Angela duckworth grit pdf download

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What the Data Show

As a researcher in psychology, Duckworth showed the predictive power of grit on success in a variety of fields:

• West Point dropouts: New cadets endure an intense 7-week boot camp called Beast Barracks. 1 in 20 drops out. The admissions criteria used for West Point, the Whole Candidate Score (which consists of SAT score, high school rank, and physical fitness), didn’t reliably predict who would drop out. In contrast, grit predicted completion better than any other predictor – candidates with 1 standard deviation higher grit were 60% more likely to finish summer training.
• Army Special Operations Forces: 42% of candidates withdrew during the Selection Course. Grit predicted retention.
• Sales: Grit predicted salespeople retention better than other personality traits – extroversion, emotional stability, conscientiousness. Someone with 1 standard deviation higher grit showed 40% greater retention at the end of 6 months.
• College GPA: Among U Penn undergrad psych majors, Grit was associated with higher GPAs, and had a stronger effect when controlling for SAT scores.
  • Grit was associated with lower SAT scores. Possible...

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Thus, the studies show a significant bias toward talent that can tip the scale in a decision.

Duckworth gives the example of comparing Hillary vs Bill Clinton. Bill seems to be a naturally gifted politician, while Hillary is competent but has to work hard to fit the role. The implication is that she’ll never be his equal without the talent.

Why do we obsess so much over talent?

Nietzsche argues, "our vanity promotes the cult of the genius. For if we think of genius as something magical, we are not obliged to compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking. To call someone ‘divine’ means: ‘here there is no need to compete."

In other...

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And grit isn’t just about staying on the treadmill – grit is about getting back on the treadmill, day after day. If you stop jumping on the treadmill, your effort drops to zero, your skills stop improving, and you stop achieving output.

Helpful Quotes

"Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in any one of those actions; only the fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all together, produce excellence." – Dan Chambliss, sociologist.

"The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is: I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be outworked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me. You might be all of those things. You got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there are two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple." – Will Smith

... </td> 4.3 </tr> 90% 4.5 95% 4.7 99% 4.9 </table>

Grit has two components: passion and perseverance, and the questions actually correspond to both.

For your passion score, add up the odd-numbered items above. For your perseverance score, add up the even-numbered items.

Chances are, your perseverance score is higher than your passion score. People tend to be better at working hard than at maintaining a consistent focus. It’s easy to get attracted to a new idea. It’s hard to maintain that passion over a consistent period of time without giving up.

Because people have different scores, this suggests passion and perseverance are different things.

Rather than letting your interest be an intense burst of firecrackers that...

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• Maturation happens naturally over time as people learn that grit is a successful strategy for accomplishing goals, and that the opposite – quitting plans, shifting goals, starting over – leads to failure and is unsatisfying. Furthermore, life experiences – like getting a job, having children, caring for parents – require us to mature and adopt more grit.

Because we don’t have longitudinal studies of grit, we can’t distinguish between these explanations, but the third is Duckworth’s favorite. Anecdotally, people change when new expectations are thrust upon them – imagine the teen who sleeps in daily, but then enlists in the military and is punished for waking up past 6 AM. Grit can be grown.

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Duckworth argues that high-achieving gritty people stick with an interest and have fewer career changes than low-grit people.

How to Develop Your Interests

Part of the problem is an unrealistic expectation of how interests are discovered. People expect to find something that just clicks and to fall head-over-heels in love with "their passion," just as in romance.

This doesn’t happen in most cases. Instead, passion needs to be developed. It starts with discovery, followed by development, then a lifetime of deepening. You shouldn’t expect your passion to materialize suddenly one day - if you believe this, then you’ll flit from interest to interest, never giving one the shot it deserves to develop into a passion.

A few guidelines around finding interests:

• You shouldn’t expect to discover your interest early in life or right out of college – many people find their life’s work after trying lots of different things.
• Interests rely on trying things and receiving more information. You shouldn’t expect to arrive at your passion solely by introspection. You can’t simply will yourself to like things.
• Ironically, it’s harder to feel when...

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Even very motivated people don’t necessarily practice deliberately. (Shortform note: This could be part of the reason people complain that a person can work very hard but not succeed. It’s not just about putting in time, but also using that time efficiently to get the best results.)

Grittier people tend to find deliberate practice more enjoyable than less gritty people, and they also do more of it. It’s unclear what direction the causality is – grittier people could spend more time in practice because of their perseverance and develop a taste for it, or grittier people innately enjoy hard work and that pushes them to do more of it.

How to Conduct Better Deliberate Practice

To increase deliberate practice, make it a habit. Figure out when and where you’re best at doing deliberate practice. Then commit to doing it then and there every day. This makes you get into deliberate practice automatically without thinking about it.

