Everybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.
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.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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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.
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As our knees and hips and eyesight deteriorate, we become more dependable, less impulsive, kinder, and less moody.
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I 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.
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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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It is important to realize that the process of ‘fostering’ a passion takes trial and error. It takes experience; you cannot do it all in your head. And it takes a long time.
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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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I would be surprised if my girls ended up as women without grit. I really would.
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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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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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I 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.
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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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Some of the things we do are great, but they often have these iterations that are not great. We screw up sometimes. We get rejected.
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Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
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One 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.
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I think it’s very important to send the message that, while parents are needed to remind you to practice and occasionally force you to finish things… they also need to learn to respect you. You as an individual, ultimately, are the captain of where you’re going.
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Nobody gets to be good at something without effort, no matter what your aptitude is.
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I worked hard when I was a consultant. I worked hard when I was in graduate school looking at neuroscience.
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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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Why do some people try, try again, and why do some people not? That’s what I’m after.
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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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Childhood is generally far too early to know what we want to be when we grow up.
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I stayed for lunch for extra tutoring, gave kids my cell phone, and was available. In my first year of teaching,
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Psychologists call this the maturity principle. My own life experience fits this principle to a T.
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Grit and self-control are related, but they’re not the same thing.
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And I’ve discovered a strikingly consistent pattern: grit and age go hand in hand. Sixty-somethings tend to be grittier, on average, than fifty-somethings, who are in turn grittier than forty-somethings, and so on.
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Negative 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 DUCKWORTH