Grittier students are more likely to earn their diplomas; grittier teachers are more effective in the classroom.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHWhen 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.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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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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The 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.
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I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my genes because I can’t do anything about them.
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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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If you’re never able to tolerate a little bit of pain and discomfort, you’ll never get better.
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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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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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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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The parenting style that is good for grit is also the parenting style good for most other things: Be really, really demanding, and be very, very supportive.
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Grit may carry risk because it’s about putting all your eggs in one basket, to some extent.
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Most teachers, when surveyed, say that it is part of their job to help students develop things like grit. This is especially true at the elementary and middle school levels. They feel it’s part of their vocation to teach other things that are not formally academic content.
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Everybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.
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Maybe. But the reality is that our early interests are fragile, vaguely defined, and in need of energetic, years-long cultivation and refinement.
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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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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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