Grit is the combination of passion and perseverance and, author Angela Duckworth says, is the biggest predictor of achievement.
Takeaways
- Grit is a mix of passion and perseverance
- Grit matters more than talent in achieving success
- You can grow your grit
- Find an interest, develop it into a passion, and stick with it
Notes
About the Author:
Angela Duckworth is a psychology researcher, Oxford and Harvard alumna, and psychology teacher at the University of Pennsylvania.
She became popular because of her research on grit, perseverance, and achievement, for which she also won a MacArthur Award. The concept of Grit and Duckworth’s research has been controversial.
Grit is a mix of passion and perseverance
It’s that mix of passion and perseverance that Angela Duckworth calls Grit.
She says that the most successful people have grit, as well as:
- Have huge perseverance
- Never feel like they’re good enough, but are satisfied being unsatisfied
- Love the chase as much as the capture
- Have an enduring passion for carrying them through boring and painful times
- They know what they want: they have both determination and direction
Effort Counts Twice
Talent x Effort = Skill →
Skill x Effort = Achievement
Talent is how quickly your skill improves when you invest effort.
Achievement is when you take the required skills and use them.
In Duckworth’s framework, effort figures twice.
First by building the skill, and second by deploying those skills until you achieve your goals and objectives.
The author recognizes that this equation is incomplete as it doesn’t include other important variables -ie.: a great coach- but adds that it’s still relevant to understand the importance of effort.
Staying Gritty
Grit is about working on something you love so much that you simply want to keep at it.
Grit is falling in love and staying in love.
Grit means keeping the same end goal -which she calls a “life philosophy”- over a prolonged period of time.
Importantly, gritty people have related lower-level and mid-level goals supporting their life philosophy.
Imagine a pyramid, with the lower-level goals all there in support of the top.
On the other hand, people lacking in grit tend to have goals that don’t align. And some other people have a big final goal but without any supporting mid-level and lower-level goals. The author calls it “positive fantasizing”.
You can, and sometimes should, swap or scrap lower-level goals if that makes sense in your circumstances.
But you should strive to stay stubborn about your high-level goal.
Grit is falling in love and STAYING in love
Staying ‘Gritty’
In part, our Grit is genetically determined.
But all human traits are a mix of genes and experience and you can influence all of them.
Angela Duckworth says there are four specific psychological assets that the Grittiest people have and that serve to counter the forces that urge us to quit.
They are, in order:
- Interest: Passion starts with enjoying what we do. You don’t have to enjoy every single part, but you enjoy it overall
- Practice: You must devote yourself to improving in your focus area zeroing in on your weaknesses. “Whatever it takes I want to improve” is a common trait among gritty people
- Purpose: The conviction that your work matters, that it’s connected to the well-being of others. Interest without purpose is hard to sustain
- Hope: Hope encompasses all three stages and is what will keep you going when things are difficult and doubts arise
You can learn all four elements, suggests the author.
Enthusiasm is common, endurance is rare
Duckworth spend some time explaining how to train, for which you can also look into our deep dive:
Duckworth also talks about Learned Optimism, Growth and Fixed mindset, and says that a Growth Mindset is strongly linked to higher levels of Grit (read how to develop a growth mindset).
Criticism
“Grit” as a psychological trait might not exist.
Grit is likely to be simply another definition of consciousness as measured in the Big Five personality traits.
You can read more here:
This does not necessarily change much in what grit, or call it “tenacity” or “staying power” if you prefer, means to your success.
However, it does, in my opinion, take away from the author’s personal reputation.
As Jordan Peterson, author of 12 Rules for Life says in this Quora answer, Duckworth never apologized for her (likely) mistake.
Personality psychologist Keith Campbell said the same:
Consider the case of the Grit Scale, created by psychologist Angela Duckworth, who wrote about it in her bestselling book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Her TED Talk on grit is one of the most viewed.
The Grit Scale captures an important trait in what determines success versus adversity, especially for long-term goals. However, as several researchers reported in a 2017 meta-analysis, grit turns out to be a variant of the Big Five trait of conscientiousness—but with a cooler name. That doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with the Grit Scale, and in fact, it means the scale was well built, but it is redundant in some ways.
And it does cast a shadow of doubt upon Duckworth’s recipes on “how to increase grit”, which now basically rests on… Little science?
Personally, I believe in the validity of this grit and/or conscientiousness. And I also tend to believe in the validity of combining passion with perseverance to “deepen” your passion.
Review
Grit is a good book, and although founded on a ‘wrong’ scale that replicates conscientiousness, it remains valid in many of its takes on what contributes to long-term success.
Check out the best psychology books, or if you’re interested in grit to become successful:
The Program For Achievement
We start with the mindsets of success and delve deep into the social strategies, skills, and behavior to gain status, respect, and attraction:
