Grit: The Power Of Passion And Perseverance

Hardcover-$26.99Paperback-$16.99NOOK Book-$14.99Audio CD-$29.99View All Available Formats & Editions
In this instant thủ đô new york Times bestseller, Angela Duckworth shows anyone striving khổng lồ succeed that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent, but a special blend of passion và persistence she calls “grit.” “Inspiration for non-geniuses everywhere” (People).

Bạn đang xem: Grit: the power of passion and perseverance

The daughter of a scientist who frequently noted her lack of “genius,” Angela Duckworth is now a celebrated researcher and professor. It was her early eye-opening stints in teaching, business consulting, & neuroscience that led lớn her hypothesis about what really drives success: not genius, but a quality combination of passion và long-term perseverance. In Grit, she takes us into the field lớn visit cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, teachers working in some of the toughest schools, and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also mines fascinating insights from history và shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in peak performance. Finally, she shares what she’s learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers—from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff lớn Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll. “Duckworth’s ideas about the cultivation of tenacity have clearly changed some lives for the better” (The new york Times Book Review). Among Grit’s most valuable insights: any effort you make ultimately counts twice toward your goal; grit can be learned, regardless of IQ or circumstances; when it comes to child-rearing, neither a warm embrace nor high standards will work by themselves; how to trigger lifelong interest; the magic of the Hard Thing Rule; và so much more. Winningly personal, insightful, and even life-changing, Grit is a book about what goes through your head when you fall down, and how that—not talent or luck—makes all the difference. This is “a fascinating tour of the psychological research on success” (The Wall Street Journal).

Xem thêm: Oppo Find 7A Giá Bao Nhiêu, Oppo Find 7A (X9006) Chính Hãng

Product Details

Angela Duckworth, PhD, is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow và professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She has advised the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams, và Fortune 500 CEOs. She is also the founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help kids thrive. She completed her cha in neurobiology at Harvard, her MSc in neuroscience at Oxford, và her PhD in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Grit: The power of Passion & Perseverance is her first book và an instant thành phố new york Times bestseller.

Read an Excerpt

Grit By the time you mix foot on the campus of the United States Military Academy at West Point, you’ve earned it. The admissions process for West Point is at least as rigorous as for the most selective universities. Top scores on the SAT or ACT and outstanding high school grades are a must. But when you apply khổng lồ Harvard, you don’t need lớn start your application in the eleventh grade, & you don’t need to lớn secure a nomination from a thành viên of Congress, a senator, or the vice president of the United States. You don’t, for that matter, have to get superlative marks in a fitness assessment that includes running, push-ups, sit-ups, và pull-ups. Each year, in their junior year of high school, more than 14,000 applicants begin the admissions process. This pool is winnowed to just 4,000 who succeed in getting the required nomination. Slightly more than half of those applicants—about 2,500—meet West Point’s rigorous academic and physical standards, & from that select group just 1,200 are admitted & enrolled. Nearly all the men and women who come lớn West Point were varsity athletes; most were team captains. & yet, one in five cadets will drop out before graduation. What’s more remarkable is that, historically, a substantial fraction of dropouts leave in their very first summer, during an intensive seven-week training program named, even in official literature, Beast Barracks. Or, for short, just Beast. Who spends two years trying to get into a place và then drops out in the first two months? Then again, these are no ordinary months. Beast is described in the West Point handbook for new cadets as “the most physically & emotionally demanding part of your four years at West Point . . . Designed to lớn help you make the transition from new cadet khổng lồ Soldier.” A Typical Day at Beast Barracks 5:00 a.m. Wake-up 5:30 a.m. Reveille Formation 5:30 to lớn 6:55 a.m. Physical Training 6:55 to 7:25 a.m. Personal Maintenance 7:30 lớn 8:15 a.m. Breakfast 8:30 lớn 12:45 p.m. Training/Classes 