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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHEverybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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The words that we use I think are symbolic of the values that we hold.
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Why do some people try, try again, and why do some people not? That’s what I’m after.
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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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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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I think the very idea of character, of developing not just grit, but empathy and curiosity, emotional intelligence.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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Many things matter other than our measured intelligence, so let’s get to work on them.
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When I was 27 years old, I left a very demanding job in management consulting for a job that was even more demanding: teaching. I went to teach seventh graders math in the New York City public schools.
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Everybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.
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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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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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH