book review of grit

Book Review: Grit by Angela Duckworth

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you.  Please read  full disclosure  for more information.

• Title:  Grit
• Sub-title:  The Power of Passion and Perseverance
• Author:  Angela Duckworth
• About the author:  Angela Duckworth is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow. She began he career as a consultant at McKinsey before she tried out teaching. Her hypothesis was that the real determining factor of success wasn’t talent but a mix of resilience and single-mindedness. Her work went on to prove this theory.
• Published:  2018
• Link to book

HIGH-LEVEL SUMMARY

Author Angela Duckworth wrote this book to summarize everything she has learned about grit. Grit is a trait that can be described as having a combination of passion and perseverance to push through obstacles, remain single-minded in a pursuit, and achieve success.

Angela grew up with a father that talked a lot about talent and genius. He believed having or not having either would determine what Angela could eventually achieve. Angela didn’t fall into this fixed mindset and went on to become a MacArthur Fellow.

She was successful by most standards. She worked as a consultant at McKinsey before taking a stab at teaching. Then she went on to become a professor and research her theory.

Her theory revolved around grit being a differentiator between those who have success and those who don’t.

In this book, you’ll learn about what really drives success.  Grit  is broken into three parts:

• What Grit is and Why It Matters
• Growing Grit From the Inside Out
• Growing Grit From the Outside In

Additional topics covered include:

• Why showing up matters
• The distraction of talent
• Why effort counts twice
• How grit can grow
• How interest, practice, purpose, and hope play a role
• Parenting and grit
• The importance of culture and grit

RECOMMENDATION

Grit is a highly coveted characteristic. If you want to become grittier or even just understand how grit works, then this book is for you. Angela Duckworth explains how this trait is the differentiator in successful individuals.

Grit can be applied to all areas of your life and career so I would emphatically recommend this book to everyone. It is an easy and fascinating read that you will zoom through in no time.

TOP 35 TAKEAWAYS

 In no particular order

1.  After interviewing leaders in business, art, athletics, journalism, academia, medicine, and law, she asked: Who are the people at the very top of your field? What are they like? What do you think makes them special? They were constantly driven to improve and never satisfied. Why were the highly accomplished so dogged in their pursuits? In a very real sense, they were satisfied being unsatisfied. Each was chasing something of unparalleled interest and importance, and it was the chase—as much as the capture—that was gratifying.

2.  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, but they also had direction. It was this combination of passion and perseverance that made high achievers special. In a word, they had grit.

3.  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. SAT scores and 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.

4.  Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.

5.  Outliers, Galton concluded, are remarkable in three ways: they demonstrate unusual “ability” in combination with exceptional “zeal” and “the capacity for hard labor.”

6.  There is a gap, James declared, between potential and its actualization. “the human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum.”

7.  The “naturalness bias” is a hidden prejudice against those who’ve achieved what they have because they worked for it, and a hidden preference for those whom we think arrived at their place in life because they’re naturally talented.

8.  “In the most general sense, talent is the sum of a person’s abilities—his or her intrinsic gifts, skills, knowledge, experience, intelligence, judgment, attitude, character, and drive.

9.  According to The War for Talent, the companies that excel are those that aggressively promote the most talented employees while just as aggressively culling the least talented. In such companies, huge disparities in salary are not only justified but desirable. Why? Because a competitive, winner-take-all environment encourages the most talented to stick around and the least talented to find alternative employment.

10.  A few years ago, I read a study of competitive swimmers titled “The Mundanity of Excellence.” The title of the article encapsulates its major conclusion: the most dazzling human achievements are, in fact, the aggregate of countless individual elements, each of which is, in a sense, ordinary. “Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. The fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all together, produce excellence.

11.  “Our vanity, our self-love, promotes the cult of the genius,” Nietzsche said. “For if we think of genius as something magical, we are not obliged to compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking. . . . To call someone ‘divine’ means: ‘here there is no need to compete.’ ”

12.  Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them. Talent—how fast we improve in skill—absolutely matters. But effort factors into the calculations twice, not once. Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill productive.

13.  Even more than the effort a gritty person puts in on a single day, what matters is that they wake up the next day, and the next, ready to get on that treadmill and keep going.

14.  “The separation of talent and skill,” Will Smith points out, “is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams, who want to do things. Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.”

15.  At the bottom of this hierarchy are our most concrete and specific goals—the tasks we have on our short-term to-do list: These low-level goals exist merely as means to ends. In contrast, the higher the goal in this hierarchy, the more abstract, general, and important it is. Grit is about holding the same top-level goal for a very long time. In very gritty people, most mid-level and low-level goals are, in some way or another, related to that ultimate goal.

16.  Any successful person has to decide what to do in part by deciding what not to do. When you have to divide your actions among a number of very different high-level career goals, you’re extremely conflicted. So, to Buffett’s three-step exercise in prioritizing, I would add an additional step: Ask yourself, To what extent do these goals serve a common purpose?

