I’m not a policy oriented person. I’m constrained to what I study. But educational policy has not yet taken adequate note of the whole child. Kids are not just their IQ or standardized test scores. It matters whether or not they show up, how hard they work.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHIs it ‘a drag’ that passions don’t come to us all at once, as epiphanies, without the need to actively develop them?
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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It’s a very good thing to teach kids to finish what they started in the sense of fulfilling their commitments.
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I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my genes because I can’t do anything about them.
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I know a lot of CEOs who are looking for three- to four-year varsity athletes – not necessarily because these people are going to be doing pushups or spiking volleyballs in the workplace, but because they’re looking for that continuity, that person who was gritty about something.
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My dad was not super-intentional in his parenting. He was very self-absorbed. I won’t say mean or selfish per se, but very self-absorbed. I think he was just thinking out loud.
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Gritty people train at the edge of their comfort zone. They zero in on one narrow aspect of their performance and set a stretch goal to improve it.
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I don’t think that every child in America is going to necessarily aspire to, you know, a four-year degree from a liberal arts college or a certain kind of life. I think that people should learn to be excellent in the thing that they choose to do.
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Nobody gets to be good at something without effort, no matter what your aptitude is.
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I worked hard as a teacher. But those are completely different career paths. And the lack of direction is why I didn’t get far enough in any of those things.
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Being gritty doesn’t mean not showing pain or pretending everything is O.K. In fact, when you look at healthy and successful and giving people, they are extraordinarily meta-cognitive. They’re able to say things like, ‘Dude, I totally lost my temper this morning.’ That ability to reflect on yourself is signature to grit.
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Substituting nuance for novelty is what experts do, and that is why they are never bored.
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One thing that’s true of gritty people is they love what they do, and they keep loving what they do. So they’re not just in love for a day or a week.
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When people tell me I can’t do something, I have a visceral reflex to say, ‘Yes, I can.’
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I do think that whatever ambition I may have had natively was amplified by my father’s clear valuing of it. I knew that was what my dad really cared about.
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Some people prefer a world where we’re all equally talented in everything. Whether you prefer that world or not, I don’t think that world exists.
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You know, the things that I want my own daughters to develop – the idea that we’re going to get there through rewards and punishments seems completely at odds with the idea of character itself.
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Striving is exhausting. Sometimes I do say things like, ‘I wish I were not quite this driven to be excellent.’ It’s not a comfortable life. It’s not relaxed. I’m not relaxed as a person. I mean, I’m not unhappy. But… it’s the opposite of being comfortable.
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During all my undergrad years and in high school, I was involved in tutoring and public service. At Harvard, I spent over 35 hours a week doing service. I was a Big Sister, I worked for the homeless, the elderly; it was the epicenter of my focus.
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As our knees and hips and eyesight deteriorate, we become more dependable, less impulsive, kinder, and less moody.
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At various points, in big ways and small, we get knocked down. If we stay down, grit loses. If we get up, grit prevails.
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Very few people can keep going their whole life doing something and feel like it’s merely personally fascinating.
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What we reliably find is that people’s perseverance scores are actually higher than their passion scores, and I think it really does get to the fact that working hard is hard, but maybe finding your passion is even more difficult.
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When people think of the word ‘drive,’ they often think you have it or you don’t, and that’s where we’re wrong.
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I know that instructional time is a zero-sum game, but if we want kids to do well academically, it’s hard to imagine that happening if they don’t have some control over their attention.
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I worked hard when I was a consultant. I worked hard when I was in graduate school looking at neuroscience.
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Longitudinal studies following thousands of people across time have shown that most people only begin to gravitate toward certain vocational interests, and away from others, around middle school.
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I ended up doubling the math time that a conventional school would have. But I don’t think any of these things were path-breaking or unusual.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH