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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHIt’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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHThere are no shortcuts to true excellence.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHBeing 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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI 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.
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 DUCKWORTHPeople who are really gritty – they’re still interested.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHMost people who are really, enduringly interested in something eventually find that it’s important, too – and important to other people.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHOne thing that’s true of gritty people is they love what they do, and they keep loving what they do. So they’re not just in love for a day or a week.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHOne 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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHThe focus on just thinking about standardized test scores as being synonymous with achievement for teenagers is ridiculous, right?
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI think the questions on the grit scale about not letting setbacks disappoint you, finishing what you begin, doing things with focus, I think that those are things I would aspire to or hope for for all our children.
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 DUCKWORTHGrit and self-control are related, but they’re not the same thing.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI stayed for lunch for extra tutoring, gave kids my cell phone, and was available. In my first year of teaching,
ANGELA DUCKWORTHNobody gets to be good at something without effort, no matter what your aptitude is.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI 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.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH