Grit
Think you might want to read this book?
In Grit, by Angela Duckworth, the reader is taken on a journey to analyze how persistence makes the difference in a successful life. If you are looking to identify and/or foster grit this book will give you research, anecdotes, and theories to do that. What makes this book remarkable though is the concepts discussed to help develop grit (e.g., learned industriousness, deliberate practice, follow-through, and the Hard Thing Rule). A great read for anyone interested in how persistence plays a role in our world.
What Would Socrates Ask?
What if we embedded learned industriousness into key learning experiences?
When does a “never give up” attitude become unhealthy?
If standardized tests aren’t a good predictor of future success, what could we assess to predict it?
Research
Grit was a more powerful predictor of graduation than how much students cared about school, how conscientious they were about their studies, and even how safe they felt at school.
How grit grows
Interest -> Practice -> Purpose -> Hope
First, research shows that people are enormously more satisfied with their jobs when they do something that fits their personal interests. Second, people perform better at work when what they do interests them.
Will Shortz remains the only person in the world to hold a college degree in enigmatology-the study of puzzles.
There are countless research studies showing that kids who are more involved in extracurriculars fare better on just about every conceivable metric-they earn better grades, have higher self-esteem, are less likely to get in trouble, and so forth.
With practice, industriousness can be learned.
Concepts
Naturalness Bias: a hidden prejudice against those who’ve achieved what they have because they worked for it, and a hidden preference for those whom we think arrived at their place in life because they’re naturally talented. We may not admit to others this bias for naturals; we may not even admit it to ourselves. But the bias is evident in the choices we make.
Flynn Effect: refers to startling gains in IQ scores over the past century. Gains have averaged more than fifteen points in the last fifty years in the more than thirty countries that have been studied.
Deliberate Practice: Maximize the benefit of deliberate practice:
Know the science
Make it a habit
Change the way you experience it
Cultivating a sense of purpose:
Reflecting on how the work you’re already doing can make a positive contribution to society.
Thinking about how, in small but meaningful ways, you can change your current work to enhance its connection to your core values.
Finding inspiration in a purposeful role model.
Resume Virtues: The sorts of things that get us hired and keep us employed.
Eulogy Virtues: Virtues that are more important to how people remember us than anything else.
Quotes from the author
If you’d like to follow your passion but haven’t yet fostered one, you must begin at the beginning; discovery. Ask yourself a few simple questions: What do I like to think about? Where does my mind wander? What do I really care about? What matters most to me? How do I enjoy spending my time?
It was this combination of passion and perseverance that made high achievers special. In a word, they had grit.
Talent is no guarantee of grit.
Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.
Notably, the particular pursuits to which students had devoted themselves in high school didn’t matter - whether it was tennis, student government, or debate team. The key was that students had signed up for something, signed up again the following year, and during that time had made some kind of progress.
Any successful person has to decide what to do in part by deciding what not to do.
A lot of us were told as children, “If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Sound advice, but as they say, “try, try again, then try something different.”
Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in any one of those actions; only the fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all together, produce excellence.
Passion for your work is a little bit of discovery, followed by a lot of development, and then a lifetime of deepening.
Kids whose parents let them make their own choices about what they like are more likely to develop an interest later identified as a passion.
Sometimes, when I talk to anxious parents, I get the impression they’ve misunderstood what I mean by grit. I tell them that half of grit is perseverance - in response, I get appreciative head nods- but I also tell them that nobody works doggedly on something they don’t find intrinsically interesting. Here, heads often stop nodding and, instead, cock to the side.
Quotes from others
“Perhaps the major quality of these teachers was that they made the initial learning very pleasant and rewarding. Much of the introduction to the field was a playful activity, and the learning at the beginning of this state was much like a game.” - Benjamin Bloom
“When I am around people my heart and soul radiate with the awesomeness that I am in the presence of greatness. Maybe greatness unfound, or greatness underdeveloped, but the potential or existence of greatness nevertheless. You never know who will go on to do good or even great things or become the next great influencer in the world - so treat everyone like they are that person.” - Kat Cole
“Success is never final; failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.” - John Wooden
Gateways to further learning
Referenced book for purchase
The applicability of this book to education is ….
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