Grit (38 page)

In my own experience, giving up on piano when it became clear I had neither interest in it nor obvious talent was a great decision. I could have given up even earlier, actually, and saved my teacher from having to listen to me sight-read all the pieces I hadn’t practiced the week before. Giving up on becoming fluent in French was also a good idea, even though I did enjoy it and picked it up more quickly than I did piano. Less time spent on piano and French freed up time for pursuits I found more gratifying.

So, finishing whatever you begin
without exception
is a good way to miss opportunities to start different, possibly better, things. Ideally, even if you’re discontinuing one activity and choosing different lower-order goals, you’re still holding fast to your ultimate concern.

One reason I don’t worry much about an epidemic of grit is that such a prospect seems so removed from our current reality. How many days have you come home from work and said to your partner, “Gosh, everyone at the office is just too gritty! They stick with their most valued goals too long! They try too hard! I wish they were less passionate!”

Recently, I asked three hundred American adults to take the Grit Scale and, after receiving their scores, to tell me how they felt. Many
said they were happy with their scores, and some
wanted to be grittier. Nevertheless, in the entire sample, there wasn’t a single person who, upon reflection, aspired to be
less
gritty.

I’m certain most of us would be better off with more grit, not less. There may be exceptions—grit outliers who don’t need to be any grittier—but those exceptions are rare.

I’ve been asked, on more than one occasion, why I feel grit is the only thing that matters. In fact, I don’t.

I can tell you, for example, that grit is
not
the only thing I want my children to develop as they round the corner from childhood to maturity. Do I want them to be great at whatever they do? Absolutely. But greatness and goodness are different, and if forced to choose, I’d put goodness first.

As a psychologist, I can confirm that grit is far from the only—or even the most important—aspect of a person’s character. In fact, in studies of how people size up others, morality trumps all other aspects of character in importance. Sure, we take notice if our neighbors seem lazy, but we’re especially offended if they seem to lack qualities like
honesty, integrity, and trustworthiness.

So, grit isn’t everything. There are many other things a person needs in order to grow and flourish.
Character is plural.

One way to think about grit is to understand how it relates to other aspects of character. In assessing grit along with other virtues, I find three reliable clusters. I refer to them as the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intellectual
dimensions of character. You could also call them strengths of will, heart, and mind.

Intrapersonal character includes grit. This cluster of virtues also includes self-control, particularly as it relates to resisting temptations like texting and video games. What this means is that gritty people
tend to be self-controlled and vice versa. Collectively, virtues that
make possible the accomplishment of personally valued goals have also been called “performance character” or “self-management skills.” Social commentator and journalist David Brooks calls these
“resume virtues” because they’re the sorts of things that get us hired and keep us employed.

Interpersonal character includes gratitude, social intelligence, and self-control over emotions like anger. These virtues help you get along with—and provide assistance to—other people. Sometimes, these virtues are referred to as “moral character.” David Brooks prefers the term “eulogy virtues” because, in the end, they may be more important to how people remember us than anything else. When we speak admiringly of someone being a “deeply good” person, I think it’s this cluster of virtues we’re thinking about.

And, finally, intellectual character includes virtues like curiosity and zest. These encourage active and open engagement with the
world of ideas.

My longitudinal studies show these three virtue clusters
predict different outcomes. For academic achievement, including stellar report card grades, the cluster containing grit is the most predictive. But for positive social functioning, including how many friends you have, interpersonal character is more important. And for a positive, independent posture toward learning, intellectual virtue trumps the others.

In the end, the plurality of character operates against any one virtue being uniquely important.

I’m often asked whether encouraging grit does children a disservice by setting expectations unreasonably high. “Careful, Dr. Duckworth, or children will all grow up thinking they can be Usain Bolt, Wolfgang Mozart, or Albert Einstein.”