• "There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual, for whom the beginning of every bit of work are subjects of express volitional deliberation." – psychologist William James

Furthermore, change...

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(Shortform note: do gritty people naturally empathize with people and want to be altruistic? Or can you develop purpose, which in turn makes you grittier? Is this malleable? The book doesn’t address this.)

Jobs vs Careers vs Callings

Here’s an illustrative story. Three bricklayers are asked, "what are you doing?"

• The first says, "I am laying bricks."
• The second says, "I am building a church."
• The third says, "I am building the house of God."

The first bricklayer has a job. The second has a career. The third has a calling.

Defined further, people who have jobs are interested only in the material benefits from work and don’t receive other rewards from it. The work is not an end in itself. People who have careers have deeper personal investment and enjoy advancement within the organizational structure.

People who have callings find their work inseparable from their life – the work is personally fulfilling.

(Shortform example: a reporter visited the SpaceX factory floor and asked someone what he was working on. The SpaceX worker replied, "the mission of SpaceX is to make humans a multi-planetary species. To accomplish...

Why are Shortform Summaries the Best?

We're the most efficient way to learn the most useful ideas from a book.

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• In contrast, optimists are likely to point to specific behaviors, like "I mismanaged my time" or "I didn’t communicate my expectations well enough." This leads to actionables to address next time and gives hope of improvement

Addressing specific and temporary causes is a part of cognitive behavioral therapy. If you keep searching for solutions to your problems, you at least have a chance of solving them. If you stop looking, you have zero chance.

"Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right." – Henry Ford

The Growth Mindset

A similar concept is the growth mindset, that intelligence can be trained and is not innate.

To consider whether you have a growth mindset, see how much you agree with these statements:

• Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.
• You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are.
• No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit.
• You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.

If you disagreed with the first two and agreed with the last two, then you have more of a growth mindset.

A growth...

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Children aren’t always the better judge of what to do, how hard to work, and when to give up. They need proper reinforcement from adults to hone this sense.

Wise Parenting Leads to Better Outcomes

Wise parenting produces kids who get higher grades, are more self-reliant, and experience less anxiety and depression. This is generally true across ethnicity, social class, and marital status.

• For instance, white children of middle-class, non-intact families showed a GPA difference of 3.14 vs 2.73 for authoritative vs nonauthoritative parenting. Black children of working-class, non-intact families showed GPA differences of 2.78 vs 2.42.

As children age, wise parenting leads to the healthiest behavior of all parenting styles.

• Children of neglectful parents performed worst, drinking alcohol and smoking at a rate twice as much as their wise-parented peers. They also showed multiples more rates of antisocial behavior and internalizing symptoms (depression).
• Indulgent parenting produced children slightly better than neglectful parenting.
• Compared to wise parenting, authoritarian parenting produced children with similar alcohol and smoking use, but...

... Duckworth argues it’s both – follow-through requires a baseline of grit, then builds it at the same time. This is the "corresponsive principle" – the traits that steer us toward certain life situations are the same traits that those situations reinforce.

This can lead to both virtuous and vicious cycles. Someone who is encouraged to try and try again, against her comfort, may experience the satisfaction of a breakthrough. This may then encourage the child to try even more difficult things, then to welcome challenge.

The Dean of Admissions at Harvard College says these students stand out: students who "have made a commitment to pursue something they love, believe in, and value – and have done so with singular energy, discipline, and plain old hard work." He argues that the experience of persevering through obstacles teaches valuable lessons, and that this grit is then transferrable to something else.

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• Pete Carroll says: "Always compete." "You’re either competing or you’re not." "Compete in everything you do." "You’re a Seahawk 24-7." "Finish strong." "Positive self-talk." "Team first." "Be early."

Give the Grit Scale questionnaire to people and let them see their results.

Give a test of grit (like the treadmill test) and make the results publicly known.

Test your teammates on memorizing your cultural values and articulating what it means.

Lead by example. Built an improvement plan for someone who is struggling, and execute it alongside them. They will soon bootstrap themselves to improve independently.

Recruit people who are demonstrably grittier than the average in your team.

Praise behavior that is gritty.

Be a supportive and demanding mentor. Think about how you would treat your own children.

Quote

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no...

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• intellectual (curiosity, zest)

Each of these clusters predicts different outcomes.

Does encouraging grit set expectations unrealistically high for children? Will they grow up thinking they can be Mozart or Einstein? If they realize they can’t get there, will they give up?

• The point of growth is not to become Einstein – it’s to be the best you can, and to break past your self-imposed limits. To be gritty is to put one foot in front of the other, day after week after year, to fall down and rise again.