1:00 khổng lồ 1:45 p.m. Lunch 2:00 khổng lồ 3:45 p.m. Training/Classes 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. Organized Athletics 5:30 lớn 5:55 p.m. Personal Maintenance 6:00 khổng lồ 6:45 p.m. Dinner 7:00 lớn 9:00 p.m. Training/Classes 9:00 to 10:00 p.m. Commander’s Time 10:00 p.m. Taps The day begins at 5:00 a.m. By 5:30, cadets are in formation, standing at attention, honoring the raising of the United States flag. Then follows a hard workout—running or calisthenics—followed by a nonstop rotation of marching in formation, classroom instruction, weapons training, và athletics. Lights out, khổng lồ a melancholy bugle song called “Taps,” occurs at 10:00 p.m. And on the next day the routine starts over again. Oh, và there are no weekends, no breaks other than meals, và virtually no liên hệ with family và friends outside of West Point. One cadet’s mô tả tìm kiếm of Beast: “You are challenged in a variety of ways in every developmental area—mentally, physically, militarily, & socially. The system will find your weaknesses, but that’s the point—West Point toughens you.” So, who makes it through Beast? It was 2004 and my second year of graduate school in psychology when I mix about answering that question, but for decades, the U.S. Army has been asking the same thing. In fact, it was in 1955—almost fifty years before I began working on this puzzle—that a young psychologist named Jerry Kagan was drafted into the army, ordered to lớn report to West Point, và assigned to thử nghiệm new cadets for the purpose of identifying who would stay và who would leave. As fate would have it, Jerry was not only the first psychologist to lớn study dropping out at West Point, he was also the first psychologist I met in college. I ended up working part-time in his lab for two years. Jerry described early efforts khổng lồ separate the wheat from the chaff at West Point as dramatically unsuccessful. He recalled in particular spending hundreds of hours showing cadets cards printed with pictures and asking the young men to make up stories to lớn fit them. This thử nghiệm was meant khổng lồ unearth deep-seated, unconscious motives, và the general idea was that cadets who visualized noble deeds & courageous accomplishments should be the ones who would graduate instead of dropping out. Lượt thích a lot of ideas that sound good in principle, this one didn’t work so well in practice. The stories the cadets told were colorful and fun to listen to, but they had absolutely nothing to vị with decisions the cadets made in their actual lives. Since then, several more generations of psychologists devoted themselves lớn the attrition issue, but not one researcher could say with much certainty why some of the most promising cadets routinely quit when their training had just begun. Soon after learning about Beast, I found my way to lớn the office of Mike Matthews, a military psychologist who’s been a West Point faculty thành viên for years. Mike explained that the West Point admissions process successfully identified men và women who had the potential lớn thrive there. In particular, admissions staff calculate for each applicant something called the Whole Candidate Score, a weighted average of SAT or ACT exam scores, high school rank adjusted for the number of students in the applicant’s graduating class, expert appraisals of leadership potential, và performance on objective measures of physical fitness. You can think of the Whole Candidate Score as West Point’s best guess at how much talent applicants have for the diverse rigors of its four-year program. In other words, it’s an estimate of how easily cadets will master the many skills required of a military leader. The Whole Candidate Score is the single most important factor in West Point admissions, & yet it didn’t reliably predict who would make it through Beast. In fact, cadets with the highest Whole Candidate Scores were just as likely khổng lồ drop out as those with the lowest. & this was why Mike’s door was mở cửa to me. From his own experience joining the air force as a young man, Mike had a clue khổng lồ the riddle. While the rigors of his induction weren’t quite as harrowing as those of West Point, there were notable similarities. The most important were challenges that exceeded current skills. For the first time in their lives, Mike and the other recruits were being asked, on an hourly basis, to vì chưng things they couldn’t yet do. “Within two weeks,” Mike recalls, “I was tired, lonely, frustrated, và ready khổng lồ quit—as were all of my classmates.” Some did quit, but Mike did not. What struck Mike was that rising to lớn the occasion had almost nothing to bởi vì with talent. Those who dropped out of training rarely did so from lack of ability. Rather, what mattered, Mike said, was a “never give up” attitude. Around that time, it wasn’t