17.  Cox concluded that “high but not the highest intelligence, combined with the greatest degree of persistence, will achieve greater eminence than the highest degree of intelligence with somewhat less persistence.”

18.  Together, the research reveals the psychological assets that mature paragons of grit have in common. There are four. First comes interest. Next comes the capacity to practice. Third is purpose. And, finally, hope.

19.  I asked Hester what she’s learned from talking to more than two hundred “mega successful” people, as she described them during our conversation. “One thing that comes up time and time again is: ‘I love what I do.’

20.  Within the last decade or so, scientists who study interests have arrived at a definitive answer. First, research shows that people are enormously more satisfied with their jobs when they do something that fits their personal interests. Second, people perform better at work when what they do interests them. So matching your job to what captures your attention and imagination is a good idea. It may not guarantee happiness and success, but it sure helps the odds.

21.  When I first started interviewing grit paragons, I assumed they’d all have stories about the singular moment when, suddenly, they’d discovered their God-given passion. One moment, you have no idea what to do with your time on earth. And the next, it’s all clear—you know exactly who you were meant to be. But, in fact, most grit paragons I’ve interviewed told me they spent years exploring several different interests, and the one that eventually came to occupy all of their waking (and some sleeping) thoughts wasn’t recognizably their life’s destiny on first acquaintance.

22.  Second, interests are not discovered through introspection. Instead, interests are triggered by interactions with the outside world. The process of interest discovery can be messy, serendipitous, and inefficient.

23.  Kaizen is Japanese for resisting the plateau of arrested development. Its literal translation is: “continuous improvement.” Likewise, in her interviews with “mega successful” people, journalist Hester Lacey has noticed that all of them demonstrate a striking desire to excel beyond their already remarkable level of expertise: “

24.  Unlike most of us, experts are logging thousands upon thousands of hours of what Ericsson calls deliberate practice. This is how experts practice: First, they set a stretch goal, zeroing in on just one narrow aspect of their overall performance. Then, with undivided attention and great effort, experts strive to reach their stretch goal. As soon as possible, experts hungrily seek feedback on how they did. Then experts do it all over again, and again, and again. Until they have finally mastered what they set out to do. Until what was a struggle before is now fluent and flawless. Until conscious incompetence becomes unconscious competence. And . . . then what? What follows mastery of a stretch goal? Then experts start all over again with a new stretch goal. One by one, these subtle refinements add up to dazzling mastery.

25.  Ericsson generally finds that deliberate practice is experienced as supremely effortful. he points out that even world-class performers at the peak of their careers can only handle a maximum of one hour of deliberate practice before needing a break, and in total, can only do about three to five hours of deliberate practice per day.

26.  Each of the basic requirements of deliberate practice is unremarkable: A clearly defined stretch goal • Full concentration and effort • Immediate and informative feedback • Repetition with reflection and refinement. Which leads to my second suggestion for getting the most out of deliberate practice: Make it a habit.

27.  At its core, the idea of purpose is the idea that what we do matters to people other than ourselves. Consider the parable of the bricklayers: Three bricklayers are asked: “What are you doing?” The first says, “I am laying bricks.” The second says, “I am building a church.” And the third says, “I am building the house of God.” The first bricklayer has a job. The second has a career. The third has a calling. In the parable of the bricklayers, everyone has the same occupation, but their subjective experience—how they themselves viewed their work—couldn’t be more different.

28.  One kind of hope is the expectation that tomorrow will be better than today. Grit depends on a different kind of hope. The hope that gritty people have has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with getting up again.

29.  Optimists, Marty soon discovered, are just as likely to encounter bad events as pessimists. Where they diverge is in their explanations: optimists habitually search for temporary and specific causes of their suffering, whereas pessimists assume permanent and pervasive causes are to blame.

30.  If you have a growth mindset, you’re more likely to do well in school, enjoy better emotional and physical health, and have stronger, more positive social relationships with other people. We’ve found that students with a growth mindset are significantly grittier than students with a fixed mindset.

31.  The scientific research is very clear that experiencing trauma without control can be debilitating. But I also worry about people who cruise through life, friction-free, for a long, long time before encountering their first real failure. They have so little practice falling and getting up again. They have so many reasons to stick with a fixed mindset. I see a lot of invisibly vulnerable high-achievers stumble in young adulthood and struggle to get up again. I call them the “fragile perfects.”

32.  There are countless research studies showing that kids who are more involved in extracurriculars fare better on just about every conceivable metric—they earn better grades, have higher self-esteem, are less likely to get in trouble and so forth.

33.  My best guess is that following through on our commitments while we grow up both requires grit and, at the same time, builds it.

