Grit

Why Grit

If you keep dropping things you started with real energy, a language, a gym habit, a business, Angela Duckworth's book Grit says the reason may not be talent. She argues that over the long run, passion and perseverance count for more.

So you tell yourself the story that other people are more talented, more disciplined, born with it. Duckworth spent years testing that story, and what she found is more hopeful, and a little more complicated, than you might expect.

Duckworth is a psychologist who left a consulting job to teach seventh-grade math. She noticed that talent alone did not explain which of her students did well, so she went back to university to study why. Her book came out in 2016.

Her promise is not a trick for willpower. Here are five ideas from the book and one piece of advice from a conversation, grouped as the questions a quitter asks: is it really talent, do I know where I am heading, am I practising in a way that works, and can I last through the dull stretch and know when to stop? Then an honest look at where the book is weaker, and one small thing to try today.

Is it really talent?

The first idea is in chapter one, called Showing Up. Duckworth describes the United States Military Academy at West Point, which admits about twelve hundred new cadets a year, chosen on test scores, school grades, leadership and fitness. Even so, one in five leave before they graduate, and many quit in the first summer, seven weeks of training with no weekends and almost no contact with family.

Everyone had assumed that the strongest applicants, as scored on admission, would last longest. Research suggests otherwise. In two classes of cadets, Duckworth gave the newcomers a short questionnaire about perseverance and long-term focus. Their grit scores had no link to their admission scores, and it was the grit scores, not the admission scores, that told the stayers from the leavers. The limit is that cadets rated themselves, and a link is not proof that grit caused them to stay.

She reports a similar pattern in other hard places. Salespeople facing daily rejection who stayed in the job tended to be grittier. So did high school students in the Chicago public schools who graduated on time. And so did the candidates who made it through the Army's Special Forces Selection Course, the road to becoming a Green Beret. The questionnaire came before the outcome each time, which helps, but it is still self-report and still correlation, not an experiment.

Across her first set of studies, which also included the Scripps National Spelling Bee, grit explained on average about four percent of the differences in outcomes. That is real, and small. And in her data, grit did not rise with IQ or admission scores, so being gifted does not guarantee that you keep going.

Do i know where i am heading?

The second idea is that grit has two halves. One is perseverance: finishing what you begin and getting back up after a setback. The other is direction, caring about the same goal for years instead of swapping interests every few months. Someone who works hard but jumps from goal to goal can stay busy for a decade and still not get far.

So where does direction come from? In chapter six, Interest, Duckworth argues that passion is not something you discover in one flash. It develops gradually, and people in the early stages often do not notice they are interested. Her advice: at the start, give yourself a set period, such as one summer, to find out, finish what you began, and only then decide. Someone who drops a dance class in week two never learns whether the interest would have grown.

The third idea, in chapter eight, is purpose. She tells of a wine taster who knows he is not curing cancer, yet finds his mission in the moment someone enjoys a bottle because he helped them appreciate it. She calls interest and purpose twin engines of motivation, and says she has never studied a standout in grit who lacked purpose. That is her observation, not a tested rule.

Am i practising in a way that works?

The fourth idea combines chapters three and seven. In Effort Counts Twice, Duckworth says talent is how quickly you improve when you try, and effort is your engagement over time. They multiply to produce skill, and then you need effort a second time to use that skill. That is her argument, not a measured formula.

Picture two people with the same ear for music. One practises on and off, the other keeps at it for years. Later the second one has not only more skill but has also played for audiences and taught. Using the skill took effort all over again.

But not every hour of effort is equal. Chapter seven, Practice, is about deliberate practice: it has goals, it has feedback, and you are improving. A weekly hobby where you enjoy yourself does not count. On guitar, twenty minutes on the one chord change you keep missing, with a recording to show what went wrong, fits her logic better than an hour of songs you already know.

Can i last, and when should i stop?

The fifth idea is hope, in chapter nine. Duckworth says many people quit not from lost interest or unwillingness to practise, but because they lost hope. Once you expect nothing to change, you look for proof of that and stop trying. She argues the belief can be rebuilt. That is her view from a conversation, not a result she cites.

Her family's answer is in chapter ten, Parenting for Grit, and it is the easiest to try. She calls it the hard thing rule, and everyone in her house lives by it, parents included. Everyone takes on one hard thing: a practice with goals and feedback, not a casual pastime. Nobody walks away in the middle of the season or on a bad day, though you may stop at the natural end. And nobody picks your hard thing but you, from a set of options.

Notice what that trains. Quitting on a bad day treats discomfort as a signal to leave. Finishing the season and then deciding helps you tell a tough day from a wrong path. Say you pick running in January. The rule does not ask you to love every morning, only to run through to your end date. It is a family habit she describes, not a tested programme.

One more piece of advice comes from a conversation, not the book, and it is the other side of persistence. Duckworth is asked whether there is such a thing as too much grit, and she does not say always push on. When someone keeps getting rejected and asks whether to try another year, she suggests asking three people who know you and the situation, one of whom tends to disagree with the others, and then deciding. Her point is that an outside view protects you from escalating a commitment for the wrong reasons. It fits the hard thing rule: first finish the stretch you committed to, and only then ask for the outside view.

Where the book is weaker

Here is where the book is weaker. First, the science is contested. A later review pooled eighty-eight samples and about sixty-seven thousand people. It suggests grit is only moderately related to performance and strongly overlaps with an older trait called conscientiousness. It also found that most of the predictive power came from the perseverance half, not the passion half. Its limit is that it pools studies that mostly rely on questionnaires.

Second, Duckworth herself has said grit scores are not precise enough to reward or punish students, teachers or schools, and that the questions are easy to fake, because anyone can guess the right answer to "I finish whatever I begin."

Third, a reviewer of the book argued that it gives little serious attention to race, class and family income, which shape who gets the chance to practise at all. Duckworth has said she agrees that grit is not enough when a child's circumstances are poor. So treat grit as one useful lens, not a verdict on anyone's character, and not a reason to blame yourself or anyone else.

Close

Here is one small thing to try today. Pick one hard thing that matters to you: a skill, a habit, a project. Write down an end date when you will decide whether to continue, such as eight weeks from now, and one short reason it matters, ideally to someone besides you. Then spend twenty focused minutes today on the hardest part.

You do not need to be a genius. The answer to "why do I keep quitting" is less about what you were born with and more about what you keep showing up for.

The evidence, in more detail

The cadet result comes from two West Point classes, 1,218 and 1,308 cadets. In both, the admission score did not separate the stayers from the leavers, and the grit questionnaire did. The cadets rated themselves, so this shows a link, not a cause.

The wider set of studies behind the "four percent" figure is varied: educational attainment in two adult samples (1,545 and 690 people), grades among 138 Ivy League undergraduates, cadet retention, and the ranking of 175 finalists in the national spelling competition. Averaged across them, grit accounted for about four percent of the differences in success. The same paper found that grit was highly correlated with conscientiousness, which is where the later criticism picks up.

Those criticisms rest on a meta-analysis of 88 independent samples, 584 effect sizes and 66,807 people. It found grit only moderately correlated with performance and retention, very strongly correlated with conscientiousness, and a better predictor through perseverance of effort than through consistency of interest. Most of its studies use questionnaires, so it shares the weakness it points out.

Several of the book's practical ideas come from spoken interviews, not from the chapters themselves: interest developing slowly, the description of deliberate practice, purpose as a second engine, hope, the hard thing rule, and the three-people advice about when to stop. They are her views and her family's habits. None of them is a tested programme, and the summary above says so each time.

One idea is ours, not hers: the link between the hard thing rule and the outside view. Finish the stretch you committed to first, and only then ask three people whether to go on. It fits her advice, but she does not state it that way.

Three questions for tonight

1. What is one thing you quit that you still think about?
2. If you gave it an end date, what would the date be?
3. Who is the one person besides you who would care that you finished?