Grit

by Angela Duckworth

  I am immensely grateful for the unflagging support of so many outstanding individuals at Simon & Schuster. The only hard thing about writing this book was the writing; everything else, these remarkable folks made easy. In particular, I’d like to thank Nan Graham, whose optimism, energy, and genuine affection for her authors have no parallel. Katie Monaghan and Brian Belfiglio masterfully orchestrated a world-class publicity campaign, ensuring that this book would end up in your hands. For masterful handling of this book’s production, I thank Carla Benton and her team. David Lamb, you’re a total pro; your commitment to excellence at every stage of the editorial process made all the difference. And, finally, for this book’s beautiful cover, I am grateful to Jaya Miceli.

  Huge thanks to the world-class team at InkWell Management, including Eliza Rothstein, Lindsey Blessing, and Alexis Hurley. You handle so much so well, and with utter grace and professionalism.

  Like the grit paragons profiled in this book, I’ve benefited from especially supportive and demanding teachers. Matthew Carr taught me to write and to love words. Kay Merseth reminded me, at so many critical junctures, that each of us is the author of our own life story. Marty Seligman taught me that the right question is at least as important as the right answer. The late Chris Peterson showed me that a true teacher is one who puts students first. Sigal Barsade showed me, in innumerable ways, what it means to be a professor and how to be a good one. Walter Mischel showed me that at its apogee, science is an art. And Jim Heckman taught me that genuine curiosity is the best companion to true grit.

  I am deeply grateful to the institutions and individuals who have supported my research, including the National Institute on Aging, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Pinkerton Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the KIPP Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Lone Pine Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Richard King Mellon Family Foundation, the University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation, Acco Brands, the Michigan Retirement Research Center, the University of Pennsylvania, Melvyn and Carolyn Miller, Ariel Kor, and Amy Abrams.

  The board and staff of the Character Lab deserve special thanks because they are the past, present, and most definitely the future of all I do.

  And, finally, thank you to my family. Amanda and Lucy, your patience, good humor, and stories made this book possible. Mom and Dad, you gave up everything for your children, and we love you for that. Jason, you make me a better person every day—this book is for you.

  RECOMMENDED READING

  Brooks, David. The Road to Character. New York: Random House, 2015.

  Brown, Peter C., Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014.

  Damon, William. The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life. New York: Free Press, 2009.

  Deci, Edward L. with Richard Flaste. Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 1995.

  Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. New York: Random House, 2012.

  Dweck, Carol. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006.

  Emmons, Robert A. Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007.

  Ericsson, Anders and Robert Pool. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.

  Heckman, James J., John Eric Humphries, and Tim Kautz (eds.). The Myth of Achievement Tests: The GED and the Role of Character in American Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

  Kaufman, Scott Barry and Carolyn Gregoire. Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind. New York: Perigee, 2015.

  Lewis, Sarah. The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014.

  Matthews, Michael D. Head Strong: How Psychology is Revolutionizing War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

  McMahon, Darrin M. Divine Fury: A History of Genius. New York: Basic Books, 2013.

  Mischel, Walter. The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. New York: Little, Brown, 2014.

  Oettingen, Gabriele. Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. New York: Penguin Group, 2014.

  Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009.

  Renninger, K. Ann and Suzanne E. Hidi. The Power of Interest for Motivation and Engagement. New York: Routledge, 2015.

  Seligman, Martin E. P. Learned Optimism: How To Change Your Mind and Your Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991.

  Steinberg, Laurence. Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014.

  Tetlock, Philip E. and Dan Gardner. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. New York: Crown, 2015.

  Tough, Paul. How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012.

  Willingham, Daniel T. Why Don’t Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PHOTO BY ZACH TERIS

  Angela Duckworth is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a 2013 MacArthur Fellow. She studies grit and other attributes that predict success in life. A former middle and high school math teacher, Angela recently co-founded the Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance the science and practice of character development in children.

