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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHPeople’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.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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When people think of the word ‘drive,’ they often think you have it or you don’t, and that’s where we’re wrong.
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Very few people can keep going their whole life doing something and feel like it’s merely personally fascinating.
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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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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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Grittier students are more likely to earn their diplomas; grittier teachers are more effective in the classroom.
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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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Everybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.
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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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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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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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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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Most people who are really, enduringly interested in something eventually find that it’s important, too – and important to other people.
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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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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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Grit and self-control are related, but they’re not the same thing.
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