GRIT by Angela Duckworth

GRIT: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (The psychology of Success)

Grit is the combination of passion and perseverance. Through years of quality research, Angela Duckworth found grit to be a stronger predictor of high-achievement than intelligence, talent and other personality traits.

Understanding Grit

Grit is the combination of passion (a deep, enduring knowledge of what you want) and perseverance (hard work and resilience). It’s about moving in a direction with consistency and endurance, like having a clear inner compass that guides all your decisions and actions.

several aspects of being gritty, including:

• Having a clear hierarchy of goals, sticking to your high-level goals consistently, and aligning your goals at all levels, prioritize and align your goals.

• Research background on how grit relates to genes, culture and experience. Essentially, grit can be developed, with life experiences probably plays a major role in one's development.

Talent * Effort = SKILL
Skill * Effort = ACHIEVEMENT

WHY GRIT IS IMPORTANT

It is proven that talent and intelligence alone don’t predict success. In fact, talent can hinder performance, and aptitude tests tend to be poor measures of true potential. On the other hand, effort (which is sustained by grit) is doubly important. You must put in effort to hone your natural talents into tangible skills through practice and improvement. You must also put in effort to apply those skills to solve real-world problems to attain achievement.

Grit has been found to reliably predict whether military recruits graduate from rigorous elite training programs, whether salespeople stay in their jobs, whether high-school students graduate on schedule and whether adults earn their graduate degrees. Over the years, Duckworth has studied grit through experiments, empirical research and interviews with “grit paragons”

Developing Grit

Research suggests there are 4 “psychological assets” behind grit. Each of these components can be developed by yourself (from inside-out) or with external help (from outside-in).
• Interest: loving what you do;
• Practice: focusing on improvement no matter what;
• Purpose: believing strongly that your work matters to yourself and to others. This usually happens only after years of cultivating your interest and honing your abilities from practice; and
• Hope: believing that you can work things out and overcome your challenges. Hope works hand-in-hand with all 3 components above to determine how you respond to failures—if you get up and keep going, or stay down and be defeated.

We’ll now briefly outline what nurturing grit entails.

DEVELOPING GRIT FROM INSIDE-OUT

Contrary to popular belief, our interests, passions and calling are not inborn; they’re cultivated over time. Grit paragons don’t suddenly discover their passion in a magical, fireworks-filled moment, nor do they fall crazily in love with the perfect job. Instead, they spend years exploring different interests before focusing on one area. As they practice and hone their skills, they also develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of their craft until it becomes a burning passion and a calling.

Discovering your Interests

In the initial stages, most people learn and practice something for fun, not to develop a life-long career. Deep interest emerges with time, and comes from a blend of age, real-life triggers, a period of interest development and support from others.

Deepening Through Practice

Hard work alone isn’t enough. Cognitive psychologist Anders Ericsson found that experts became outstanding not just from lots of practice, but how they practice, i.e. they use deliberate practice.
We see the following
(i) components of deliberate practice,
(ii) deliberate practice (working on a target skill performance) and flow (natural strength training)

Developing a Sense of Purpose

Purpose is “the intention to contribute to the well-being of others.” Both gritty and non-gritty people seek short-term pleasures, but gritty people are drastically more likely to also seek to contribute to others. They usually spend years developing their skills and interest, before they discover their purpose later in life.

Nurturing Hope

Hope is “the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future”. It helps us to persevere; it gives us the strength to get up each time we fall and to keep going.

DEVELOPING GRIT FROM OUTSIDE-IN

It's has these components
Parenting
Training Ground
Culture

You can also use external help to develop grit in yourself or to nurture grit in others.

Parenting For Grit

Parenting broadly as the act of nurturing the next generation. Every grit paragon she interviewed had at least 1 person who, at the right time and in the right way, motivated him/her to push through to the next level. I call them authoritarian or disciplined parents who push you to achieve more without pampering.

Providing the Training Ground for Grit

Grit and follow-through have been found to be directly correlated, and follow-through has also been found to be the best predictor of whether young people attain high achievement later in life.

Developing a Culture of Grit

Culture refers to a group’s shared norms and values. Our cultures shape our self-identity, worldview and the way we think and act.

Grit is vital to the psychology of success and can be developed. Our character is multi-dimensional: it’s made up of at least 3 virtues, all of which affect different outcomes. Grit is just one key virtue.

• Intrapersonal virtues (e.g. self-control) affect how you manage yourself, and grit is part of this category.
• Interpersonal virtues (e.g. social intelligence, emotional control) affect how you interact with others.
• Intellectual virtues (e.g. curiosity) affect how you engage with ideas.