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

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  authors.simonandschuster.com/Angela-Duckworth

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  NOTES

  CHAPTER 1: SHOWING UP

  more than 14,000 applicants: For more information on West Point, including its admissions process, see www.usma.edu.

  drop out before graduation: Data provided by the United States Military Academy.

  “new cadet to Soldier”: “Information for New Cadets and Parents,” United States Military Academy–West Point, 2015, www.usma.edu/parents/SiteAssets/Info-4-New-Cadets_Class-of-19.pdf.

  “West Point toughens you”: Ibid.

  and who would leave: For more on Jerry’s views about predicting West Point outcomes, see Jerome Kagan, An Argument for Mind (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), 49–54.

  West Point admissions: For more information on the Whole Candidate Score and its history, see Lawrence M. Hanser and Mustafa Oguz, United States Service Academy Admissions: Selecting for Success at the Military Academy/West Point and as an Officer (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2015).

  those with the lowest: Angela L. Duckworth, Christopher Peterson, Michael D. Matthews, and Dennis R. Kelly, “Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-term Goals,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92 (2007): 1087–1101.

  “I was tired, lonely, frustrated”: Michael D. Matthews, Head Strong: How Psychology Is Revolutionizing War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 16.

  “never give up” attitude: Mike Matthews, professor of engineering psychology at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, in conversation with the author, May 25, 2015.

  physical fitness marks: Hanser and Oguz, Selecting for Success.

  seventy-one cadets had dropped out: Duckworth et al., “Grit.”

  55 percent of the salespeople: Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, Elizabeth P. Shulman, Scott A. Beal, and Angela L. Duckworth, “The Grit Effect: Predicting Retention in the Military, t
he Workplace, School and Marriage,” Frontiers in Psychology 5 (2014): 1–12.

  graduate degree were grittier: Duckworth, et al., “Grit.”

  as high as 80 percent: For more information on college dropout rates in the United States, see “Institutional Retention and Graduation Rates for Undergraduate Students,” National Center for Education Statistics, last updated May 2015, http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cva.asp.

  “where we decide”: Dick Couch, Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007), 108.

  42 percent of the candidates: Eskreis-Winkler et al., “The Grit Effect.”

  Success in the military, business, and education: Ibid. Importantly, the bivariate associations between grit and outcomes were in all cases significant as well.

  to all 273 spellers: Duckworth et al., “Grit.”

  SAT scores and grit: Ibid. See also Kennon M. Sheldon, Paul E. Jose, Todd B. Kashdan, and Aaron Jarden, “Personality, Effective Goal-Striving, and Enhanced Well-Being: Comparing 10 Candidate Personality Strengths,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 1 (2015), 1–11. In this one-year longitudinal study, grit emerged as a more reliable predictor of goal attainment than any other measured personality strength. Likewise, my colleagues Phil Tetlock and Barbara Mellers have found in their longitudinal research that people who forecast future events with astonishing accuracy are considerably grittier than others: “The strongest predictor of rising into the ranks of superforecasters is perpetual beta, the degree to which one is committed to belief updating and self-improvement. It is roughly three times as powerful a predictor as its closest rival, intelligence.” See Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (New York: Crown, 2015), page 192.

  CHAPTER 2: DISTRACTED BY TALENT

  in the classroom: The school I taught at was created by Teach For America alumnus Daniel Oscar, and in my view, the best teacher in the school was a guy named Neil Dorosin. Both Daniel and Neil are still in the vanguard of education reform.

  “I was a little behind”: David Luong, in an interview with the author, May 8, 2015.

  learning came easy: Karl Pearson, The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton, vol. 1 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1930), 66.

  “capacity for hard labor”: Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius (London: Macmillan, 1869), 38. It’s important to note here that Galton’s fascination with heredity was misguided. While his conclusions about the importance of zeal and hard work and ability have been supported by modern research, his erroneous conclusions about heredity and race have not.

  “eminently important difference”: Charles Darwin, Letter to Francis Galton, December 23, 1869. Frederick Burkhardt et al., ed., The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 17, 1869 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 530.

  supernatural intelligence: See Leonard Mlodinow, The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos (New York: Pantheon Books, 2015), 195. Catharine Morris Cox, “The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses,” in Genetic Studies of Genius, vol. 2, ed. Lewis M. Terman, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1926), 399.

  “no great quickness”: Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin (London: Collins Clear-Type Press, 1958), 140–41.

  data presented itself: Adam S. Wilkins, “Charles Darwin: Genius or Plodder?” Genetics 183 (2009): 773–77.

  “The Energies of Men”: William James, “The Energies of Men,” Science 25 (1907): 321–32.

  that our talents vary: Talents are, of course, plural. For interested readers, see Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York: Basic Books, 1983). Also, Ellen Winner, Gifted Children: Myths and Realities (New York: Basic Books, 1996). Robert J. Sternberg and James C. Kaufman, “Human Abilities,” Annual Review of Psychology 49 (1998): 479–502.

  twice as likely to single out effort: Survey of America’s Inner Financial Life, Worth Magazine, November 1993.

  about athletic ability: “CBS News Poll: Does Practice Make Perfect in Sports?,” CBS News website, April 6, 2014, www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-poll-does-practice-make-perfect-in-sports.

  endorse “intelligence”: The 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair Poll, Vanity Fair, January 2010.

  more likely to succeed: Chia-Jung Tsay and Mahzarin R. Banaji, “Naturals and Strivers: Preferences and Beliefs About Sources of Achievement,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47 (2011): 460–65.

  naturals were rated higher: Chia-Jung Tsay, “Privileging Naturals Over Strivers: The Costs of the Naturalness Bias,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (2015).

  favor the natural: Ibid.

  “technical skills can flourish”: “Juilliard Pre-College,” The Juilliard School, accessed August 10, 2015, http://www.juilliard.edu/youth-adult-programs/juilliard-pre-college

  a self-fulfilling prophecy: Robert Rosenthal, “Pygmalion Effect,” in The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology, ed. Irving B. Weiner and W. Edward Craighead (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010), 1398–99.

  “I wanted to get better”: Chia-Jung Tsay, assistant professor at the University College London School of Management, in an interview with the author, April 8, 2015.

  “The War for Talent”: Elizabeth Chambers et al., “The War for Talent,” McKinsey Quarterly 3 (1998): 44–57.

  became a best-selling book: Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, and Beth Axelrod, The War for Talent (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2001).

  “What do we mean by talent?”: Ibid., xii.

  “like comparing SAT scores”: John Huey, “How McKinsey Does It,” Fortune, November 1993: 56–81.

  on being “bright”: Ibid., 56.

  The War on Common Sense: Duff McDonald, “McKinsey’s Dirty War: Bogus ‘War for Talent’ Was Self-Serving (and Failed),” New York Observer, November 5, 2013.

  Gladwell has also critiqued: Malcolm Gladwell, “The Talent Myth,” New Yorker, July 22, 2002.

  largest corporate bankruptcy: Clinton Free, Norman Macintosh, and Mitchell Stein, “Management Controls: The Organizational Fraud Triangle of Leadership, Culture, and Control in Enron,” Ivey Business Journal, July 2007, http://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/management-controls-the-organizational-fraud-triangle-of-leadership-culture-and-control-in-enron/.

  firing the bottom 15 percent: Ibid.

  “always a step or two behind”: Scott Barry Kaufman, director of the Imagination Institute, in an interview with the author, May 3, 2015. Also see www.scottbarrykaufman.com.

  “I was so driven”: Scott Barry Kaufman, “From Evaluation to Inspiration: Scott Barry Kaufman at TEDxManhattanBeach,” YouTube video, posted January 6, 2014, https://youtu.be/HQ6fW_GDEpA.

  “does achievement trump potential?”: Ibid.

