Grit by Angela Duckworth
The Power of Passion and Perseverance
We all want to be successful, don’t we? We can look at someone and attribute their success to their talent. And others, to their hard work. So which is it? Does talent matter more than hard work, or vice versa?
Angela Duckworth, author and psychologist, writes found that innate talent alone is not enough for success. She found that each person who has been successful in their field has one thing in common: grit.
⭐ Rating: 4.3/5
What is Grit?
Grit is a unique blend of passion and perseverance.
Passion: knowing what you want and why you want it
Perseverance: continuing to do the hard work through challenges and obstacles
Grit is what keeps you going through the adversities. It’s about loving what you do and staying passionate about your interests. It’s about enduring through the hardships—continuing to show up when you don’t want to. Gritty people are able to stay determined and motivated to reach their long-term goals, despite the failures they may face along the way.
If you’re thinking to yourself, “I’m not sure if I have grit right now...” Well, lucky for you, grit can be developed over time if you’re committed to working on it.
Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn’t work hard
If you want success, relying solely on your talents is not enough. So what does it actually take to be successful in your field, or any field for that matter?
Duckworth created this formula:
⭐ Talent × Effort = Skill
⭐ Skill × Effort = Achievement
In other words, effort builds skill, and effort makes your skill productive. Talent can be your starting point, but that is not where it ends. You need to work on talents and start using them. Because where talent only counts once, effort counts twice.
Effort is twice as important and the consistency of your effort is what will take you towards success.
Small wins add up to big wins
You may be asking yourself, “How do we stay motivated? How do you continue to put effort? Won’t that just take too much time and energy?”
Duckworth gives two simple solutions for staying consistent and motivated:
Have a big dream: Your big dream is something that’s meaningful to you. Something great that can keep you inspired, even when things get tough.
Have small, achievable goals: Don’t disregard the smaller wins. See them as stepping stones that will help get you closer to your big dream. They help you make progress and stay motivated.
How do we develop grit?
Developing grit will not happen over time. It’s like a marathon rather than a sprint: you have to pace yourself so you don’t burn out, and just focus on taking the next step after the other.
4 inside-out traits to increase your grit:
Interest
Identify your passions: what do you love and enjoy doing?
Staying motivated and consistent requires you to love what you do so you can stick with it in the long run.
Practice
Practice will not bring success, but practice does require persistence, aka grit.
Let your practice be deliberate, purposeful, and systematic.
For example, if you want to work on your knitting skills, then make time to knit for 30 minutes each day—even on the days you don’t want to. Being intentional with your practice will help you see progress towards the skills you’re trying to acquire or improve on.
Purpose
You have to believe that your work matters to others other than yourself. That it in one way or another contributes to a higher purpose. Purpose is what fuels your momentum.
Hope
Nurture your hope. Have an expectation of good. Don’t focus on the failures.
When you have the mindset that you can and will overcome the challenges, you will not only begin to believe that you can do it, but you will also build perseverance.
Hope ⇒ Perseverance ⇒ Grit
3 outside-in traits for grit:
Parenting
This doesn’t have to be your parents, it can be your mentors or your role models.
It’s someone who has told and taught you to endure and push through even when it gets hard.
Training ground
When you have a set of goals and you achieve the, you develop grit. Achieving your goals is following through with what you’ve said you will do. Train yourself to be someone who follows through.
Developing a culture
We tend to surround ourselves with people who are like us. But if you are not currently gritty and want to be more gritty, surround yourself with gritty people—with people you want to be more like.
A culture shares the same norms and values with each other. Find a community that shares your values of grit.
Notable Quotes
“Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.”
“Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t.
“When I get knocked down, I’ll get back up. I may not be the smartest person in the room, but I’ll strive to be the grittiest.”
“The main thing is that greatness is doable. Greatness is many, many individual feats, and each of them is doable.”
“Success is never final; failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
“I learned a lesson I’d never forget. The lesson was that, when you have setbacks and failures, you can’t overreact to them.”
“One form of perseverance is the daily discipline of trying to do things better than we did yesterday.”
“I have a feeling tomorrow will be better is different from I resolve to make tomorrow better.”
Key Takeaways
Raw talent can only get you so far. It won’t get you to success.
Effort doesn’t have to be all time and energy consuming.
Staying consistent and persevering is of utmost important.
Failure does not need to end our journey. We can still push through and find success if we don’t let it stop us.
Combining small, low-level goals with a larger dream allows you to stay consistently motivated.
It’s time to get gritty. As Angela Duckworth puts it:
“No whining. No complaining. No excuses.”
