Grit

by Angela Duckworth

  ten hours per week: Duckworth et al., “Spells Success,” 177.

  come to a different conclusion: On the effortfulness of learning, see also Elizabeth L. Bjork and Robert Bjork, “Making Things Hard on Yourself, but in a Good Way: Creating Desirable Difficulties to Enhance Learning,” in Psychology and the Real World: Essays Illustrating Fundamental Contributions to Society, ed. Morton A. Gernsbacher et al. (New York: Worth Publishers, 2011), 56–64. See also Sidney K. D’Mello and Arthur C. Graesser, “Confusion” in International Handbook of Emotions in Education, ed. Reinhard Pekrun and Lisa Linnenbrink-Garcia (New York: Routledge, 2014), 289–310.

  experienced as supremely effortful: Ericsson et al., “The Role of Deliberate Practice.”

  “daily small deaths”: Graham, “I Am a Dancer.”

  “you’re concentrating and you’re exhausted”: Judd Apatow, interviewed by Charlie Rose, Charlie Rose, July 31, 2009, republished in Apatow, Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy (New York: Random House, 2015), 26.

  to keep doing it: K. Anders Ericsson, “How Experts Attain and Maintain Superior Performance: Implications for the Enhancement of Skilled Performance in Older Individuals,” Journal of Aging and Physical Activity 8 (2000): 366–72.

  “a feeling of spontaneity”: Karen Stansberry Beard, “Theoretically Speaking: An Interview with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Flow Theory Development and Its Usefulness in Addressing Contemporary Challenges in Education,” Educational Psychology Review 27 (2015): 358. Csikszentmihalyi has emphasized that what matters to the quality of our momentary experience is the subjective level of challenge and the subjective level of skill.

  “just flows out by itself”: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Play and Intrinsic Rewards,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 15 (1975): 50.

  “automatically without thinking”: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Flow: The Joy of Reading,” in Applications of Flow in Human Development: The Collected Works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2014), 233.

  “incompatible with deliberate practice”: K. Anders Ericsson and Paul Ward, “Capturing the Naturally Occurring Superior Performance of Experts in the Laboratory,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 16 (2007): 349.

  “by no means self-evident”: Csikszentmihalyi, Applications of Flow, xx.

  “but its fruits are sweet”: Ibid.

  “achieve what you desire”: Ibid.

  “passion and world-class performance”: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and K. Anders Ericsson, “Passion and World-Class Performance” (presentation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, August 2006).

  flow and grit: In this study, flow was measured using a previously validated six-item questionnaire whose possible scores ranged from a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 5. Example item: “Whether at work or play, I am usually ‘in a zone’ and not conscious of myself.” See Katherine R. Von Culin, Eli Tsukayama, and Angela L. Duckworth, “Unpacking Grit: Motivational Correlates of Perseverance and Passion for Long-term Goals,” Journal of Positive Psychology 9 (2014): 1–7.

  “I swam around the world”: Gaines, interview.

  “It’s about hard work”: Mads Rasmussen, Danish rower and Olympic gold medalist, in an interview with the author, June 28, 2015.

  “testament to the work”: Rod Gilmour, “Ledecky Betters Own 1500m Freestyle World Record,” Reuters, August 3, 2015, http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/08/03/swimming-world-1500m-idINKCN0Q813Y20150803.

  “shows off in the meet”: Ashley Branca, “Katie Ledecky: ‘I’ve Just Always Felt Comfortable in the Water from Day One,’ ” Guardian, March 10, 2015.

  said they enjoyed it more: Duckworth et al., “Spells Success.”

  “she has that attitude”: Bruce Gemmell, USA National Team swimming coach, in an interview with the author, August 24, 2015.