  “I had this grit”: Kaufman, interview.

  deemed insufficiently bright: I know two other people whose tested aptitude wasn’t particularly prognostic of what they would go on to achieve. The first is Darrin McMahon, an eminent historian at Dartmouth College. In Darrin’s book, Divine Fury: A History of Genius (New York: Basic Books, 2013), he points out that genius incites ambivalence. On one hand, the idea that a few of us stand above the rest by virtue of our God-given gifts holds timeless appeal. On the other hand, we love the idea of equality; we like to think we all have the same chance of succeeding in life. In a recent conversation on this topic, Darrin told me, “What we are seeing play out now is the democratization of genius. Part of us wants to believe that everyone can be a genius.” I was never a very good history student, and sometimes I was a very poor one. So I was more than a little surprised that I couldn’t put Darrin’s book down. It was beautifully written. The meticulous research and careful argumentation somehow did not get in the way of it telling a story. And then, at the very end, on page 243, I got to the acknowledgments: “I have undoubtedly suffered from many delusions in my life—and undoubtedly suffer
from many still. But being a genius is not one of them.” Then Darrin says, with humor and affection, that when he was growing up, his parents saw to it that their son “never got too big for his britches.” And even more to the point, he recalls being tested as a child for his school’s gifted program. There were “shapes and pictures and the like,” but the only thing he remembers with certainty is “I didn’t pass.” Darrin remembers watching his classmates “trundle off each week to special classes for the specially endowed.” And then he reflects on whether getting labeled nongifted was, in the end, a blessing or a curse: “At an early age, I was told, with all the objectivity of science, that I was not the recipient of gifts. I might have just thrown in the towel then and there, but I am a stubborn sort, and I spent many years disputing the verdict, working away to prove to myself and to others, dammit, that I had not been slighted at birth.” Similarly, Michael Lomax was not easily identifiable as any kind of prodigy. Nevertheless, he has an illustrious résumé: he is president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund, a leadership position he has held for more than a decade. Before that, Michael was president of Dillard University. He has taught English at Emory University, Spelman College, and Morehouse College and was a two-time mayoral candidate for the city of Atlanta. “Honestly, I wasn’t considered the smartest kid,” Michael told me recently. When he was sixteen, his mother nevertheless wrote to the president of Morehouse College to ask whether her son could be admitted to its prep school. “Of course, there was no prep school at Morehouse!” Michael chuckled. The Morehouse president decided, on the basis of Michael’s outstanding grades, to admit him as a freshman to the college. “I got there. I hated it. I wanted to leave. I was number one in my class, but I wanted to transfer. I got it in my head that I would be a better fit at Williams College, so I applied. I had done everything, and they were about to admit me, and then the director of admissions said, ‘Oh, by the way, we need an SAT score.’ ” Because he’d been admitted to Morehouse without a formal application, Michael had never taken the SAT before. “That test was make-or-break for me. I sat down and took it. And I didn’t do well. Williams didn’t admit me.” So Michael stayed at Morehouse and made the best of it, graduating Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in English. Later, he earned his master’s degree in English from Columbia University, and his PhD in American and African American literature from Emory University. Now sixty-eight years old, Michael told me, “At my age, I think it’s character more than genius. I know all kinds of very talented people who squander their great talents, or who are dissatisfied and unhappy because they think talent is enough. In fact, it ain’t even near enough. What I tell my kids, what I try to tell my grandchildren, and anybody I get a chance to mentor is this: It’s the sweat, it’s the hard work, it’s the persistence, it’s the determination. It is the getting up and dusting yourself off. That’s what it’s all about.” In anticipation of hate mail about this passage on gifted and talented programs, let me say this: I am wholeheartedly in favor of giving kids all the intellectual stimulation they can handle. At the same time, I urge opening those programs to all children who might benefit. Thirty years ago, Benjamin Bloom said it best: “We in this country have come to believe that we can tell who’s going to be a great musician by giving musical aptitude tests, who’s going to be a great mathematician by giving mathematics aptitude tests. Doing that counts some people in and others out far too early. . . . All the children should be given opportunities to explore fields that they might be interested in.” Ronald S. Brandt, “On Talent Development: A Conversation with Benjamin Bloom,” Educational Leadership 43 (1985): 33–35.