34.  The bottom line on culture and grit is: If you want to be grittier, find a gritty culture and join it. If you’re a leader, and you want the people in your organization to be grittier, create a gritty culture. “So it seems to me,” Dan concluded, “that there’s a hard way to get grit and an easy way. The hard way is to do it by yourself. The easy way is to use conformity—the basic human drive to fit.”

35.  To be gritty is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. To be gritty is to hold fast to an interesting and purposeful goal. To be gritty is to invest, day after week after year, in challenging practice. To be gritty is to fall down seven times, and rise eight.

WHAT I LIKED

Comprehensive coverage of grit

The book is divided into three parts:

I feel that Angela covered the topic of grit pretty comprehensively. In part one, she introduces grit and talks about its importance. Once the reader is all hyped up about grit, she explains how the reader can generate it internally and externally.

Research and stories show grit as the common denominator in many cases

The book is filled with research and stories that all show grit as a common denominator. The author talks about Westpoint cadets, musicians, athletes, Ivy League students, and corporate professionals. You see how grit played a factor in some succeeding and some failing.

I thought the research and stories made it apparent how grit can impact a multitude of areas in one’s life.

Book explains how to generate grit internally and externally

Above, I mentioned how Angela shows you how you can generate grit internally and how you can generate it externally. I enjoyed this layout. She gives you the tools you need to build grit. Some people thrive on solving things internally and others thrive with help from external forces.

This book caters to both audiences.

BENEFITS TO YOUR LIFE AND CAREER

Understanding of the real trait you need to succeed

Individuals who are on the pursuit of success frequently analyze those who have had it. They look at them and try to pick apart why they have achieved so much. Odds are that they have a strong level of grit and single-minded focus on their goal.

That’s what Angela Duckworth points out in her book. With the awareness of how important this trait is, you can learn to develop it and use it to lead you to success.

Become mentally strong and overcome any obstacle

By building grit, you’ll naturally become mentally strong. In life, you will have highs and lows. You need mental strength to help get you through those low points. With grit, you’ll be able to withstand the storms and overcome any obstacle.

Know the importance of surrounding yourself with quality individuals

The latter chapters of the book deal with building grit from the outside in. Angela talks about her time with Seattle football coach Pete Carroll. She spent time with him and the team and saw how he created this gritty culture that every bought into.

She also shared quotes from a swim coach basically saying “the best way to become a good swimmer is to join a good swim team.”

By the end of the book, you’ll understand the importance of surrounding yourself with quality individuals. When you join a group that is gritty and always pushing themselves, you’ll want to do the same. It’s human nature to conform. You wouldn’t want to be the odd one out and risk being excluded from the tribe.

11 ACTIONS YOU SHOULD TAKE

1.  Learn to love the chase as much as the capture. Loving the pursuit of something will get you through the tough times that that pursuit will have.

2.  Develop the “capacity for hard labor” by learning to do hard things. By seeking out hard things, your comfort zone will grow.

3.  Avoid the “naturalness bias” when looking at the achievements of others. Understand what type of work they put in and for how long.

4.  Don’t just put in a large amount of effort in a single day. You need to show up the next day, and the next day, and the next. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.

5.  Look at your goals in a hierarchy. The top-level goal is your main over-arching goal that is important to you. The bottom-level goals exist as a means to an end. These goals will help you accomplish your mid-level goals. Then your mid-level goals will help you achieve your top-level goals. Your low-level and mid-level goals should be somewhat related to your ultimate goal. The more unified, aligned, and coordinated our goal hierarchies, the better.

6.  Develop these traits: 1) Degree to which he works with distant objects in view (as opposed to living from hand to mouth). Active preparation for later life. Working toward a definite goal. 2) Tendency not to abandon tasks from mere changeability. Not seeking something fresh because of novelty. Not “looking for a change.” 3) Degree of strength of will or perseverance. Quiet determination to stick to a course once decided upon. 4) Tendency not to abandon tasks in the face of obstacles. Perseverance, tenacity, doggedness.

7.  Develop a daily discipline of trying to do things better than you did yesterday.

8.  Experiment and find out what it is that you love to do; what it is that you’re interested in. Knowing what you want to do with your life does not happen in a singular moment. Ask yourself a few simple questions: What do I like to think about? Where does my mind wander? What do I really care about? What matters most to me? How do I enjoy spending my time? And, in contrast, what do I find absolutely unbearable?

9.  Practice deliberate practice. Give undivided attention and great effort. Seek feedback, adapt, and practice more. Work until a struggle is fluent and flawless. Measure your practice by how much your skill improved, not by how much time has passed.

10.  Avoid becoming a “fragile perfect.” These are people who cruise through life, friction-free, for a long, long time before encountering their first real failure. They have so little practice falling and getting up again. They tend to have a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset.

11.  Find a group that has a gritty culture. When you join that group, you’ll naturally want to conform, which will result in you becoming grittier.

