are dramatically more motivated than others to seek a meaningful, other-centered life. Higher scores on purpose correlate with higher scores on the Grit Scale.” (p. 147)

But purpose often requires a role model—seeing someone else execute against their purpose

“The purposeful role model could be a family member, a historical figure, a political figure. It doesn’t really matter who it is, and it doesn’t even matter whether that purpose is related to what the child will end up doing. ‘What matters,’ Bill explained, ‘is that someone demonstrates that it’s possible to accomplish something on behalf of others.’” (p. 162)

“In fact, he can’t remember a single case in which the development of purpose unfolded without the earlier observation of a purposeful role model. ‘Ideally,’ he said, ‘the child really gets to see how difficult a life of purpose is—all the frustrations and the obstacles—but also how gratifying, ultimately, it can be.’” (p. 162)

Cultivating purpose

“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.” (p. 165)

• “David Yeager recommends reflecting on how the work you’re already doing can make a positive contribution to society.” (p. 166)

• “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.” (p. 166)

• “Finally, Bill Damon recommends finding inspiration in a purposeful role model. He’d like you to respond in writing to some of the questions he uses in his interview research, including, “Imagine yourself fifteen years from now. What do you think will be most important to you then?” and “Can you think of someone whose life inspires you to be a better person? Who? Why?”” (p. 168)

Grit requires hope

“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.” (p. 169)

How to teach yourself to be more gritty

(p. 192)

“My first suggestion in that regard is to update your beliefs about intelligence and talent.” (p. 192)

“My next suggestion is to practice optimistic self-talk.” (p. 193)

“...let me offer one final suggestion for teaching yourself hope: Ask for a helping hand.” (p. 193)

Warm, supportive, and demanding parents lead to gritty children

“Regardless of gender, ethnicity, social class, or parents’ marital status, teens with warm, respectful, and demanding parents earned higher grades in school, were more self-reliant, suffered from less anxiety and depression, and were less likely to engage in delinquent behavior. The same pattern replicates in nearly every nation that’s been studied and at every stage of child development.” (p. 213)

“Growing up with support, respect, and high standards confers a lot of benefits, one of which is especially relevant to grit—in other words, wise parenting encourages children to emulate their parents.” (p. 214)

“Nevertheless, as a parent and as a social scientist, I would recommend that, as soon as your child is old enough, you find something they might enjoy doing outside of class and sign them up.” (p. 224)

The Hard Thing Rule

“In our family, we live by the Hard Thing Rule. It has three parts. The first is that everyone—including Mom and Dad—has to do a hard thing. A hard thing is something that requires daily deliberate practice.” (p. 241)

“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.” (p. 241)

“And, finally, the Hard Thing Rule states that you get to pick your hard thing. Nobody picks it for you because, after all, it would make no sense to do a hard thing you’re not even vaguely interested in.” (p. 241)

Being in a group culture that values grit will increase the grit of the individuals in the group 

“The bottom line on culture and grit is: If you want to be grittier, find a gritty culture and join it. If you’re a leader, and you want the people in your organization to be grittier, create a gritty culture.” (p. 245)

“The drive to fit in—to conform to the group—is powerful indeed. Some of the most important psychology experiments in history have demonstrated how quickly, and usually without conscious awareness, the individual falls in line with a group that is acting or thinking a different way.” (p. 247)

Quotables

“By the last day of Beast, seventy-one cadets had dropped out. Grit turned out to be an astoundingly reliable predictor of who made it through and who did not.” (p. 10)

“...I came to a fundamental insight that would guide my future work: Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.” (p. 14)

“After reading the first fifty pages of Galton’s book, Darwin wrote a letter to his cousin, expressing surprise that talent made the short list of essential qualities. ‘You have made a convert of an opponent in one sense,’ wrote Darwin. ‘For I have always maintained that, excepting fools, men did not differ much in intellect, only in zeal and hard work; and I still think this is an eminently important difference.’” (p. 21)

“No one can see in the work of the artist how it has become,” Nietzsche said. “That is its advantage, for wherever one can see the act of becoming one grows somewhat cool.” In other words, we want to believe that Mark Spitz was born to swim in a way that none of us were and that none of us could. We don’t want to sit on the pool deck and watch him progress from amateur to expert. We prefer our excellence fully formed. We prefer mystery to mundanity. (p. 39)“What about your wonderful wife, Myrna?” I asked. “Oh, she is wonderful. More wonderful than I am, certainly. But is she perfect? Is she the only person I could have made a happy life with? Am I the only man in the world with whom she could have made a wonderful marriage? I don’t think so.” (p. 102)

“So, parents, parents-to-be, and non-parents of all ages, I have a message for you: Before hard work comes play.” (p. 106)

“The key, Paul explained, is that novelty for the beginner comes in one form, and novelty for the expert in another. For the beginner, novelty is anything that hasn’t been encountered before. For the expert, novelty is nuance.” (p. 114)

“...I’ve come to the following conclusion: Gritty people do more deliberate practice and experience more flow.” (p. 131)

“So it seems to me,” Dan concluded, “that there’s a hard way to get grit and an easy way. The hard way is to do it by yourself. The easy way is to use conformity—the basic human drive to fit in—because if you’re around a lot of people who are gritty, you’re going to act grittier.” (p. 247)

“Take, for example, Schofield’s Definition of Discipline. These words, first spoken in an 1879 address to the cadets by then superintendent John Schofield, are the sort you’d expect a West Pointer to know by heart. The passage that cadets must memorize begins: ‘The discipline which makes the soldiers of a free country reliable in battle is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment. On the contrary, such treatment is far more likely to destroy than to make an army.’” (p. 258)

“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. (p. 275)”