just Mike Matthews who was talking to lớn me about this kind of hang-in-there posture toward challenge. As a graduate student just beginning to probe the psychology of success, I was interviewing leaders in business, art, athletics, journalism, academia, medicine, and law: Who are the people at the very đứng đầu of your field? What are they like? What vì you think makes them special? Some of the characteristics that emerged in these interviews were very field-specific. For instance, more than one businessperson mentioned an appetite for taking financial risks: “You’ve got lớn be able to lớn make calculated decisions about millions of dollars & still go to sleep at night.” But this seemed entirely beside the point for artists, who instead mentioned a drive to lớn create: “I lượt thích making stuff. I don’t know why, but I do.” In contrast, athletes mentioned a different kind of motivation, one driven by the thrill of victory: “Winners love to go head-to-head with other people. Winners hate losing.” In addition lớn these particulars, there emerged certain commonalities, và they were what interested me most. No matter the field, the most successful people were lucky and talented. I’d heard that before, & I didn’t doubt it. But the story of success didn’t end there. Many of the people I talked lớn could also recount tales of rising stars who, to lớn everyone’s surprise, dropped out or lost interest before they could realize their potential. Apparently, it was critically important—and not at all easy—to keep going after failure: “Some people are great when things are going well, but they fall apart when things aren’t.” High achievers described in these interviews really stuck it out: “This one guy, he wasn’t actually the best writer at the beginning. I mean, we used lớn read his stories and have a laugh because the writing was so, you know, clumsy and melodramatic. But he got better và better, & last year he won a Guggenheim.” & they were constantly driven to lớn improve: “She’s never satisfied. You’d think she would be, by now, but she’s her own harshest critic.” The highly accomplished were paragons of perseverance. Why were the highly accomplished so dogged in their pursuits? For most, there was no realistic expectation of ever catching up lớn their ambitions. In their own eyes, they were never good enough. They were the opposite of complacent. And yet, in a very real sense, they were satisfied being unsatisfied. Each was chasing something of unparalleled interest và importance, and it was the chase—as much as the capture—that was gratifying. Even if some of the things they had to vì were boring, or frustrating, or even painful, they wouldn’t dream of giving up. Their passion was enduring. In sum, no matter the domain, the highly successful had a kind of ferocious determination that played out in two ways. First, these exemplars were unusually resilient and hardworking. Second, they knew in a very, very deep way what it was they wanted. They not only had determination, they had direction. It was this combination of passion and perseverance that made high achievers special. In a word, they had grit. For me, the question became: How bởi vì you measure something so intangible? Something that decades of military psychologists hadn’t been able to quantify? Something those very successful people I’d interviewed said they could recognize on sight, but couldn’t think of how khổng lồ directly chạy thử for? I sat down and looked over my interview notes. & I started writing questions that captured, sometimes verbatim, descriptions of what it means lớn have grit. Half of the questions were about perseverance. They asked how much you agree with statements like “I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge” and “I finish whatever I begin.” The other half of the questions were about passion. They asked whether your “interests change from year to lớn year” & the extent khổng lồ which you “have been obsessed with a certain idea or project for a short time but later lost interest.” What emerged was the Grit Scale—a test that, when taken honestly, measures the extent to lớn which you approach life with grit. In July 2004, on the second day of Beast, 1,218 West Point cadets sat down lớn take the Grit Scale. The day before, cadets had said good-bye to their moms và dads (a farewell for which West Point allocates exactly ninety seconds), gotten their heads shaved (just the men), changed out of civilian clothing and into the famous gray và white West Point uniform, and received their footlockers, helmets, và other gear. Though they may have mistakenly thought they already knew how, they were instructed by a fourth-year cadet in the proper way khổng lồ stand in line (“Step up to my line! Not on my line, not over my line, not behind my line. Step up to lớn my line!”). Initially, I looked lớn