  “and getting it done”: Kerry Close, 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion, in an interview with the author, August 10, 2015.

  basic requirements of deliberate practice: K. Anders Ericsson, “The Influence of Experience and Deliberate Practice on the Development of Superior Expert Performance,” in Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance ed. K. Anders Ericsson et al. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), 685–706. For a fascinating study of the importance of practicing “strategically,” see Robert Duke, Amy Simmons, and Carla Davis Cash, “It’s Not How Much; It’s How: Characteristics of Practice Behavior and Retention of Performance Skills,” Journal of Research in Music Education 56 (2009): 310 21.

  it’s not hours of brute-force: Rasmussen, interview.

  until he was twenty-two: Noa Kageyama, performance psychologist at The Julliard School, in an interview with the author, September 21, 2015.

  challenging, effortful practice: Lauren Eskreis-Winkler et al., “Using Wise Interventions to Motivate Deliberate Practice,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (in press).

  You just do: Judith A. Ouellette and Wendy Wood, “Habit and Intention in Everyday Life: The Multiple Processes by Which Past Behavior Predicts Future Behavior,” Psychological Bulletin 124 (1998): 54–74. See also, Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (New York: Random House, 2012).

  rose at dawn: Mason Currey, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 217–18.

  a “tiny mean” hotel room: Ibid., 122.

  “beginning of every bit of work”: William James, “The Laws of Habits,” The Popular Science Monthly 30 (1887): 447.

  “with your nose”: Robert Compton, “Joyce Carol Oates Keeps Punching,” Dallas Morning News, November 17, 1987.

  “feel great while you’re doing it”: Terry Laughlin, head coach and chief executive optimist (not kidding, that’s his real title) of Total Immersion Swimming, in an interview with the author, July 24, 2015.

  toddlers don’t mind at all: Elena Bodrova and Deborah Leong, creators of the Tools of the Mind curriculum for early childhood education, in an interview with the author, July 15, 2015. See also Adele Diamond and Kathleen Lee, “Interventions Shown to Aid Executive Function Development in Children 4 to 12 Years Old,” Science 333 (2011): 959–64. Clancy Blair and C. Cybele Raver, “Closing the Achievement Gap Through Modification of Neurocognitive and Neuroendocrine Function,” PLoS ONE 9 (2014): 1–13.

  “give their best effort”: Gemmell, interview.

  CHAPTER 8: PURPOSE

  “have a lemonade stand”: Alex’s Lemonade Stand, http://www.alexslemonade.org.

  this three-phase progression: Bloom, Developing Talent.

  “the larger purpose and meaning”: Bloom, Developing Talent, 527.

  “new perspective on life”: Golden, interview.

  Election Day never comes: Melissa Dribben, “Gracing the City Jane Golden Has Made Mural Arts the Nation’s Top Public Arts Program,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 27, 2008, http://articles.philly.com/2008-07-27/news/25245217_1_jane-seymour-golden-globes-philadelphia-s-mural-arts-program.

  “so I find ways to get energized”: Ibid.

  “it’s a moral imperative”: Golden, interview.

  “beautiful bottle of wine”: Antonio Galloni, wine critic and founder of Vinous, in an interview with the author, July 24, 2015

  “a million lightbulbs”: “Liv-Ex Interview with Antonio Galloni, Part One,” Liv-Ex Blog, December 13, 2013, www.blog.liv-ex.com/2013/12/liv-ex-interview-with-antonio-galloni-part-one.html.

  “sense of purpose”: Galloni, interview.

  purpose, pleasure, and age: These data are originally reported in Von Culin, Tsukayama, and Duckworth, “Unpacking Grit.”

  well-being of others: Different scholars use the word purpose in slightly different ways. Often it is emphasized that a goal, to be purposeful, has to be meaningful to the self and, at the same time, beneficial to others. Here I emphasize the beyond-the-self aspect of purpose because we already covered the more self-oriented motivation of interest in the last chapter.

  the eu
daimonic life: Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009), 5.

  “pleasure principle”: Sigmund Freud, “Formulations Regarding the Two Principles in Mental Functioning,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 12, trans. James Strachey and Anna Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1958), 218–26.

  evolved to seek meaning: See John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008). See also Roy F. Baumeister and Mark R. Leary, “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation,” Psychological Bulletin 117 (1995): 497–529. Finally, see Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste, Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation (New York: Penguin, 1995). Note that recent primate studies show that longevity and reproductive success depend on the ability to form strong, enduring social bonds with others. The desire to connect is as basic a human—even mammalian—need as the need for pleasure. See Robert M. Seyfarth and Dorothy L. Cheney, “The Evolutionary Origins of Friendship,” Annual Review of Psychology 63 (2012): 153–77.

  than we care about pleasure: Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potential: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being,” Annual Review of Psychology 52 (2001): 141–66.

  which of the three bricklayers: Amy Wrzesniewski, Clark McCauley, Paul Rozin, and Barry Schwartz, “Jobs, Careers, and Callings: People’s Relations to Their Work,” Journal of Research in Personality 31 (1997): 25.

  their occupations a calling: We collected this data in 2015.

  than those with a job: Wrzesniewski et al., “Jobs, Careers, and Callings,” 25.

  survey of 982 zookeepers: J. Stuart Bunderson and Jeffery A. Thompson, “The Call of the Wild: Zookeepers, Callings, and the Double-Edged Sword of Deeply Meaningful Work,” Administrative Science Quarterly 54 (2009): 32–57.

  “Monday through Friday sort of dying”: Studs Terkel, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), xi. Note that the names of the workers in Terkel’s book were pseudonyms.

  “I don’t think I have a calling”: Ibid., 521–24.

  “find a savor in their daily job”: Ibid., xi.

  “It’s meaningful to society”: Ibid., 103–6.

  when she studied secretaries: Wrzesniewski et al., “Jobs, Careers, and Callings.”

  “waiting to be discovered”: Amy Wrzesniewski, professor of organizational behavior at Yale School of Management, in an interview with the author, January 27, 2015.

  all the way to Chicago: Metropolitan Transit Authority, “Facts and Figures,” accessed March 10, 2015, http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ffsubway.htm.

  “and I got hired”: Joe Leader, senior vice president at New York City Transit, in an interview with the author, February 26, 2015.

  “experience I’ve ever had”: Michael Baime, clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Penn Program for Mindfulness, in an interview with the author, January 21, 2015.

  having fun at the same time: The next year, we doubled in size and, to better support our students, developed an after-school enrichment program. The following year, the program won the Better Government Award for the state of Massachusetts. Around the same time, professors at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government wrote up the story of Summerbridge Cambridge as a case study in social entrepreneurship.

  hundreds of students every year: For more information on Breakthrough Greater Boston, see www.breakthroughgreaterboston.org.

  “you can have both”: Adam Grant, Class of 1965 Wharton Professor of Management, in an interview with the author, July 15, 2015.

  prosocial interests in mind do better: Adam Grant, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success (New York: Penguin, 2014).

  interest in the work itself: Adam Grant, “Does Intrinsic Motivation Fuel the Prosocial Fire? Motivational Synergy in Predicting Persistence, Performance, and Productivity,” Journal of Applied Psychology 93 (2008): 48–58.

  raised more money: Ibid.

  about a hundred adolescents: David S. Yeager and Matthew J. Bundick, “The Role of Purposeful Work Goals in Promoting Meaning in Life and in Schoolwork During Adolescence,” Journal of Adolescent Research 24 (2009): 423–52. Relatedly, it’s been shown that affirming values can boost performance for other reasons, particularly by maintaining a sense of personal adequacy. Geoffrey L. Cohen and David K. Sherman, “The Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and Social Psychological Intervention,” Annual Review of Psychology 65 (2014): 333–71.

  “didn’t give in to obstacles”: Aurora and Franco Fonte, wife and husband founders and directors of Assetlink, in an interview with the author, March 13, 2015.

  “something you’re interested in”: Bill Damon, professor of psychology at Stanford Graduate School of Education, in an interview with the author, July 20, 2015.

  personal loss or adversity: For example, detectives who have themselves been the victim of a crime are grittier and, in turn, more engaged in their work. See Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, Elizabeth P. Shulman, and Angela L. Duckworth, “Survivor Mission: Do Those Who Survive Have a Drive to Thrive at Work?” Journal of Positive Psychology 9 (2014): 209–18.

  “became family to her”: Kat Cole, president of Cinnabon, in an interview with the author, February 1, 2015.

  exceeded one billion dollars: Charlotte Alter, “How to Run a Billion Dollar Brand Before You’re 35,” Time, December 2, 2014.

