Book Report – Grit by Angela Duckworth

“Enthusiasm is common,” writes Angela Duckworth is her seminal book, Grit. “Endurance is rare.” Ain’t that the truth? She shares the stories of those known for determination and direction, from West Point cadets and Olympic athletes to oft-rejected cartoonists and salespeople, all of whom find ways to gut out the tough times and persevere. At issue for the rest of us is our very nature as neophiles, those who fall victim to varied interests. By the Latin definition, “interesse” means “to differ,” which explains why we’re always chasing shiny new objects rather than sticking with what we started in the first place. Different is new and therefore good, except of course when it’s not. Dr. Duckworth explains that this is why Warren Buffett advises we write down our list of twenty-five career goals and, after careful reflection, identify the top five, never speaking again of the other twenty. Why? Because they’re what “eat away at time and energy.”

So what’s an average schlub to do? Get gritty. Thankfully, grittiness – like our mindset – is not fixed; it can be grown and enhanced. Leveraging some of the work done by her colleague Carol Dweck (author of the equally brilliant Mindset), Duckworth tells us we need to commit to deliberate practice. Benjamin Franklin sharpened his writing skills through a relentless process of reading others’ articles and then memorizing them, hiding them, and recreating them over and over until he felt he acquired an author’s skill. (Imaging doing that. Seriously.) Bill Gates mastered tedious troubleshooting by working endless programming hours, so in the early years of Microsoft he made job applicants do the same, only hiring those who toughed out the cruel exercise. Call it perfect practice or better yet learned industriousness, noting that “without directly experiencing the connection between effort and reward, animals, whether they’re rats or people, default to laziness.” That may sting and yet it’s not exactly headline news that we only burn calories when we get off our ass.

The author looks all of 25 years old and yet has easily spent that number of years on her research. She confesses that grit isn’t everything and indeed can be a bad thing, suggesting that Hitler and Stalin were surely gritty types. Putting that aside, she has proven that “grittier people are dramatically more motivated than others to seek a meaningful, other-centered life.” In other words, it’s not hard to exercise stick-to-itiveness and follow through when one is driven by clear purpose. She distinguishes having a job from a career from a calling, advising that we develop ourselves and our intellectual character “with virtues like curiosity and zest.” Angela Duckworth lives that kind of talk, clearly applying all the zest she can muster mastering the one topic she was meant to study: grit. Read her inspiring book and you too may agree: you’re not fully keen unless you’re zestfully keen.