When people think of the word ‘drive,’ they often think you have it or you don’t, and that’s where we’re wrong.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my genes because I can’t do anything about them.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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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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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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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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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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There are going to be peaks and valleys. You don’t want to let kids quit during a valley.
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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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Many, many individuals will report starting to form their lifelong interests around adolescence. Why that is, researchers don’t fully know. But if you can take a trip down memory lane and see what interested you, that’s at least a clue as to where your interest may begin to develop.
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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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Why do some people try, try again, and why do some people not? That’s what I’m after.
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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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I didn’t tell my kids, ‘You have to play viola, and you have to play piano.’ They chose these things on their own, and I don’t think we have to give kids every choice, but we do have to give them some choice because that autonomy is crucial for fostering passion.
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Everybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.
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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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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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH -
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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH