From The Wall Street Journal:
Angela Lee Duckworth has just returned from her 25th class reunion at Harvard. “People’s lives really do turn out differently,” she observes during an interview in a stylish boardroom. “And it certainly can’t be explained by how intelligent you remember them being when they were sitting next to you in organic chemistry class. Some of it is luck, some of it opportunity.” And some of it is “grit,” as Ms. Duckworth has told the world in articles, lectures and a 2016 bestselling book, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.”
It’s no hyperbole to talk about the 47-year-old University of Pennsylvania professor in international terms. More than eight million people have watched her 2013 TED talk on grit. That same year she won the renowned MacArthur “Genius” grant. U.S. and foreign government officials, CEOs and ordinary helicopter parents, teachers of every stripe, world-class coaches and award-winning researchers line up outside her office to pick her brain about how to make their employees, students, children or competitive swimmers grittier.
. . . .
So what is this thing called grit, and why should we believe it is a key to success? “I define grit as the tendency to pursue long-term goals with passion and persistence,” she explains, echoing her book’s subtitle. A close cousin of what personality psychologists call conscientiousness, grit deserves its own entry in the social-science lexicon, Ms. Duckworth insists: “Conscientiousness also includes self-control, orderliness, punctuality, responsibility.”
. . . .
Ms. Duckworth has her own 10-question test called the Grit Scale. She asked West Point cadets to take the test; those who scored higher were likelier to make it through the notoriously grueling “Beast Barracks” training. She also tested salespeople at a time-share company, Chicago public-school students and National Spelling Bee competitors, among others. High grit scores had the same predictive power for all of them. Persistence driven by passionate interest, she concluded after testing the various likely alternatives, predicts achievement in ways that neither conscientiousness nor IQ nor talent does.
. . . .
Ms. Duckworth has several thoughts about why parents and educators in particular have seized on grit as an answer to some of life’s—and the schools’—problems. “It’s just speculation, but there may be a reaction to the focus on standardized tests, on ability and tests of ability and aptitude,” she says. Grit offers parents a different way of thinking about their children’s futures: “It’s not just about your talent and ability, it’s also about how much heart you put into it. Also, privileged parents worry their kids don’t have enough grit—the path has been smoothed for them.”
Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (Link may expire)
PG knows more successful authors who rely on grit than who rely on writing talent without grit. This is particularly true with indie authors.
99%. In my IT day job, I’m a “finisher,” i.e. – somebody who delivers projects/tasks no matter what obstacles are placed in my path. So this result on her quiz doesn’t seem unexpected. Not sure how you teach “grit,” though.
I believe the grit she’s talking about may be very hard to teach.
I don’t know why I persist. By all reasonable standards, I should have given it up and taken it easy long ago, since the costs of getting anything done are so high.
But I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t attempt to do SOMETHING, anything, with what’s left of my life. I’m lucky that the something turned out to be something I love and something I was able to teach myself to do.
But I would have done something else if I hadn’t had the writing. And many people don’t.
Which is fine – as long as they can live with themselves. Time passes. We each get ONE life. I don’t know WHY it matters so much to me to use it, but it does.
Built-in + childhood? Nobody actually ever told me no, but I did get a lot of grudging, “Well, okay, if you insist” help: if you’re going to do that anyway, let’s have you do it properly so you don’t embarrass the family.
Duckworth’s grit scale was what I was looking for; the article didn’t have it. But I persisted until I could find a way to read the article: I’m not subscribing to WSJ for one article (which wasn’t that great). The first attempts all ran up against the paywall. Which is fine if I were going to read more of their articles – but I couldn’t even sample one through their normal channels.
Aha! Grit scale easily available:
https://angeladuckworth.com/grit-scale/
“You scored higher than about 95% of American adults in a recent study.”
Interesting quiz! I would define “grit” as a combination of mental health and stability, long-term planning ability, ability to focus despite distractions, stubbornness (which can be either a good or a bad thing, depending on circumstances), and high self-confidence (which counteracts the discouragement that can otherwise come from repeated failure; again, great if one’s business/product/idea/etc. has real potential that might just take time to be recognized, not so great if it doesn’t). All of these have genetic/epigenetic components, as well as components that are affected by parenting and culture. So you can raise a child from birth to have more (or less) “grit” than they might have had with a different upbringing, but an adult whose background is what it is and whose mental wiring is established sitting down and consciously saying, “Okay, from now on I’m gonna have more grit!” is only going to get so far.
Or at least that’s my excuse for only scoring higher than 10% of American adults…
(Though there’s also the possibility my low self-confidence caused me to rate myself lower than others would.)
That’s because I AM stubborn. VERY stubborn. It makes up for a lot of things.
Or I wouldn’t be sitting around the last few days learning a bunch of new software and new uses for old software just to design better Amazon ads. I would have quit after the first couple of hours.
I wouldn’t worry about almost anything an online test told me. There was this one on FB recently which told me I was Jewish because I somehow figured out a bunch of Yiddish expressions I’d never heard, instead of growing up in the suburbs of NYC. I think they’re clickbait.
“True grit, clear through, all sand and no dirt.”
I prefer the original 1969 movie to the remake:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Grit_(1969_film)
Just the right amount of gritty grit gritted. 😀
Worst book ever written. Duckworth is attempting to commandeer a “term” (grit) in order to access the money available at public schools by selling today’s “snake water.”
Conservatives, preach everything Duckworth says, and more, every single day but call it straight living.
Lastly, it’s becomes boring of liberals like Duckworth to attempt to co-opt the public school systems with one more “new” system that will give children an education. Here’s what does work. Remove all the time spent on social engineering, bludgeoning children to be “kind,” and telling them about the endless variations of sexual orientation.
Teach them to read, write, and writhmetic and they’ll do great. I once taught a neighbor’s son (in 8th grade) how to read. Took me all of two weeks. He’d been “passed on” over and over gain and was getting very hostile. You would too if you didn’t understand that you were being screwed over by the school system.
Have you ever taught in a public school? Because I have, and I can’t remember ever teaching anything at all about human sexuality of any kind, gay or straight. In fact, the vast majority of schools in the state I live in, Texas, do NOT teach any sex education at all. That might be why our teen pregnancy rate is through the roof compared to other states.
And what’s so terrible about teaching children kindness? Should I instead let them beat themselves bloody in some “Hunger Games” reenactment to teach them–what exactly? That bullying and violence solves all your problems? That should work great for them the first time they get a real job and punch an annoying customer!
Social skills are important, they are necessary for success, and yes, we should teach them to children, when we have time leftover after drilling them on what they need to know to pass the standardized tests.
Back in the early 80s, in Indiana, I used to read my grandma’s copies of Grit.
That’s what came to mind when I saw the headline, and wondered what the magazine had done THIS time. 🙂
I remember seeing ads for Grit in comic books during the 1970s. It was obviously some sort of newspaper but they were never very clear about the subject matter. I think I decided it must be about farming…
Carpenters know all about “grit scales” when it comes to sandpaper.