Grit

Grit.  Everyone’s talking about it. Do you have?  Do I?

Grit by Angela Duckworth is an attempt to take a little shine off our culture’s obsession with “natural talent”– (think labels like “math genius”, “tennis prodigy”).  Duckworth, a Harvard trained psychologist, social scientist and teacher, has spent much of her career thinking about how we can use science to help children learn and thrive.  Her book helps demystify the components of success, trying to understand how we can all be more successful. I’m still digesting much of it, but here are two pieces of good news for us all.

First, effort counts twice. Essentially, she divides achievement into three requirements categories–talent, skills and effort.  Whatever talent you are born with must be matched with effort to develop skills. Those skills are honed and made productive over time by more effort. So effort counts twice. If you have talent but don’t work at it (tennis, math, spelling, whatever), you can be outmatched by someone with less talent who works hard to develop skills and then works hard to employ those skills.  That’s comforting in a world that seems to glorify people for whom things just come easy.  Grit or that willingness to persevere through challenging work pays huge dividends across all walks of life. Her research on National Spelling Bee participants, West Point candidates, world class athletes and  college students confirms that grit matters, a lot.

Second, we can all become grittier. It’s not a matter of having grit or not. You can develop grit by finding things that deeply inspire you, by engaging in deliberate and regular practice, by setting goals for improvement and soliciting help to develop skills and by keeping an optimistic outlook on increasing your abilities.  And best news yet for those struggling parents, you can help teach your kids grit by allowing kids to pick extracurriculars they like and NOT letting them quit on a bad day. I’m having a PTSD-like flashback to that terrible year I said I wanted to play the violin, hated it from the get-go, but had to finish the year per Momma Boone’s rules.

Anyway, I thought the author had some inspiring and hopeful things to say about our ability to continue to grow skills.  The book’s worth a read or take the grit test here.

Send me your score and I’ll share mine.