If the quality and quantity of continuous effort toward goals matters as much as I think it does, we may actually get more productive, not less, as we get older – even if we can’t pull all-nighters like we used to.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHGrit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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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.
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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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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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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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Substituting nuance for novelty is what experts do, and that is why they are never bored.
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The words that we use I think are symbolic of the values that we hold.
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I do feel it’s hard to be modest and humble and egoless when people are telling you you are so great and wanting to give you prizes and energy. I’m trying hard not to be an awful, narcissistic human being.
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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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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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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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Everybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.
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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 and self-control are related, but they’re not the same thing.
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Psychologists call this the maturity principle. My own life experience fits this principle to a T.
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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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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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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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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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Grittier students are more likely to earn their diplomas; grittier teachers are more effective in the classroom.
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I would be surprised if my girls ended up as women without grit. I really would.
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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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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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And I’ve discovered a strikingly consistent pattern: grit and age go hand in hand. Sixty-somethings tend to be grittier, on average, than fifty-somethings, who are in turn grittier than forty-somethings, and so on.
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The focus on just thinking about standardized test scores as being synonymous with achievement for teenagers is ridiculous, right?
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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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People who are really gritty – they’re still interested.
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