Most teachers, when surveyed, say that it is part of their job to help students develop things like grit. This is especially true at the elementary and middle school levels. They feel it’s part of their vocation to teach other things that are not formally academic content.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHThere’s something about taking the path of least resistance that makes a lot of sense. But at the same time, we have to figure out which things in life are worth struggling through.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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There are no shortcuts to true excellence.
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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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To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it.
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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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It’s also stamina in your direction, stamina in your interests. If you are working on different things but all of them very hard, you’re not really going to get anywhere. You’ll never become an expert.
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Grittier students are more likely to earn their diplomas; grittier teachers are more effective in the classroom.
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Is it ‘a drag’ that passions don’t come to us all at once, as epiphanies, without the need to actively develop them?
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There haven’t been genetic studies on grit, but we often think that challenge is inherited but grit is learned. That’s not what science says. Science says grit comes from both nature and nurture.
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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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Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
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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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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 think the very idea of character, of developing not just grit, but empathy and curiosity, emotional intelligence.
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I believe kids should choose what they want to do, because it’s their life, but they have to choose something, and they can’t quit in the middle unless there’s a really good reason.
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There’s something about taking the path of least resistance that makes a lot of sense. But at the same time, we have to figure out which things in life are worth struggling through.
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There’s this really awesome theory of human motivation – that human beings all want three things. One is to be competent, one is to belong, and one is be free, as in to have choice: to not be told what to do but to choose what to do.
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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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Grit, in a word, is stamina. But it’s not just stamina in your effort.
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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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I define talent as the rate at which you get better at something when you try. To be very talented means you get better faster and more easily than other people or other things that you try.
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Substituting nuance for novelty is what experts do, and that is why they are never bored.
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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 think the questions on the grit scale about not letting setbacks disappoint you, finishing what you begin, doing things with focus, I think that those are things I would aspire to or hope for for all our children.
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The words that we use I think are symbolic of the values that we hold.
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One of the challenges of commencement speeches is that you have this older, wiser person who is accomplished talking to young, not-yet-so-wise, not-yet-accomplished adults or, in high school or middle school, even younger.
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I would be surprised if my girls ended up as women without grit. I really would.
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