  “My passion is to help people”: Jo Barsh, in an interview with the author, July 31, 2015.

  “like they are that person”: Kat Cole, “See What’s Possible, and Help Others Do the Same,” from Kat Cole’s blog, The Difference, August 7, 2013, http://www.katcole.net/2013/08/see-whats-possible-and-help-others-do.html.

  “be a better place?”: David S. Yeager et al., “Boring but Important: A Self-Transcendent Purpose for Learning Fosters Academic Self-Regulation,” Attitudes and Social Cognition 107 (2014): 559–80.

  calls this idea job crafting: Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane E. Dutton, “Crafting a Job: Revisioning Employees as Active Crafters of Their Work,” Academy of Management Review 26 (2001): 179–201. See also www.jobcrafting.org and Grant, Give and Take, 262–63. This section also reflects personal correspondence between the author and Amy Wrzesniewski, professor of organizational behavior at Yale School of Management, October 20, 2015.

  “be a better person”: Interested readers can find a more complete list of questions that Bill Damon uses in his book, The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life (New York: Free Press, 2008), 183–86.

  CHAPTER 9: HOPE

  getting up again: For a more expansive discussion of how hope can be conceptualized, see Kevin L. Rand, Allison D. Martin, and Amanda M. Shea, “Hope, but Not Optimism, Predicts Academic Performance of Law Students Beyond Previous Academic Achievement,” Journal of Research in Personality 45 (2011): 683–86. Also see Shane J. Lopez, Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others (New York: Atria Books, 2013).

  major in—neurobiology: At Harvard until 2006, you actually declared your “concentration” (which is Harvard’s terminology for “major”), in the spring of your freshman year and at the same time mapped out every class you intended to take. My official concentration was the neurobiology track within biology, since neurobiology as a separate concentration was not created until years later.

  the punishments to stop: Steven F. Maier and Martin E. Seligman, “Learned Helplessness: Theory and Evidence,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 105 (1976): 3–46. The seminal studies on learned helplessness actually had a triadic design, meaning that there was a third condition: dogs who received no shock at all. In general, these dogs behaved similarly to those who were subjected to stress with control. Some of the material in this chapter is from an interv
iew between Seligman and the author, July 20, 2015. See also Martin E. P. Seligman, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life (New York: Pocket Books, 1990).

  practical antidotes for depression: For more information on Aaron Beck, see www.beckinstitute.org.

  distinguish optimists from pessimists: Christopher Peterson et al., “The Attributional Style Questionnaire,” Cognitive Therapy and Research 6 (1982): 287–300. See also Lyn Y. Abramson, Gerald I. Metalsky, and Lauren B. Alloy, “Hopelessness Depression: A Theory-Based Subtype of Depression,” Psychological Review 96 (1989): 358–72.

  suffer from depression and anxiety: Peter Schulman, Camilo Castellon, and Martin E. P. Seligman, “Assessing Explanatory Style: The Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanations and the Attributional Style Questionnaire,” Behavioural Research and Therapy 27 (1989): 505–9.

  drop out of school: Leslie P. Kamen and Martin E. P. Seligman, “Explanatory Style Predicts College Grade Point Average” (unpublished manuscript, 1985). Christopher Peterson and Lisa C. Barrett, “Explanatory Style and Academic Performance Among University Freshman,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 53 (1987): 603–7.

  stay healthier: Toshihiko Maruto, Robert C. Colligan, Michael Malinchoc, and Kenneth P. Offord, “Optimists vs. Pessimists: Survival Rate Among Medical Patients Over a 30-Year Period,” Mayo Clinic Proceedings 75 (2000): 140–43. Christopher Peterson, Martin E. P. Seligman, “Pessimistic Explanatory Style Is a Risk Factor for Physical Illness: A Thirty-Five-Year Longitudinal Study,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 55 (1988): 23–27.

  satisfied with their marriages: Karen J. Horneffer and Frank D. Fincham, “Construct of Attributional Style in Depression and Marital Distress,” Journal of Family Psychology 9 (1995): 186–95. See also, Horneffer and Fincham, “Attributional Models of Depression and Distress,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 22 (1996): 678–89.