Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth
Summary and high yield notes
Rating: 9/10
Date finished: October 1, 2020
The book in 3 sentences
Effort trumps mere talent.
Grit is made up of two components; passion and perseverance.
Grit is not entirely fixed, it can be learned.
💡Impressions
This is a must-read book for anyone striving to succeed in any field. It is great book. It's a lucid, informative, and entertaining review of the research Angela has assiduously conducted over the past decade or so.
✍️Summary + high yield notes
"In sum, no matter the domain, the highly successful have a kind of ferocious determination that plays out in two ways. First, these exemplars are unusually resilient and hardworking. Second, they know in a very, very deep way what it is they want. They not only had determination, they had direction. Combination of passion and perseverance makes high achievers special. In a word they have grit."
Talent is no guarantee of grit.
Effort trumps mere talent.
Will Smith; The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is: I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be outworked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me. You might be all of those things. You got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple.
“Eighty percent of success in life is showing up.” Woody Allen
💡Someone twice as talented but half as hardworking as another person might reach the same level of skill but still produce dramatically less over time.
Grit has two components: passion and perseverance.
Passion- Passion is not just something you care about, you also care about that same ultimate goal in an abiding, loyal, steady way. You are not capricious. Each day, you wake up thinking of the questions you fell asleep thinking about.
🚀Passion items for grit scale; Tendency not to abandon tasks from mere changeability. Not seeking something fresh because of novelty. Not “looking for a change.”
👊Perseverance items for grit scale; Tendency not to abandon tasks in the face of obstacles. Perseverance, tenacity, doggedness.
“High but not the highest intelligence, combined with the greatest degree of persistence, will achieve greater eminence than the highest degree of intelligence with somewhat less persistence.”
Grit is not entirely fixed. Like every aspect of your psychological character, grit is more plastic than you might think.
💡Four psychological assets that mature paragons of grit have in common
Interest
The capacity to practice
Purpose
Hope
🚀People perform better at work when what they do interests them.
Passion for your work is a little bit of discovery, followed by a lot of development, and then a lifetime of deepening.
Without experimenting, you can’t figure out which interests will stick, and which won’t. the initial triggering of a new interest must be followed by subsequent encounters that retrigger your attention—again and again and again.
Novelty for the beginner comes in one form, and novelty for the expert in another. For the beginner, novelty is anything that hasn’t been encountered before. For the expert, novelty is nuance.
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? And, in contrast, what do I find absolutely unbearable?"
How experts practice- First, they set a stretch goal, zeroing in on just one narrow aspect of their
overall performance. Rather than focus on what they already do well, experts strive to improve specific weaknesses. They intentionally seek out challenges they can’t yet meet.
Then experts do it all over again, and again, and again. Until they have finally mastered what they set out to do. Until what was a struggle before is now fluent and flawless. Until conscious incompetence becomes unconscious competence.
Gritty people do more deliberate practice and experience more flow. deliberate practice is a behavior, and flow is an experience.
Deliberate practice is for preparation, and flow is for performance.
“It’s about hard work. When it’s not fun, you do what you need to do anyway. Because when you achieve results, it’s incredibly fun. You get to enjoy the ‘Aha’ at the end, and that is what drags you along a lot of the way.”
How to get the most of deliberate practice
Know the science
Basic requirements of deliberate practice
A clearly defined stretch goal
Full concentration and effort
Immediate and informative feedback
Repetition with reflection and refinement
2 . Make it a habit
Change the way you experience it
Purpose- “The intention to contribute to the well-being of others.”
Workers identify themselves as having:
A job (“I view my job as just a necessity of life, much like breathing or sleeping”), a career (“I view my job primarily as a stepping-stone to other jobs”), or a calling (“My work is one of the most important things in my life”).
Those who view their jobs as a calling are happier than those who view it as a job or a career.
Recommendations to begin 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
Hope
"Grit depends on a different kind of hope. It rests on the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future. I have a feeling tomorrow will be better is different from I resolve to make tomorrow better. The hope that gritty people have has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with getting up again."
HENRY FORD “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t—you’re right.”
Growth mindset vs fixed mindset- With a fixed mindset, you’re likely to interpret setbacks as evidence that, after all, you don’t have “the right stuff”—you’re not good enough. With a growth mindset, you believe you can learn to do better.
“What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” Nietzsche.
A fixed mindset about ability leads to pessimistic explanations of adversity, and that, in turn, leads to both giving up on challenges and avoiding them in the first place. In contrast, a growth mindset leads to optimistic ways of explaining adversity, and that, in turn, leads to perseverance and seeking out new challenges that will ultimately make you even stronger.
How to teach yourself hope
update your beliefs about intelligence and talent.
Practice optimistic self-talk
Ask for a helping hand
If you want to be grittier, find a gritty culture and join it. If you’re a leader, and you want the people in your organization to be grittier, create a gritty culture.
Culture has the power to shape our identity. Over time and under the right circumstances, the norms and values of the group to which we belong become our own. We internalize them. We carry them with us. The way we do things around here and why eventually becomes The way I do things and why.
Thinking of yourself as someone who is able to overcome tremendous adversity often leads to behavior that confirms that self-conception. Even if the idea of an actual inner energy source is preposterous, the metaphor couldn’t be more apt.
Will add it to my to read list (or better say to listen list since I consume most of my books via audible)