Summary
Highlights
Angela Lee Duckworth shares her experience as a seventh-grade math teacher in New York City, where she observed that IQ was not the sole determinant of her students' success. She noticed that some strong performers did not have high IQs, while some smart students underperformed. This led her to believe that every student could learn the material with hard work and motivated her to pursue psychology to understand learning from a motivational perspective.
Duckworth left teaching to become a psychologist, studying successful individuals in challenging settings. Her research team investigated various groups, including cadets at West Point, National Spelling Bee contestants, rookie teachers in tough neighborhoods, and salespeople at private companies. Her goal was to identify the characteristics that predicted success in these diverse environments.
Duckworth's research extended to Chicago public schools, where she administered grit questionnaires to high school juniors, following them to see who would graduate. She found that grittier students were significantly more likely to graduate, even when controlling for factors like family income, standardized test scores, and safety perception at school. This highlighted the importance of grit beyond elite institutions.
Despite the importance of grit, Duckworth admits that little is known about how to build it. She emphasizes that talent alone does not equate to grit, and sometimes, the two are inversely related. The most promising idea for fostering grit is 'growth mindset,' developed by Carol Dweck. This concept suggests that the ability to learn is not fixed and can improve with effort, leading to greater perseverance in the face of failure.
Duckworth concludes that while the growth mindset is a good start, more research is needed to understand how to effectively cultivate grit in children. She calls for taking best ideas and intuitions, testing them rigorously, measuring success, and being willing to fail and learn from mistakes. Ultimately, she states that 'we need to be gritty about getting our kids grittier.'
Across all her studies, one characteristic consistently emerged as a significant predictor of success: grit. Duckworth defines grit as 'passion and perseverance for very long-term goals,' emphasizing stamina and consistent effort over years, rather than just weeks or months. She likens life to a marathon, not a sprint, when it comes to grit.