Everybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHMost 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.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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Substituting nuance for novelty is what experts do, and that is why they are never bored.
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People’s lives really do turn out differently. And it certainly can’t be explained by how intelligent you remember them being when they were sitting next to you in organic chemistry class.
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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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Some of the things we do are great, but they often have these iterations that are not great. We screw up sometimes. We get rejected.
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There are no shortcuts to true excellence.
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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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To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it.
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Many things matter other than our measured intelligence, so let’s get to work on them.
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There are so many things that kids care about, where they excel, where they try hard, where they learn important life lessons, that are not picked up by test scores.
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Boredom is a very self-conscious emotion by definition. Interest is not. So you can actually be completely absorbed in something and, at certain points in your development, not even realize that you’re into it.
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There is a fluency and an ease with which true mastery and expertise always expresses itself, whether it be in writing, whether it be in a mathematical proof, whether it be in a dance that you see on stage, really in every domain. But I think the question is, you know, where does that fluency and mastery come from?
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The most important thing parents can do, although it’s not the only thing they should do, is model the behavior they want from their kids.
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If you are a young person who is wanting to develop a passion, you cannot expect anyone else to tell you what that passion would be.
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Every day, parents and teachers ask me, ‘How do I build grit in kids? What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic? How do I keep them motivated for the long run?’ The honest answer is, I don’t know.
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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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH