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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI 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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHThe 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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHNobody gets to be good at something without effort, no matter what your aptitude is.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHTo me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHWhat 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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHIf you’re never able to tolerate a little bit of pain and discomfort, you’ll never get better.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHThere are no shortcuts to true excellence.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI 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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI 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 DUCKWORTHReally, what matters in the long run is sticking with things and working daily to get better at them.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHNegative 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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI know that instructional time is a zero-sum game, but if we want kids to do well academically, it’s hard to imagine that happening if they don’t have some control over their attention.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHEverybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHDrive is something that can be encouraged by a wonderful teacher, by a terrific classroom environment, by an awesome soccer team that you are on, and it can be squashed as well.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI worked hard when I was a consultant. I worked hard when I was in graduate school looking at neuroscience.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHThere’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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH