digest
Short Summary
Main recommendation: Angela Lee Duckworth argues that grit, defined as passion and perseverance for very long-term goals, is a better predictor of success than talent or IQ, and that schools and parents should work to build it in kids. She notes that science does not yet know how to build grit well, and the best candidate so far is growth mindset, which she says is not enough on its own.
Key Points
- Duckworth's teaching experience showed that IQ did not fully explain differences between her strongest and weakest seventh-grade math students, which led her to study motivation and psychology.
- Across West Point cadets, National Spelling Bee contestants, rookie teachers in tough neighborhoods, and salespeople, grit emerged as a significant predictor of success, outperforming social intelligence, looks, physical health, and IQ.
- In a study of Chicago high school juniors, grittier students were significantly more likely to graduate, even after matching on family income, test scores, and perceived school safety.
- Talent does not make someone gritty; in her data, grit is usually unrelated to or even inversely related to talent measures.
- Growth mindset, developed by Carol Dweck at Stanford, is the best idea Duckworth has heard for building grit, based on the belief that ability can change with effort.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: The talk gives no step-by-step method for building grit. The only actionable idea is that, according to Dr. Dweck's research, having kids read and learn about how the brain changes and grows in response to challenge makes them more likely to persevere after failure. Duckworth herself says that the honest answer to how to build grit is that she does not know.
- Grit is defined as having stamina and living life like a marathon rather than a sprint, sticking with long-term goals for years rather than weeks or months.
- The Chicago study asked thousands of high school juniors to complete grit questionnaires and then tracked who graduated over more than a year.
- Duckworth calls for testing ideas about building grit, measuring whether they work, and being willing to fail and start over.
Bottom Line
Grit is a measurable predictor of long-term success across many settings, but the research on how to build it is still in its early stages, with growth mindset as the leading but incomplete candidate.