Grit  can be found on Amazon at  this link here  if you are interested in reading.

About Post Author

Brandon Hill

I’m Brandon Hill with Bizness Professionals. We serve content to help young professionals develop personally, professionally, and financially. Well-rounded improvement is a theme we live by. As such, this website will cover a variety of topics aimed to help you have a successful life and career.

See author's posts

I'm Brandon Hill with Bizness Professionals. We serve content to help young professionals develop personally, professionally, and financially. Well-rounded improvement is a theme we live by. As such, this website will cover a variety of topics aimed to help you have a successful life and career.

Related Posts

Book Review: Getting Things Done by David Allen

Book Review: Influence by Robert B. Cialdini PhD

© 2022 Bizness Professionals • All Rights Reserved

Ouick Links

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

Google Rating

New York Times Bestseller

THE POWER OF PASSION AND PERSEVERANCE

by Angela Duckworth ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 3, 2016

Not your grandpa’s self-help book, but Duckworth’s text is oddly encouraging, exhorting us to do better by trying harder,...

Gumption: it’s not just for readers of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , as this debut book, blending anecdote and science, statistic and yarn, capably illustrates.

If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? It could be, to trust MacArthur fellow Duckworth, that you’re just not working hard enough—which is to say, you just don’t have enough grit. That old-fashioned term, appropriated by a newfangled scholar, is meant to combine the notions of passion, persistence, and hard work in more or less equal measure. That passion, Duckworth argues, “begins with intrinsically enjoying what you do.” Self-confidence figures into the equation, the assuredness that you have the ability to do what you do with at least some measure of success; but then, the ability to cope with failure, dust yourself off, and try again comes into play as well. Duckworth makes great effort to downplay any idea of innate talent in favor of improvement and mastery that come from digging in and doing it. “If we overemphasize talent,” she urges, “we underemphasize everything else.” In the nature vs. nurture controversy, the author sides with nurture, and there’s more than a little of the tiger mom in the prescriptions she dispenses for education. But on that note, she writes, teachers who are demanding may “produce measurable year-to-year gains in the academic skills of their students.” But throw a little love, supportiveness, and respect into the mix, and you build better people. For Duckworth, there should be no trophies for just showing up. When she writes of hard work in building the “gritty person,” she means  hard  work, as evidenced by her close study of West Pointers during their first and worst year, when 20 percent of the students drop out in a cohort carefully selected for their ability to stay on task until the task is done.

Pub Date: May 3, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-5011-1110-5

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: March 7, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016

PSYCHOLOGY | BUSINESS | SELF-HELP | MOTIVATIONAL & PERSONAL SUCCESS | GENERAL BUSINESS

Share your opinion of this book

THINKING, FAST AND SLOW

by Daniel Kahneman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011

Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...

A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.

The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011

BUSINESS | LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT & COMMUNICATION | PSYCHOLOGY

More by Daniel Kahneman

BOOK REVIEW

by Daniel Kahneman & Olivier Sibony & Cass R. Sunstein

More About This Book

IN THE NEWS

THE CULTURE MAP

Breaking through the invisible boundaries of global business.

by Erin Meyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 27, 2014

These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.

A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.

“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.

Pub Date: May 27, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1

Page Count: 288

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014

BUSINESS | PSYCHOLOGY

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

Advertisement

Supported by

‘Grit,’ by Angela Duckworth

• Share full article

By Judith Shulevitz

• May 4, 2016

GRIT The Power of Passion and Perseverance By Angela Duckworth Illustrated. 333 pp. Scribner. $28.

Grit: The word has mouth feel. It sounds like something John Wayne would chaw on. Who wouldn’t want grit? Wusses. ­Forget ’em.

Angela Duckworth, the psychologist who has made “grit” the reigning buzzword in education-policy circles, would surely recoil at any association between it and Wayne’s outmoded machismo. Duckworth is a scholar you have to take seriously. She has been featured in two best-­selling books (“How Children Succeed,” by Paul Tough, and “The Power of Habit,” by Charles Duhigg), consulted by the White House and awarded the MacArthur “genius” fellowship for her work on this obviously desirable trait. At the University of Pennsylvania’s Duckworth Lab, grit is gender-neutral. It’s self-control and stick-to-it-iveness. The two big ideas about grit that have made Duckworth famous are first, that it predicts success more reliably than talent or I.Q.; and second, that anyone, man or woman, adult or child, can learn to be gritty.

Nonetheless, the word has a cowboy kick, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It harks back to America’s pioneering days. It took grit to light out for the territory, as Huck Finn might have said. The notion that talent is born, not made, is the modern-day version of the caste system those Americans were fleeing. The cult of genius reinforces passivity and dampens ambition. “If we think of genius as something magical, we are not obliged to compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking,” Nietzsche wrote in a passage quoted by Duckworth in her new book, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.”

Grit, on the other hand, is egalitarian, or at least a less class-based indicator of future accomplishment than aptitude. Measurable intelligence owes something to genetic endowment but also depends heavily on environmental inputs, such as the number of words spoken to a child by her caregivers. The development of grit does not rely quite so much on culturally specific prompts. Moreover, grit appears to be a better engine of social mobility.

Giving character training to the underprivileged will not level America’s increasingly Dickensian inequalities, of course, but Duckworth’s ideas about the cultivation of tenacity have clearly changed some lives for the better. Duckworth has worked closely with influential figures in the ­education-reform movement, like the founders of the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) charter school network, which now has 183 schools in 20 states. She helped them devise the tough-love or “no excuses” pedagogical approach increasingly common among charter schools, which holds students to high standards and employs stern disciplinary methods meant to cultivate good habits. Thanks to her, social and emotional education appears on public school lesson plans throughout the country. There’s even a movement to test schools on how well they teach these noncognitive skills, as they’re called, although it must be said that Duckworth strongly opposes this. She argues that any test of character worth giving is too subjective to standardize, and too easy to game.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

• Health, Fitness & Dieting
• Psychology & Counseling

Sorry, there was a problem.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance Hardcover – May 3, 2016

• Print length 352 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Scribner
• Publication date May 3, 2016
• Dimensions 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 1501111108
• ISBN-13 978-1501111105
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

One of "The Hottest Spring Nonfiction Books" —The Wall Street Journal

A "Leadership Book to Watch for in 2016" —The Washington Post

A "Must-Read Business Book for 2016" —Forbes

One of "The Year's Best Life Hacks" —Glamour

"Angela Duckworth [is] the psychologist who has made 'grit' the reigning buzzword in education-policy circles...Duckworth's ideas about the cultivation of tenacity have clearly changed some lives for the better...In this book, Duckworth, whose TED talk has been viewed more than eight million times, brings her lessons to the reading public." —Judith Shulevitz, The New York Times Book Review

"It really isn't talent but practice—along with passion—that makes perfect, explains psychologist Duckworth in this illuminating book. Inspiration for non-geniuses everywhere." —People

“Psychologists have spent decades searching for the secret of success, but Angela Duckworth is the one who found it. In this smart and lively book, she not only tells us what it is, but also how to get it.” — Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness

“ Grit is a persuasive and fascinating response to the cult of IQ fundamentalism. Duckworth reminds us that it is character and perseverance that set the successful apart.” — Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers

“Impressively fresh and original… Grit scrubs away preconceptions about how far our potential can take us.” — Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

“Fascinating. Angela Duckworth pulls together decades of psychological research, inspiring success stories from business and sports, and her own unique personal experience and distills it all into a set of practical strategies to make yourself and your children more motivated, more passionate, and more persistent at work and at school.” — Paul Tough, author of How Children Succeed

"If you have recently bumped into that word, grit , Duckworth is the reason...In education and parenting circles, her research has provided a much needed antipode to hovering , by which children are systematically deprived of the opportunity to experience setbacks, much less overcome them...What sticks with you [in Grit ] are the testimonials, collected from sources as disparate as Will Smith, William James, and Jeff Bezos's mom, that relentlessly deflate the myth of the natural." —The Atlantic

" Grit is a useful guide for parents or teachers looking for confirmation that passion and persistence matter, and for inspiring models of how to cultivate these important qualities." —The Washington Post

“This book will change your life. Fascinating, rigorous, and practical, Grit is destined to be a classic in the literature of success.” — Dan Heath, co-author of Made to Stick , Switch , and Decisive

“Utterly captivating, inspiring and original…Once you pick up Grit , you won't be able to tear yourself away.” — Amy Cuddy, Harvard Business School professor and author of Presence

“Enlightening… Grit teaches that life’s high peaks aren’t necessarily conquered by the naturally nimble but, rather, by those willing to endure, wait out the storm, and try again.” — Ed Viesturs, Seven-Time Climber of Mount Everest and author of No Shortcuts to the Top

“I kept wanting to read this book aloud—to my child, my husband, to everyone I care about. There are no shortcuts to greatness, it's true. But there is a roadmap, and you are holding it.” — Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way

“Readable, compelling and totally persuasive. The ideas in this book have the potential to transform education, management and the way its readers live. Angela Duckworth’s Grit is a national treasure.” — Lawrence H. Summers, Former Secretary of the Treasury and President Emeritus at Harvard University

“Masterful… Grit offers a truly sane perspective: that true success comes when we devote ourselves to endeavors that give us joy and purpose.” — Arianna Huffington, author of Thrive

“I’m convinced there are no more important qualities in striving for excellence than those that create true grit...I hope you enjoy the book as much as I did.” — Brad Stevens, Coach of the Boston Celtics