If we can’t be Einstein, is it worth studying physics? If we can’t be Usain Bolt, should we go for a run this morning? Is there any point in trying to run a little faster or longer than we did yesterday? In my view, these are absurd questions. If my daughter says to me, “Mom, I shouldn’t practice my piano today because I’ll never be Mozart,” I’ll say in reply, “You’re not practicing piano to be Mozart.”

We all face limits—not just in talent, but in opportunity. But more often than we think, our limits are self-imposed. We try, fail, and conclude we’ve bumped our heads against the ceiling of possibility. Or maybe after taking just a few steps we change direction. In either case, we never venture as far as we might have.

To be gritty is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. To be gritty is to hold fast to an interesting and purposeful goal. To be gritty is to invest, day after week after year, in challenging practice. To be gritty is to fall down seven times, and rise eight.

I was interviewed recently by a journalist. As he was packing up his notes, he said, “So, it’s obvious you could have talked all day. You really love this subject.”

“Oh, gosh. Is there
anything
as interesting as the psychology of achievement? Could there be
anything
more important?”

He chuckled. “You know,” he said, “I absolutely love what I do, too. It’s amazing to me how many people I know who’re well into their forties and haven’t really committed to anything. They don’t know what they’re missing.”

One final thought.

Earlier this year, the latest MacArthur genius awards were announced. One of the winners was Ta-Nehisi Coates, the journalist whose second book,
Between the World and Me
, has been an extraordinary best seller.

Eight years ago, Coates was unemployed, recently laid off by
Time
magazine, and scrambling to get freelance work. It was a hard time. He guesses he gained thirty pounds from the strain. “I knew what kind of writer I wanted to be. I was not becoming that kind of writer. I was banging my head against a wall and
nothing was coming out.”

His wife, he says, was “unerringly supportive.” Still, they had a young son. There were practical realities. “I was considering driving a cab.”

He finally got back on his feet, and after pushing through the “extraordinary stress” of his book, he began to hit his stride. “The writing was very, very different. The sentences had much more power.”

In his three-minute video posted on the MacArthur website, the first thing Coates says is: “Failure is probably the most important factor in all of my work.
Writing
is
failure. Over and over and over again.” Then he explains, that as a boy, he was insatiably curious. Growing up in Baltimore, he was particularly obsessed with the idea of physical safety, and the lack thereof, and has remained so since. Journalism, he says, lets him keep asking the questions that interest him.

Toward the end of the video, Coates offers the best description of what it’s like to write that I’ve ever heard. To give you a sense of his intonation, and the cadence, I’ve laid out the words as
I
heard them—as a poem:

The challenge of writing

Is to see your horribleness on page.

To see your terribleness

And then to go to bed.

And wake up the next day,

And take that horribleness and that terribleness,

And refine it,

And make it not so terrible and not so horrible.

And then to go to bed again.

And come the next day,

And refine it a little bit more,

And make it not so bad.

And then to go to bed the next day.

And do it again,

And make it maybe average.

And then one more time,

If you’re lucky,

Maybe you get to good.

And if you’ve done that,

That’s a success.

You might think Coates is especially modest. He
is
. But he’s also especially gritty. And I’ve yet to meet a MacArthur Fellow, Nobel laureate, or Olympic champion who says that what they achieved came in any other way.

“You’re no genius,” my dad used to say when I was just a little girl. I realize now he was talking to himself as much as he was talking to me.

If you define genius as being able to accomplish great things in life without effort, then he was right: I’m no genius, and neither is he.

But if, instead, you define genius as working toward excellence, ceaselessly, with every element of your being—then, in fact, my dad
is
a genius, and so am I, and so is Coates, and, if you’re willing, so are you.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

When I pick up a book for the first time, I immediately flip to the Acknowledgments. Like many readers, I’m eager to peek behind the curtain; I want to meet the cast and crew responsible for the show. Writing my own book has only deepened my appreciation for the team effort that any work represents. If you like this book, please know that credit for its creation is shared among the wonderful human beings recognized here. It’s time for these many supporters to step out into the footlights for a moment and take a well-deserved bow. If I’ve left anyone in the wings, I apologize; any omissions are inadvertent.

