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 DUCKWORTHThe focus on just thinking about standardized test scores as being synonymous with achievement for teenagers is ridiculous, right?
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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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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There are going to be peaks and valleys. You don’t want to let kids quit during a valley.
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You cannot will yourself to be interested in something you’re not interested in. But you can actively discover and deepen your interest.
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If you’re never able to tolerate a little bit of pain and discomfort, you’ll never get better.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Negative feelings are typical of learning, and you shouldn’t feel like you’re stupid when you’re frustrated doing something. You might say to yourself, ‘I can’t do this,’ but you should say, ‘That’s great.’ That means you really have the potential to learn something there.
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So when my daughter told me on the second track meet that she was done with it because she discovered she didn’t like competing, I made her finish the season.
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Everybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.
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I will say that if my wildest dreams come true, I will, like, wake up one day, and I will be Carol Dweck, right? Because she is like everything I want to be.
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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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I now have Grit Scale scores from thousands of American adults. My data provide a snapshot of grit across adulthood.
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Many things matter other than our measured intelligence, so let’s get to work on them.
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I stayed for lunch for extra tutoring, gave kids my cell phone, and was available. In my first year of teaching,
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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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To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it.
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Grittier soldiers are more likely to complete their training, and grittier salespeople are more likely to keep their jobs. The more challenging the domain, the more grit seems to matter.
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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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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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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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