“Empowering…Angela Duckworth compels attention with her idea that regular individuals who exercise self-control and perseverance can reach as high as those who are naturally talented—that your mindset is as important as your mind.” — Soledad O’Brien, Chairman of Starfish MediaGroup and former co-anchor of CNN’s “American Morning”

"Engaging...With strong appeal for readers of Daniel H. Pink, Malcolm Gladwell, and Susan Cain, this is a must-have." —Booklist

“Invaluable…In a world where access to knowledge is unprecedented, this book describes the key trait of those who will optimally take advantage of it. Grit will inspire everyone who reads it to stick to something hard that they have a passion for.” — Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy

“A combination of rich science, compelling stories, crisp graceful prose, and appealingly personal examples…Without a doubt, this is the most transformative, eye-opening book I’ve read this year.” — Sonja Lyubomirsky, Professor, University of California, Riverside and author of The How of Happiness

“Incredibly important…There is deeply embodied grit, which is born of love, purpose, truth to one's core under ferocious heat, and a relentless passion for what can only be revealed on the razor’s edge; and there is the cool, patient, disciplined cultivation and study of resilience that can teach us all how to get there. Angela Duckworth's masterpiece straddles both worlds, offering a level of nuance that I haven’t read before.” — Josh Waitzkin, International Chess Master, Tai Chi Push Hands World Champion, and author of The Art of Learning

“A thoughtful and engaging exploration of what predicts success. Grit takes on widespread misconceptions and predictors of what makes us strive harder and push further…Duckworth’s own story, wound throughout her research, ends up demonstrating her theory best; passion and perseverance make up grit.” — Tory Burch, Chairman, CEO and Designer of Tory Burch

“I love an idea that challenges our conventional wisdom and 'grit' does just that! Put aside what you think you know about getting ahead and outlasting your competition, even if they are more talented. Getting smarter won't help you—sticking with it, will!” — Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last

"An informative and inspiring contribution to the literature of success." —Publishers Weekly

“Profoundly important. For eons, we've been trapped inside the myth of innate talent. Angela Duckworth shines a bright light into a truer understanding of how we achieve. We owe her a great debt.” —David Shenk, author of The Genius in All of Us: New Insights into Genetics, Talent, and IQ

“An important book...In these pages, the leading scholarly expert on the power of grit (what my mom called 'stick-to-it-iveness') carries her message to a wider audience, using apt anecdotes and aphorisms to illustrate how we can usefully apply her insights to our own lives and those of our kids.” —Robert D. Putnam, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard and author of Bowling Alone and Our Kids

“This book gets into your head, which is where it belongs…For educators who want our kids to succeed, this is an indispensable read.” — Joel Klein, former Chancellor, New York City public schools

"[Blends] anecdote and science, statistic and yarn...Not your grandpa's self-help book, but Duckworth's text is oddly encouraging, exhorting us to do better by trying harder, and a pleasure to read." —Kirkus Reviews

“ Grit delivers! Angela Duckworth shares the stories, the science, and the positivity behind sustained success…A must-read.” — Barbara Fredrickson, author of Positivity and Love 2.0 and President of the International Positive Psychology Association

"A fascinating tour of the psychological research on success...A great service of Ms. Duckworth's book is her down-to-earth definition of passion. To be gritty, an individual doesn't need to have an obsessive infatuation with a goal. Rather, he needs to show 'consistency over time.' The grittiest people have developed long-term goals and are constantly working toward them." —The Wall Street Journal

About the Author

Product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner; 1st edition (May 3, 2016)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1501111108
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1501111105
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
• #17 in Popular Applied Psychology
• #57 in Popular Psychology Personality Study
• #377 in Success Self-Help

Videos for this product

Click to play video

Watch This Before Buying- Grit Angela Duckworth

HONEST Review of Grit The Power of Passion and Perseverance

My Top Picks

Watch Before Buying - Grit Book.

Keshav Kolur

The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Publisher Video

Grit is living life like it is a marathon, not a sprint.

Cary Decker

Customer Review: This book is packed with a bunch of Big Ideas.

Brian Johnson | Heroic

Customer Review: What talent really looks like

Christine Brown-Quinn

Customer Review: Four Stars

Bulldog Mindset

Customer Review: True Grit

Kendal Brian Hunter

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Amazon Videos

About the author

Angela duckworth.

Dr Angela Duckworth is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and an associate professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is an expert in non-IQ competencies, including grit and self-control. A highly sought-after international speaker, her TED talk on grit has been viewed by over 10 million people.

Duckworth’s hypothesis that the real guarantor of success may not be inborn talent but a special blend of resilience and single-mindedness grew out of her upbringing: as a child her scientist father lovingly bemoaned the fact his daughter was ‘no genius’. Duckworth was determined to prove him wrong and spent her youth smashing through every academic barrier. As an adult she became focused on proving her theory and to find out if grit can be learned or cultivated. It was out of this that she created her own Character Lab at the University of Pennsylvania.