see how grit scores lined up with aptitude. Guess what? Grit scores bore absolutely no relationship to lớn the Whole Candidate Scores that had been so painstakingly calculated during the admissions process. In other words, how talented a cadet was said nothing about their grit, và vice versa. The separation of grit from talent was consistent with Mike’s observations of air force training, but when I first stumbled onto this finding it came as a real surprise. After all, why shouldn’t the talented endure? Logically, the talented should stick around & try hard, because when they do, they bởi vì phenomenally well. At West Point, for example, among cadets who ultimately make it through Beast, the Whole Candidate Score is a marvelous predictor of every metric West Point tracks. It not only predicts academic grades, but military & physical fitness marks as well. So it’s surprising, really, that talent is no guarantee of grit. In this book, we’ll explore the reasons why. By the last day of Beast, seventy-one cadets had dropped out. Grit turned out to be an astoundingly reliable predictor of who made it through and who did not. The next year, I returned to West Point lớn run the same study. This time, sixty-two cadets dropped out of Beast, & again grit predicted who would stay. In contrast, stayers và leavers had indistinguishable Whole Candidate Scores. I looked a little closer at the individual components that make up the score. Again, no differences. So, what matters for making it through Beast? Not your SAT scores, not your high school rank, not your leadership experience, not your athletic ability. Not your Whole Candidate Score. What matters is grit. Does grit matter beyond West Point? to find out, I looked for other situations so challenging that a lot of people drop out. I wanted khổng lồ know whether it was just the rigors of Beast that demanded grit, or whether, in general, grit helped people stick khổng lồ their commitments. The next arena where I tested grit’s nguồn was sales, a profession in which daily, if not hourly, rejection is par for the course. I asked hundreds of men & women employed at the same vacation time-share company lớn answer a battery of personality questionnaires, including the Grit Scale. Six months later, I revisited the company, by which time 55 percent of the salespeople were gone. Grit predicted who stayed & who left. Moreover, no other commonly measured personality trait—including extroversion, emotional stability, & conscientiousness—was as effective as grit in predicting job retention. Around the same time, I received a điện thoại tư vấn from the Chicago Public Schools. Lượt thích the psychologists at West Point, researchers there were eager to learn more about the students who would successfully earn their high school diplomas. That spring, thousands of high school juniors completed an abbreviated Grit Scale, along with a battery of other questionnaires. More than a year later, 12 percent of those students failed lớn graduate. Students who graduated on schedule were grittier, và grit was a more powerful predictor of graduation than how much students cared about school, how conscientious they were about their studies, and even how safe they felt at school. Likewise, in two large American samples, I found that grittier adults were more likely khổng lồ get further in their formal schooling. Adults who’d earned an MBA, PhD, MD, JD, or another graduate degree were grittier than those who’d only graduated from four-year colleges, who were in turn grittier than those who’d accumulated some college credits but no degree. Interestingly, adults who’d successfully earned degrees from two-year colleges scored slightly higher than graduates of four-year colleges. This puzzled me at first, but I soon learned that the dropout rates at community colleges can be as high as 80 percent. Those who defy the odds are especially gritty. In parallel, I started a partnership with the Army Special Operations Forces, better known as the Green Berets. These are among the army’s best-trained soldiers, assigned some of the toughest & most dangerous missions. Training for the Green Berets is a grueling, multistage affair. The stage I studied comes after nine weeks of boot camp, four weeks of infantry training, three weeks of airborne school, và four weeks of a preparation course focused on land navigation. All these preliminary training experiences are very, very hard, và at every stage there are men who don’t make it through. But the Special Forces Selection Course is even harder. In the words of its commanding general, James Parker, this is “where we decide who will và who will not” enter the final stages of Green Beret training. The Selection Course makes Beast Barracks look lượt thích summer vacation. Starting before dawn, trainees go full-throttle until nine in the