Grit

If you had to pick one metric to predict how successful someone was going to be, what would you choose?

Maybe IQ? Class rank? Some measurement of social intelligence or good looks?

It turns out that one of the strongest predictors of future success across a broad variety of endeavors is something we might not think to look at: grit.

As the author, Angela Duckworth explains:

“Grit is passion and perseverance for very long term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

Here are my notes:

• When she began interviewing  about what qualities made people in their field successful, she got a lot of field specific answers: business people said you need the ability to take calculated risks, in art they cited a compulsion to create, in athletics she frequently heard that you needed to have a competitive nature and to hate losing. There were some common answers: everyone agreed that talent and luck were both important. Every group also had examples they could cite that baffled them of rising starts that suddenly quit.
• In general, for high achievers, there is no “catching up to their own ambition,” and they end up being their own harshest critic, never satisfied with their work, “yet in a very real sense, they were satisfied being unsatisfied…it was the chase as much as the capture that was gratifying.
• At West Point, you need to be committed enough to apply in 11th grade and spend two years applying, yet many people drop out in the first two months during an initiation process called “beast.”
• West Point had an exhaustive “Total Candidate Score”, but it did a terrible job of predicting those who would drop out. For those who stayed, it did a good job of predicting grades and other measures of achievement.
• In “The Energies of Man,” Harvard psychologist William James asserted that we were making use of only a small portion of our mental and physical resources: “The human individual lives far within his limits.” He acknowledged that talent exists and that there are limits to our potential, but that the boundaries are so far out there as to be essentially irrelevant.
• Despite the fact that effort usually trumps talent and despite the fact that when asked most Americans will say that effort is more important for success, we have a deep-seated bias towards “natural talents.” In one study, subjects were given a fictional biography of two musicians , one a “natural talent,” and the other a “natural hard worker.” and then listened to a sample of music. In reality, the two pieces of music were two different sections of a song played by the same artist, but the “natural talent” was deemed to sound better, be more likely to succeed, and more hireable.
• This study was replicated with the profile of a “natural” and a “striver” entrepreneur.  Th subjects listened to a business proposal that they believed to be from the fictitious entrepreneur. People preferred to invest in the business of the “natural.” The “striver” would need 4 more years of experience and an additional $40,000 to be rated as likely to succeed.
• The reason we are so enthralled with mythologizing “natural talent” is because it lets us off the hook. We say, “this is an area where I don’t need to compete.” It gives you an excuse to not work hard.
• Talent x effort = skill. Skill x effort = achievement
• Talent is how quickly your skills advance when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you use your acquired skill.
• You’ll notice, that in the above formulas, effort counts twice.
• A Harvard study put men on a treadmill at a high speed and steep incline for 5 minutes, and some men quit early. The Harvard researchers tracked the young men (who were then in their 20’s) into their 60’s. Those who held on the longest on the treadmill were happier, healthier, and more well-adjusted.
• Grit has two components: Passion and Perseverance
• The grit scale can be broken up into these two categories and for most people, perseverance ranks higher than passion.
• She says that passion is a sustained enthusiasm
• Passion is not ephemeral, like fireworks. It’s more like a personal compass.
• The hierarchy of goals: imagine about 11 circles arranged in three rows like a pyramid. The top of the pyramid is a big circle: your top-level goal. On the second row are three medium circles, our mid-level goals. The seven small circles on the bottom are low-level goals or short-term goals. The higher up in the hierarchy a goal is, the more abstract, general, and important it is. It is an end, not just a means. You can get to a top-level goal by starting with a low-level goal and asking “why” until the answer is “just because.” Psychologists call your top-level goal your “ultimate concern.”
• Grit is about holding the same top-level goal for a long period of time.
• Positive fanaticism: you have a top-level goal but do not know how to implement it.
• To some extent, conflict is a necessary art of human existence and if you have more than one top-level goal you will have to deal with some amount of tension between the them.
• One is the ideal number of top-level goals, but you might have one personal, one professional, etc.
• Warren Buffet’s advice: 1. Write 25 career goals down. 2. Do some soul-searching and circle the 5 highest goals. 3. Take a good hard look at the goals you didn’t circle and avoid them at all costs, they are distractions from your true goals (the point of this exercise is that time and energy are limited, and you need to decide what to do and what not to do).
• Metaphorically, top-level goals are written in ink and the rest are in pencil. You can switch gears at lower levels all the time. Try something different if what you are doing isn’t working.
• Height is influenced by at least 697 genes, many of which influence other things as well. These genes also interact with environmental factors in complex ways.
• Average height is growing. According to military data, the average height of men in Great Britain used to be 5’5″ but is now 5’10. There hasn’t been enough time for a huge genetic shift. The reason is because of advances in nutrition and medicine. So even a trait that is supposedly all “nature” is actually highly influenced by nurture.”
• “Years of hard work are often mistaken for innate talent.”
• “Lectures don’t have half the effect of consequences.”
• “Matching your job to what captures your attention and imagination is a good idea. It may not guarantee happiness and success, but it sure helps the odds.
• She says that most young people don’t have a pre-existing passion, so if she were invited to give a commencement speech she would tell them to start fostering one.
• She says that multiple meta-analyses confirm that following your passion is correlated to greater success.
• Most grit paragons that she interviewed try lots of things before they find their passion.
• She says that on the day Jeff Bezos bought the domain “Amazon.com” he also bought “relentless.com.” This looks like it’s true. Type http://relentless.com into your browser and see where it takes you.
• Human beings are hard wired to get bored after a while. We focus on the new. The word “interest” comes from the Latin “interesa” which means to be different. “Interesting” is literally “different.”
• The key to going deeper with grit is to look for novelty in nuance. This is what experts do.
• “After discovery comes development.”
• The development of interest takes time. Keep asking questions and let them lead to more questions.
• Experts always want to improve. They are never satisfied. They don’t look back in frustration, they look forward in anticipation of progress.
• Deliberate Practice (how experts practice): first they set a “stretch goal” zeroing in on one aspect of their performance. They seek out challenges they can’t yet meet. With undivided attention, they work on the stretch goal. Experts often do this with no one watching. They seek immediate feedback and focus on the negative.
• They repeat until “conscious incompetence becomes unconscious competence.”
• Even world-class performers can only sustain deliberate practice for about an hour at a time and 3-5 hours per day. The mental strain is as exhausting as any physical strain.
• Deliberate practice, as described by Anders Ericcson is what experts do. Flow, as described by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi, is what experts feel.
• Deliberate practice is how they prepare, flow is how they perform.
• Deliberate practice is difficult and uncomfortable, flow is effortless and exhilarating.
• Deliberate practice is stretching yourself beyond your limit, flow is performing at your limit.
• Based on her study of spelling bee contestants, grittier people engage in more deliberate practice and enjoy it more. There are a couple reasons why that might be the case: 1) The “they learn to love the burn” story: as they engage in deliberate practice they begin to see the rewards and associate the pain with the promise of gain. 2) The “some people enjoy a challenge” story: they just like how it feels to work hard. There’s probably some truth to both explanations (bear in mind that deliberate practice can almost never be described as “fun,” but i can be gratifying.
• True deliberate practice needs to check all four boxes: 1) a clearly defined stretch goal 2) Full concentration and effort 3) Immediate and informative feedback 4) Repetition with reflection and refinement.
• She suspects that most people cruise through life averaging zero hours of deliberate practice.
• “Routines are a godsend when doing something hard.” -develop a daily routine or ritual that includes deliberate practice.
• “There is no more miserable human being than the one for whom the beginning of every bit of work must be decided anew each day.” -William James
• Children constantly engage in deliberate practice, its how very human learns how to walk. After preschool, most children begin to associate failure with shame and things start to change.
• Often you find calling or purpose by doing something in your own interest
• Optimists search for temporary, specific causes for setbacks. Pessimists looks for permanent and pervasive causes fro setbacks. Optimists are more likely to get higher grades, graduate, have a happier marriage, and be better salespeople. Pessimists are more likely to be depressed.
• In one study, elite swimmers took an optimism test and then swam a race and were told that their time was slower than their real time actually was. They were then asked to repeat the race. Optimists did just as well the second time around, pessimists did significantly worse.
• When you assume your situation can improve, you actively start looking for solutions, making it likely that you’ll find one. If you assume your situation can’t improve, you’ll stop looking for solutions, virtually ensuring that you won’t find any.
• Students with a “growth” mindset are grittier than students with a “fixed” mindset
• It is good to praise effort and learning over natural talent, especially in children
• A growth mindset leads to optimistic self-talk which leads to perseverance over adversity.
• 4 Parenting styles:
• 1) Authoritative (wise) parenting: supportive and demanding. In order to reach their potential, children need love, limits, and latitude.
• 2) Neglectful parenting: undemanding, unsupportive (creates a toxic emotional environment)
• 3) Authoritarian parenting: demanding and unsupportive.
• 4) Permissive parenting: supportive and undemanding
• She says that she doesn’t think that every moment of a child’s day should be scripted, but she does see extracurriculars as being of value in developing grit. She would like every child to be a part of at least one extracurricular activity and for high schoolers to pick one that they stick with for more than a year
• She sees tremendous value in children spending part of their week doing difficult things that interest them.
• School is hard, but not necessarily interesting. Texting or hanging out with your friends is interesting, but not hard. Ballet can be both.
• Kids involved with extracurricular activities are more successful across the board. Having too many extracurriculars is bad, but rare (my note: in general kids are using their down time for media, not for solitude and creativity. Regardless of how many extracurricular activities they have it’s critical that they learn how to get real rest from their down time).
• The corresponsive principle: a theory developed by Brent Roberts that says that the traits that steer us toward certain life situations are the very same traits that those situations encourage, reinforce, and amplify. In this relationship, there is a possibility for virtuous and viscous cycles
• The Hard Thing Rule (Angela’s family rule):
• 1) Everyone in the family, including mom and dad, needs to do a hard thing (something that requires daily deliberate practice.
• 2) You can quit, but not until the season is over or some natural stopping point. You can’t stop because you had a bad day.
• 3) You get to pick your hard thing
• For high schoolers, a fourth rule is that you must pick one thing that you stick with at least two years
• The hard way to develop grit: do it yourself. The easy way; hang around gritty people and let the innate desire to conform cause you to fall into line.
• The origin of great leadership is the respect of a commander for his subordinates.
• “Personally I have learned that if you create a vision for yourself and stick with it, you can make amazing things happen in your life. My experience is that once you have done the work to create the clear vision, it is the discipline and effort to maintain that vision that can make it come true. The two go hand-in-hand. The moment you’ve created that vision, you’re on your way. But it’s the diligence with which you stick to that vision that allows you to get there.” -Pete Carroll
• Two ways to grow your grits:
• 1) On your own. Cultivate your interests, develop a habit of daily challenge-exceeding skill practice, you can connect your work to  purpose beyond yourself, and you can learn to hope when all seems lost.
• 2) Grow from the outside in: parents, coaches, teachers, mentors, bosses, friends, a team.
• “Complacency has its charms, but none worth trading for the fulfillment of realizing [your] potential.”
• The intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intellectual dimensions of character (you could also call them strengths of the will, heart, and mind):
• Intrapersonal character includes grit, self-control (self management skills).
• Interpersonal character; gratitude, social intelligence, and control over emotions like anger
• Intellectual character: curiosity and zest. Open and active engagement with the world of ideas.
• Academic achievement is best predicted by intrapersonal character
• For positive social functioning (such as having friends), interpersonal is most important.
• For a positive, independent posture of learning, intellectual character is critical.
• “The challenge of writing is to see your horribleness on page. To see your terribleness and then go to bed. And then to wake up the next day, and take that horribleness and that terribleness and refine it, and make it not so terrible, and not so horrible. And then to go to bed again. And to come back the next day, and refine it a little bit more, and to make it not so bad. And then to go to bed the next day. And do it again, and make it maybe average. And then one more time, if you’re lucky, maybe you get to good. And if you’ve done that, that’s a success.” Ta-Nehisi Coates