Customer reviews

• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 75% 16% 6% 2% 2% 75%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 75% 16% 6% 2% 2% 16%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 75% 16% 6% 2% 2% 6%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 75% 16% 6% 2% 2% 2%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 75% 16% 6% 2% 2% 2%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Customers say

Customers find the book interesting, significant, and well worth their time. They appreciate the good insights, wisdom, encouragement, and challenge. Readers describe the writing style as easy to read, pleasurable, and conversational. They also mention the book presents many interesting stories and case studies. However, some feel the book is repetitive, boring, and predictable.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book interesting, significant, and well worth their time. They also say it's delightful and engaging.

"...presenting research findings while making them interesting and relevant to readers through many personal stories, examples, and literally dozens of..." Read more

"...This book has been very helpful to me personaly. One of the best self help books probably, because it was written by an woman author 😁..." Read more

"...Dancer Martha Graham says “Dancing appears glamorous, easy, delightful ...." Read more

"...In her incredibly enjoyable to read yet vastly informational book, Dr. Duckworth explains what grit is, and most importantly how you can foster grit..." Read more

Customers find the book has good insight and great real-life examples. They say it's a treasure trove of wisdom, encouragement, and challenge. Readers also appreciate the author's fresh writing that distills very difficult psychological concepts. They mention the book is filled with thoughts to ponder and has much research done by the author to support the content. Additionally, they say it's highly motivational and inspirational.

"...shines in accurately presenting research findings while making them interesting and relevant to readers through many personal stories, examples, and..." Read more

"...This book has been very helpful to me personaly . One of the best self help books probably, because it was written by an woman author 😁..." Read more

"...It is a book for those who relish solid research and well-reasoned conclusions . It is highly motivational, in a mature and thoughtful way...." Read more

"...In her incredibly enjoyable to read yet vastly informational book , Dr. Duckworth explains what grit is, and most importantly how you can foster grit..." Read more

Customers find the writing quality of the book engaging, easy to read, and pleasurable. They say the author makes a compelling case for grit as the standard in which we should live. Readers also appreciate the author's brilliant job of shaping their viewpoint.

"...to laypeople, Angela Duckworth succeeds brilliantly with this well-written and engaging book...." Read more

"...Dancer Martha Graham says “Dancing appears glamorous, easy , delightful...." Read more

"...Nonetheless, it covers a fair range of ground in a readable and well-organized package, so is worth the price for a one-stop review or a first-read..." Read more

"...The concept appears to be fairly intuitive until you get the very deep dive into the details of what passion and perseverance over the long term..." Read more

Customers find the story quality of the book interesting. They mention it has many case studies and interviews with successful people. Readers also appreciate the research, examples, and diagrams. They say the concept is good, giving good ideas for re-evaluating their goals.

"I found that this book had really good insight as well as great real life examples regarding the authors thoughts on grit and how people can..." Read more

"...She shares many examples and case studies , including the experiences of West Point cadets, and NFL players for the Seattle Seahawks under the..." Read more

"...the research that brought her to that definition; she uses many interesting examples , including the national spelling bee and WestPoint cadets, and..." Read more

"...Duckworth is infectiously smart and crafts a wonderful narrative ." Read more

Customers find the book a great study on personality. They say it explains well the importance of passion, perseverance, and the need to create. Readers also mention the author shows humility and honesty by stating the limits of her work. Overall, they say the book reveals character and fits perfectly with Mindset by Carol Dweck.

"...In essence: It’s the combination of intense passion + intense perseverance toward a long-term goal that matters to you...." Read more

"...her research and ideas in the parenting of her children, is honest and open ...." Read more

"...Lastly, like another reviewer pointed out, this book has a self-righteous undertone to it ...." Read more

"...It should perfectly fit the personality and attitude of the giftee. Hope he has time to read it." Read more

Customers find the book well-researched, with solid arguments. They say it's inspiring and a predictor of long-term excellence. Readers also mention the material itself is very inspiring.

"...The stories of people with the ability to persist are lively and interesting, but the overall feeling is of reading small vignette style biographies..." Read more

"...First, they were unusually resilient and hard-working. Second, they knew in a very, very deep way what it was they wanted...." Read more

"...First, these exemplars were unusually resilient and hardworking. Second, they knew in a very, very deep way what it was they wanted...." Read more

"This was a really great book. Well researched. Mostly solid arguments . Engaging, easy-to-read writing style...." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book. Some mention it's well-laid out, nicely written, and clearly written with real-life examples. However, others say it's dry and annoying.

