Book of the Week: Grit
10 Oct 2016
This week, I read Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth, MacArthur grant winner and University of Pennsylvania professor. I thought the name was familiar, but I though it was just because she was a famous person. After I started reading the book, I found out why. She taught high school math. After reading the first part of the book, I didn’t like it, because she says that grit is a combination of passion and perseverance. I believe that passion is bullshit based on personal experience, reading Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You and listening to Ben Horowitz. I judged the book too soon. Duckworth goes on to describe passion in a later chapter that is consistent with Newport, Horowitz and the data she presents. Need to read the whole thing before passing judgement. The book is good, but some things are a little more nuanced. She starts with a simplification and handles the nuance later. If you’re a parent, she talks about how to teach your kids grit. Talent Versus Grit Talent versus grit was some of the initial thing I had issues with. One issue I had was using Lowell High School students as an example. This isn’t exactly a normal school. Students are already prefiltered with those who do well on standardized tests. Also the example of getting a 5 on an AP Calculus exam wasn’t really impressive. Students are taught by the person who writes the exam and usually everyone in the class gets a 5. Grit will always lose to talent plus grit. But I agree most people don’t persevere enough to hit the talent ceiling. There are cases where I’ve tried my best, but I still got demolished by others. She tries to make the point that Grit > Talent but it should be Grit + Talent > Grit > Talent Maybe I haven’t been a teacher and interacted with students who weren’t gritty. This book was focused on how to help those students who weren’t gritty and weren’t talented. They can at least be gritty and they will eventually do better than the talented ones. I’ve been on both sides. There were times where things were easy and I didn’t practice. There were also times where I sucked and I tried my hardest to get better. You can’t get awesome without lots of practice. I know that, but I guess other people don’t. They don’t think about Jerry Rice being the first to practice and the last to leave. They don’t know about him training on The Hill. When you see only the final result and not the path to get there, you think it is genius and something achievable.
Our vanity, our self-love, promotes the cult of the genius—Nietzsche
We say talent because we don’t want to compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking. The thing is I don’t have this problem. I always blame myself, which has its own problems. The people I get frustrated with are the people who blame other people for their lack of achievement. Have you ever considered the possibility that it could be your fault? We don’t want to hate ourselves for being lazy.
Growing Grit
passion for your work is a little bit of discovery, followed by a lot of development, and then a lifetime of deepening.
You can grow grit from the inside out with
- interest - cultivate them by trying different things
- practice - use deliberate practice by setting a stretch goal and focus on improving one narrow aspect of overall performance to improve weaknesses with immediate and informative feedback
- purpose - have intention to contribute to the well-being of others
- hope - belief that you have the power to change things for the better
There’s a lot in this book that I skipped over, because I read those studies before in The Achievement Habit, Peak, Mindset and Flow. Probably other books too. I think if Angela told me that I needed to be grittier to be successful and defined grit, I would hope that would be enough for me to go on. Have grit.