evening. In addition to lớn daytime và nighttime navigation exercises, there are four- and six-mile runs and marches, sometimes under a sixty-five-pound load, và attempts at an obstacle course informally known as “Nasty Nick,” which includes crawling through water under barbed wire, walking on elevated logs, negotiating cargo nets, and swinging from horizontal ladders. Just getting to lớn the Selection Course is an accomplishment, but even so, 42 percent of the candidates I studied voluntarily withdrew before it was over. So what distinguished the men who made it through? Grit. What else, other than grit, predicts success in the military, education, và business? In sales, I found that prior experience helps—novices are less likely lớn keep their jobs than those with experience. In the Chicago public school system, a supportive teacher made it more likely that students would graduate. Và for aspiring Green Berets, baseline physical fitness at the start of training is essential. But in each of these domains, when you compare people matched on these characteristics, grit still predicts success. Regardless of specific attributes và advantages that help someone succeed in each of these diverse domains of challenge, grit matters in all of them. The year I started graduate school, the documentary Spellbound was released. The film follows three boys và five girls as they prepare for and compete in the finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. To lớn get khổng lồ the finals—an adrenaline-filled three-day affair staged annually in Washington, DC, & broadcast live on ESPN, which normally focuses its programming on high-stakes sports matchups—these kids must first “outspell” thousands of other students from hundreds of schools across the country. This means spelling increasingly obscure words without a single error, in round after round, first besting all the other students in the contestant’s classroom, then in their grade, school, district, và region. Spellbound got me wondering: to what extent is flawlessly spelling words lượt thích schottische and cymotrichous a matter of precocious verbal talent, and to what extent is grit at play? I called the Bee’s executive director, a dynamic woman (and former champion speller herself) named Paige Kimble. Kimble was as curious as I was to learn more about the psychological makeup of winners. She agreed to lớn send out questionnaires to lớn all 273 spellers just as soon as they qualified for the finals, which would take place several months later. In return for the princely reward of a $25 gift card, about two-thirds of the spellers returned the questionnaires to my lab. The oldest respondent was fifteen years old, the absolute age limit according lớn competition rules, và the youngest was just seven. In addition khổng lồ completing the Grit Scale, spellers reported how much time they devoted khổng lồ spelling practice. On average, they practiced more than an hour a day on weekdays & more than two hours a day on weekends. But there was a lot of variation around these averages: some spellers were hardly studying at all, & some were studying as much as nine hours on a given Saturday! Separately, I contacted a subsample of spellers and administered a verbal intelligence test. As a group, the spellers demonstrated unusual verbal ability. But there was a fairly wide range of scores, with some kids scoring at the verbal prodigy level & others “average” for their age. When ESPN aired the final rounds of the competition, I watched all the way through lớn the concluding suspenseful moments when, at last, thirteen-year-old Anurag Kashyap correctly spelled A-P-P-O-G-G-I-A-T-U-R-A (a musical term for a kind of grace note) lớn win the championship. Then, with the final rankings in hand, I analyzed my data. Here’s what I found: measurements of grit taken months before the final competition predicted how well spellers would eventually perform. Put simply, grittier kids went further in competition. How did they vày it? By studying many more hours and, also, by competing in more spelling bees. What about talent? Verbal intelligence also predicted getting further in competition. But there was no relationship at all between verbal IQ and grit. What’s more, verbally talented spellers did not study any more than less able spellers, nor did they have a longer track record of competition. The separation of grit and talent emerged again in a separate study I ran on Ivy League undergraduates. There, SAT scores & grit were, in fact, inversely correlated. Students in that select sample who had higher SAT scores were, on average, just slightly less gritty than their peers. Putting together this finding with the other data I’d collected, I came to a fundamental insight that would guide my future work: Our potential is one thing. What we vì with it is quite another.