Angela
Duckworth's new book 'Grit' persuasively makes the case that effort counts
twice as much as talent.
Angela Duckworth
is a rising star in the world of ideas. The psychologist and 2013 MacArthur
Fellowship winner, until recently, was probably most known for her TED
talk on grit, which has been viewed well over eight million times.
With the recent
publication of her bestselling book Grit:
The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Duckworth has established
herself as someone dedicated to using psychological science to help people
thrive.
What stands out
about the book is that it’s data-driven, yet practical. Duckworth believes just
about anyone can acquire the strength of will that leads people to persevere,
that enables a Jeff Bezos to leave a cushy career in finance, pursue his
passion, and radically change online commerce.
What It Is—And
Isn’t
I have to admit
I came to this book with skepticism. In my experience, self-help-type memes
aren’t very practical. But the decades of research Duckworth synthesizes leaves
me convinced that, barring absolute destitution, it’s just not that complicated
to set the stage for someone to gain grit.
To really
appreciate the concept of grit, you have to understand what it is not. It’s not
shallow practice, it’s not mindlessly sprinting up and down the hardwood, nor
is it obsessing over impractical goals. While Duckworth defines grit as
“passion and perseverance for long term goals,” she does admirable work to
unpack what that means. She reveals something that begins with effort and
evolves into more of an enlightened pursuit of interests meaningful to you and
others.
This is a book
that easily outlines those qualities that make some people most likely to
succeed in life. But that alone isn’t what makes it remarkable. Where it
concerns moms, dads, guardians, and maybe school board members, Grit’s real strength is in the way
it uses anecdotes and relatable science to get down to the most basic, mundane
actions needed for virtually anyone to produce excellence.
Paragons Of Grit
Duckworth’s book
explains skillfully that grit can be developed. But because grit has spent most
of its existence as one of those trite terms every high school coach tosses
around, Duckworth’s approach had to be exhaustive. To provide ample clarity,
Duckworth shares insight from accomplished men and women she calls “paragons of
grit.” She also shadows many selective organizations like West Point, the
Seattle Seahawks, and the Scripps National Spelling Bee to study how they
promote a culture of grit.
One of her
immediate targets for scrutiny is the tendency of most people, from competitive
CEOs to gangly grade school kids choosing their teammates in recess, to
overemphasize talent. People are naturally drawn toward those they consider
“naturals”—those who seem to excel effortlessly. In
contrast, few prefer those “strivers” who may have to work two to three times
as hard to achieve parity with their peers.
Duckworth’s animating theory is that effort counts twice
as much as talent.
While mountains of data confirm this, one of the studies that lead her to this
conclusion was the famous Treadmill Test, one of the longest studies of human
development ever. In 1940, Harvard University researchers asked sophomores to
run on a treadmill ramped to a steep angle and set to breakneck speed. They
wanted to measure “strength of will” in the participants.
After contacting
the students every two years since graduation (and over decades), they found
time on the treadmill was a “reliable predictor of psychological adjustment
throughout adulthood.” In addition to the data, enlightening conversations
about work ethic with celebrated potter Warren MacKenzie and Oscar-nominated
actor Will Smith also sold Duckworth on the difference that relentless effort makes.
A Startling
Caveat
It doesn’t take
long before questions about opportunity and access crop up in Grit.
After reading about interviews with billionaires and Ivy-league-credentialed
others, I awaited answers to questions like: What about children who don’t
attend schools with even lousy music or arts programs? Could they one day
become gritty enough to perform at Juilliard?
Duckworth admits
“opportunities matter tremendously, too, and maybe more than anything about the
individual. My theory doesn’t address these outside forces, nor does it include
luck.” That’s a startling caveat coming from the ambassador of grit. But, like
Duckworth, I think ideas about the psychology of achievement are nonetheless
incredibly useful.
In chapter five
Duckworth encourages readers to glean insights from her interviews with the
“paragons” and emulate their psychological assets. That’s something anyone with
a library card can do, including Kat Cole, who grew up in poverty in a
single-parent home and managed to develop immense grit, becoming CEO of
Cinnabon in her thirties. There’s also Scott Kaufman, who was thrust into
special-education classes because of an early intellectual disability, but
found his way at age 14 “into just about every challenge his school had to
offer.”
Duckworth really
looks at the issue of poverty in her chapter on hope. She does so later in the
book as well, when Geoffrey Canada sums up what kids really need to rise out of
unfortunate circumstances: “a decent childhood.” But the real gem is when she
explores Steve Maier’s experimental work on the neurobiology of hope.
Adversity And
Mastery
Maier’s theory is essentially that the brain responds to
difficult experiences. He believes that people who experience great adversity
in their youth and overcome it on their own develop the capacity to handle
adversity later in life. But Maier warns that simply telling someone they can
deal with adversity isn’t enough. They have to experience adversity and mastery
over it simultaneously.
Maier goes on to
comment on the lives of children who experience challenges but not a sense of
control:
I worry a lot
about kids in poverty…They’re getting a lot of helplessness experiences.
They’re not getting enough mastery experiences. They’re not learning: ‘I can do
this. I can succeed in that.’ My speculation is that those earlier experiences
can have really enduring effects. You need to learn that there’s a contingency
between your actions and what happens to you: ‘If I do something, then
something will happen.’
Economist Walter
Williams offers an insightful yet sobering take on a similar reality in a
recent article, “Education
Insanity.” He says that a number of inputs must be present in a child’s
education (and by extension throughout their youth) for that child to be
successful. As Williams puts it, “Someone must make
the youngster do his homework, ensure that he gets eight to nine hours of
sleep, feed him breakfast and make sure that he behaves in school and respects
the teachers. If these minimum requirements are not met, and by the way they
can be met even if a family is poor, all else is for naught.”
Purpose Equals
Passion
Really what
rescues Grit from being a tour through social science research is that
it brings intangibles like purpose into the fray. Duckworth is honest enough to
admit that purpose often emerges last—after people have already found something
they love doing. She also dismisses the all-of-a-sudden metaphors about
passively unearthing one’s passion or hearing fireworks go off when an interest
suddenly materializes. Instead, Duckworth talks about
getting out there, about interacting with the world and experimenting with
several interests. That’s a deceptively simple proposition itself; sometimes
people just sit on their interests, on self-imposed limits—and not for lack of
resources.
If most of us are going to discover our passion, we’re going to have
to actively construct and trigger that passion.
If most of us
are going to discover our passion, we’re going to have to actively construct
and trigger that passion. One of my favorite studies from the book is the
Personal Qualities Project. In 1978, Warren Willingham helmed this sprawling
and complex endeavor. I’ll sum it up this way. After collecting data on the
extent to which high school students could “point to significant accomplishment
in science and technology, the arts, sports,” etc., Willingham determined that
follow-through was the best predictor of accomplishment in virtually any
domain.
Drawing on this
model, Duckworth created the “Grit Grid,” which basically uses data about
students’ dedication to and advancement in extracurricular activities to
measure their capacity to persevere through long-term goals. Encouraging commitment
to extracurricular activities should probably be the first order of business
for parents and educators. But adults, as well, would benefit from signing up
for a couple grit-inducing activities. The extracurricular route, I believe, is
also the most potent deterrent to the positive fantasizing kids love to engage
in—for example, claiming a bright future as an NFL player, rapper, or corporate
attorney without accounting for challenges along the way.
People Are Our
Greatest Resource
Perhaps the
final lesson of Grit is one point that ties it all together: “developing your
personal grit depends critically on other people.” One the one hand, when we
meet standouts like Alex Scott, whose family continues her legacy of raising
money for cancer research; or art activist Jane Golden, who tirelessly promotes
public art programs because she truly believes “Art saves lives”—we understand
that people are integral to our passions.
Duckworth
wrote the book not only to start a conversation, but also to give people a renewed
sense of agency.
On the other
hand, Cody Coleman’s path was about growing up in an unstable home in a subpar
school district. His brother’s thoughtful advice, some mentoring by a math
teacher, and the “ecosystem of support” he later encountered at MIT (which
helped him earn a perfect GPA), teach us to see people as our greatest
resource.
It appears Duckworth wrote the book not only to start a
conversation about grit, but also to give people a renewed sense of agency. The
chapters are chock full of quotes that convey messages about the power of
realizing one’s potential. By the end, grit becomes a kind of launch pad for
other valued elements like positive social functioning, interpersonal
character, and intellectual virtue. The book probably could have used more
in-progress stories about ordinary people like Cody who followed a rough road
to grit. Still, Grit succeeds in its theme that neither disadvantage,
learned helplessness, nor complacency can’t be overcome.
John
Glenn holds a PhD in English from the University of Florida. He is now an
assistant professor of English at Atlanta Metropolitan State College, and his
writings have appeared in The Birmingham News, The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, and Library Journal.
http://thefederalist.com/2016/07/22/why-grit-matters-more-than-talent/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=5b4ad7f5ed-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-5b4ad7f5ed-83795033
