Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth asks what is the biggest indication of future excellence and comes to the conclusion that it is grit, a combination of passion and perseverance. The ideas, case studies, and research at the core of this book are compelling and clear in their explanation.
Angela Duckworth, PhD, is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania which is to say, she is qualified to be presenting the research that she is. You can feel the expertise and passion that she holds for this subject all throughout the book.
So the big question, should you read this book? If you enjoy self-help/psychology books, want to learn more about motivation, or are sick of your kids rolling their eyes when you tell them “you just need to work harder” this book is worth your time..
Key Idea
Grit is essential, so what is it?
I love how Duckworth frames grit as Passion + Perseverance. The simple combination of two virtues helps me put the ideas into perspective. We have all passions that come and go with the years as we change and grow. Grit isn’t sticking with one decision for your entire life, but it is a commitment to engage with what you are passionate about in a consistent deliberate way.
Someone with grit sets goals, and strives to meet those goals with deliberate and consistent practice. This idea echo’s a lot of the same ideas found within these books that I have already reviewed:
- Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
- The Talent Code: Unlocking the Secret of Skill in Sports, Art, Music, Math, and Just About Everything Else
- Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
My Favorite Studies and Ideas
The Art of Deliberate Practice
Duckworth sets out a clear and functional framework to define deliberate and skillful practice which I want to share. She breaks down what the key basic elements are and provides a great check for if your own practice is living up to that goal.
“Each of the basic requirements of deliberate practice is unremarkable:
• A clearly defined stretch goal
• Full concentration and effort
• Immediate and informative feedback
• Repetition with reflection and refinement
But how many hours of practice do most people accomplish that checks all four of these boxes? My guess is that many people are cruising through life doing precisely zero hours of daily deliberate practice.”
Ask yourself, how many hours do you have of daily deliberate practice? Do you have deliberate practice in your job, your studies, your hobbies, or you own passions?
The Flynn Effect: Why you are Smarter than you Expect
This book is the second time that I have encountered the Flynn Effect and I just can’t stop thinking about how crazy this is! I will let the brief excerpt from Grit explain:
On the most widely used IQ tests today— the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale— gains have averaged more than fifteen points in the last fifty years in the more than thirty countries that have been studied. Put another way, if you scored people a century ago against modern norms, they would have an average IQ score of 70— borderline for mentally retarded. If you scored people today against the norms of a century ago, we would have an average IQ score of 130— the typical cut score for mentally gifted programs.”
Take a second and think about how crazy that is. The average person alive today is magnitudes smarter on an intelligence quotient exam than they were even a century ago. The tests are consistent, but children have collectively improved at an astounding rate over time all over the world. We all have the potential for excellence and it can be easy to let labels get in the way of our own self confidence, an average person today would have been considered gifted fifty years ago.
The Power of Continual Improvement
Amy Wrzesniewski, an organization psychologist conducting research on how to add meaning to work in a variety of different contexts, recommends thinking about small adjustments that can bring your work in line with your core values, what she calls “job crafting.” Job crafting is an intervention technique that she has been studying with fellow psychologists Jane Dutton, Justin Berg, and Adam Grant.
“Amy and her collaborators recently tested this idea at Google. Employees working in positions that don’t immediately bring the word purpose to mind— in sales, marketing, finance, operations, and accounting, for example— were randomly assigned to a job-crafting workshop. They came up with their own ideas for tweaking their daily routines, each employee making a personalized “map” for what would constitute more meaningful and enjoyable work. Six weeks later, managers and coworkers rated the employees who attended this workshop as significantly happier and more effective.”
The simple act of taking the time to make small personal adjustments to their daily routine was able to create a healthier and happier workplace. This practice can however be applied in a wide variety of contexts. Everything we do is composed of a variety of different smaller component tasks and related factors. Take the time to consider what your small pain points are and try to find ways to fix them at work or otherwise.
If you are interested in this type of job crafting and continual improvement, I would recommend Atomic Habits by James Clear.
Hard Thing Rule
Duckworth describes a rule that they use at home for their adolescent children as well as for herself and her husband, what she calls the Hard Thing Rule. The Hard Thing Rule draws on Duckworths research on Grit and the need for practice to encourage healthy habits to create real skill. Here are the three components of the hard stuff rule:
- Everyone in the family has to do a hard thing daily which requires deliberate practice.
- You can quit from your chosen “hard thing” but you can’t quit until the season is over, the tuition payment is up, or some other “natural” stopping point.
- You get to choose your hard thing. Nobody gets to pick your hard thing for you.
The first component is important because it provides a sense of community. We are all better at doing hard things when we have support and others working equally hard around us. The second component gives autonomy to each person to quit something that isn’t working while providing the guardrails to stick it out even when things are hard until a natural conclusion comes around. There can often be a hump between starting something and getting good enough to really enjoy it, this rule helps us stick with our commitments. Finally, there has to be a sense of autonomy to our choices. By making clear that we all get to choose our hard task rather than having it choose for us Duckworth ensures that her children know they have control over their own lives.
Favorite Quote
“And here’s the really important thing. Grit is about working on something you care about so much that you’re willing to stay loyal to it.” “It’s doing what you love. I get that.” “Right, it’s doing what you love, but not just falling in love— staying in love.”
So, Should I read ?
Grit was an overall excellent read. Duckworth presents her own ideas drawn from history, numerous case studies, and research that is directly relevant to the topic at hand, much of which she conducted the studies for herself. If you read a lot of books in this same genre many of the case studies will be already known to you, but that failed to detract much from my overall experience. If you are interested in Grit, this is the book for you.