"...] I found this book to be a nice mix of old and new . Old, in that it reaffirmed things that I had learned on my own, or had been taught...." Read more

" Quite dry and clinical. Difficult to read. Seems to fit a primarily into a strictly academic setting...." Read more

"...It's well-written and 'GRIT' becomes so well-defined through out...." Read more

"...The answer is yes.This is the most repetitive, annoying , boring book I have ever had to read, and I haven't even been able to force..." Read more

Customers find the book incredibly repetitive, boring, and predictable. They say it becomes tiresome in the middle and hard to get through. Readers also mention the writing style is bland, hard to follow, and random. In addition, they say the book loses its enjoyability and educational value.

"...There are times of complete frustration . There are daily small deaths.”Gritty people do more deliberate practice than others...." Read more

"...human stories to illustrate its points, but there are just too many of these stories ...." Read more

"...The book is amazingly boring .Duckworth also has a couple of glaring problems in logic...." Read more

"...Arghhhh...This books is sprawling, rambling , poorly organized, and doesn't deliver a thimble's worth of actual insight...." Read more

Reviews with images

Amazing body of work on a topic we *think* we already know...

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• About Amazon
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell products on Amazon
• Sell on Amazon Business
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Become an Affiliate
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Make Money with Us
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Amazon and COVID-19
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices

• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

• About Tubarks Consulting
• Read to Succeed Media Kit
• Evernote Media Kit
• 80 Ways to Use ChatGPT in the Classroom
• Strategies for Success: Scaling Your Impact as a Solo Instructional Technologist and Designer
• The New York Times® Best Sellers
• Book Review Sign Up

Book Review: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Grit is 349 pages long. Duckworth arranged the thirteen chapters into three major parts. These parts include:

What Grit Is and Why It Matters

Growing grit from the inside out, growing grit from the outside in.

Duckworth also included an Afterword that included the seven most common questions that she is regularly asked. She also provided a recommended reading list focused on developing a growth mindset.

While conducting research at West Point, Duckworth developed an assessment that measured Grit. Grit is a combination of passion and perseverance (p. 8). She was able to predict with great accuracy who would stick it out in West Point and who would drop out.

Over the course of her research, she learned that grit had no relationship with talent. This not only was evident to her experiences at West Point but also in other fields such as academics, sales, and even the spelling bee. Those who consistently practiced and prepared could overtake someone who was talented. However, talent should not be disregarded because it is important.

“Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them” (Duckworth, 2016, p. 42). Effort is a force multiplier. As I look back on my life, I realize I would have been extremely good if I simply put in the time and effort consistently. I merely dabble at activities thus I never become good. I just don’t stick to the activities.

Duckworth shared here Grit Scale. I took the assessment and it is sad to say that I am not very gritty. Perhaps it is the goals I set or don’t set. Duckworth pointed out that lifelong goals are important to grit. One must be committed to the goals they set. She devoted a chapter to goals and subgoals.

One of the findings that I found interesting is that people become grittier as they age or become more mature.

Duckworth discovered that there are four psychological elements that relate to grit. She devoted a chapter to each of these elements. These are

People who are interested in and passionate about something will tend to stick with it longer. I am sure that we all recognize this in ourselves. When we love doing something, we get lost in it. It is easy to do something we enjoy.

Practice is another element closely tied to grittiness. One must define goals with a purpose. It not just a matter of practicing, although that will result in improvement over time. It is more a matter of practice with a purpose. The goal is to achieve fluency. It was a matter of getting into the flow. “Gritty people do more deliberate practice and experience more flow” (Duckworth, 2016, p. 131). Practice is hard but it can be a positive experience. Duckworth shared ample strategies for making practice more beneficial.

If your activity also benefits others, you will typically see higher levels of grittiness. In other words, your activity should have a purpose that helps others. It is the difference between having a job, a career, and a calling.

This last element focused on hope. Interestingly, it had more to do with control. Someone who was in control of their mindset and circumstances knew they could control the outcome. Duckworth tapped into Carol Dweck’s growth mindset research. Those with a growth mindset experienced more success because they knew they were in control of their outcomes. It is important to know how to overcome adversity.

The last part of the book focused on helping others develop grit. Duckworth approached the topic from different perspectives such as what parents could do to develop grit in their child to what high-performing organizations could do. Developing the right culture is essential for grit to take hold. Throughout these last chapters, Duckworth shared strategies for developing grit.

Final Thoughts

Throughout the book, Duckworth provided a wealth of research that was weaved into interesting stories. This definitely held my interest throughout the book.

I would definitely recommend reading Grit if you find yourself giving up too early. There are certainly lessons that you can employ to develop more grit.

Come follow me on Facebook!

In the spirit of full disclosure, this is an affiliate link, which means that if you purchase this item through my link I will earn a commission. You will not pay more when buying a product through my link. I only recommend products & systems that I use and love myself, so I know you’ll be in good hands. Plus, when you order through my link, it helps me to continue to offer you lots of free stuff. 🙂 Thank you in advance for your support!