First and foremost, I want to thank my collaborators. I wrote this book in the first-person singular, using “I” when, in fact, pretty much everything I’ve done as a researcher or writer was accomplished by a plurality. The “we” who deserve credit—in particular coauthors on published research—are named individually in the Notes. On their behalf, I extend a heartfelt thanks to our research teams who, collectively, made this research possible.

As for the book itself, I have three individuals to thank in particular: First and foremost, I am eternally grateful to my editor, Rick Horgan, who improved my writing and thinking more than I thought was possible. If I’m lucky, he’ll let me work with him again (and again). Max Nesterak was my day-to-day editor, research assistant, and conscience.
Put simply, were it not for Max, this book would not be in your hands today. And, finally, my fairy godfather and agent, Richard Pine, is the person who originally, and finally, made this book a reality. Eight years ago, Richard wrote me an email asking, “Has anyone ever told you that you ought to write a book?” I demurred. Gritty and gallant, he kept asking, but never pushing, until I was ready. Thank you, Richard, for everything.

The following scholars were kind enough to review drafts of this book, discuss their relevant work, or both—of course, any errors that remain are mine: Elena Bodrova, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Dan Chambliss, Jean Côté, Sidney D’Mello, Bill Damon, Nancy Darling, Carol Dweck, Bob Eisenberger, Anders Ericsson, Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, Ronald Ferguson, James Flynn, Brian Galla, Margo Gardner, Adam Grant, James Gross, Tim Hatton, Jerry Kagan, Scott Barry Kaufman, Dennis Kelly, Emilia Lahti, Reed Larson, Luc Leger, Deborah Leong, Susan Mackie, Steve Maier, Mike Matthews, Darrin McMahon, Barbara Mellers, Cal Newport, Gabrielle Oettingen, Daeun Park, Pat Quinn, Ann Renninger, Brent Roberts, Todd Rogers, James Rounds, Barry Schwartz, Marty Seligman, Paul Silvia, Larry Steinberg, Rong Su, Phil Tetlock, Chia-Jung Tsay, Eli Tsukayama, Elliot Tucker-Drob, George Vaillant, Rachel White, Dan Willingham, Warren Willingham, Amy Wrzesniewski, and David Yeager.

I was shocked, and so deeply moved, that the following individuals were willing to share their stories for this book; even when I wasn’t able to include details in the book itself, their perspectives deepened my understanding of grit and its development: Hemalatha Annamalai, Kayvon Asemani, Michael Baime, Jo Barsh, Mark Bennett, Jackie Bezos, Juliet Blake, Geoffrey Canada, Pete Carroll, Robert Caslen, Ulrik Christensen, Kerry Close, Roxanne Coady, Kat Cole, Cody Coleman, Daryl Davis, Joe de Sena, Tom Deierlein, Jamie Dimon, Anson Dorrance, Aurora Fonte, Franco Fonte, Bill Fitzsimmons, Rowdy Gaines, Antonio Galloni, Bruce Gemmell, Jeffrey Gettleman,
Jane Golden, Temple Grandin, Mike Hopkins, Rhonda Hughes, Michael Joyner, Noa Kageyama, Paige Kimble, Sasha Kosanic, Hester Lacey, Emilia Lahti, Terry Laughlin, Joe Leader, Michael Lomax, David Luong, Tobi Lütke, Warren MacKenzie, Willy MacMullen, Bob Mankoff, Alex Martinez, Francesca Martinez, Tina Martinez, Duff McDonald, Bill McNabb, Bernie Noe, Valerie Rainford, Mads Rasmussen, Anthony Seldon, Will Shortz, Chantel Smith, Are Traasdahl, Marc Vetri, Chris Wink, Grit Young, Sherry Young, Steve Young, Sam Zell, and Kai Zhang.