Grit, put simply is perseverance and passion for very long term goals.
To say a few more words about, Grit is really about your stamina, how consistently you're
working in a certain direction, then how hard you're working in that direction.
It is not about intensity.
I've had young people come to me after talks and say "well let me just tell you how gritty
I am.
I spent 72 hours without sleeping and I did this amazing thing" and I congratulate them
but I say "so what did you do the next week and how many
years have you been working on this?"
So when we assess Grit by looking at people's biographies for example we don't necessarily
look for bursts of unusual productivity or effort, but we really look for constancy of
effort over time.
I have actually for several years been grappling with the question of whether
virtues like grit are only virtues in the middle of the spectrum so do we have
something like the Aristotelian notion of the golden mean where excessive grit
as well as insufficient grit are both bad.
I've lately come to the opinion and it really is an opinion because I don't have
data to support this.
That it's not necessarily that you can have too much grit, what you can have is Grit
in the absence of other key virtues. So for example if you're an extraordinarily
gritty person who lacks judgment or humility or honesty or empathy and kindness you can
see where Grit could you know magnify ill effects.
But I don't necessarily think that it's the problem of being a 10 out of 10 on the Grit scale
Let me start off by saying that in our research
studies for many outcomes like finishing West Point, Grit actually is more predictive than
IQ or SAT scores, but i think the real question is not oh which is more important or more
predictive what it really is important to do is to highlight the undervalued role of
effort.
I feel like we live in a culture where we talk about talent all the time.
In fact I once was asked to do a media presentation and they actually even refer to people as
talent.
As in has the talent showed up? The talent show up to makeup yet? Talent has to be on
in five minutes.
So this kind of obsession we have with, you know, whether we are or are not gifted and
talented.
Whether we do or do not make some talent threshold is misplaced and if anything I would hope
that my research doesn't necessarily undermine talent because I think talent exists.
I'm not a particularly talented driver for example.
But but we vastly underestimate how much effort, practice, time on task, really determines ultimate
performance.
So resilience and Grit, I'm often asked the question as sort of how does resilience effect
grit or is resilience the same thing as grit?
I would say that resilience if you would define resilience as bouncing back from adversity,
that that that would be one of the things that would be a precursor to grit.
But I don't think it's exactly the same because if you're somebody who well when things are
hard to bounce back that is one thing that you need to be gritty but not the only thing
you also need a passion right you also need something that you're really committed to
working on over the long term and and being resilient doesn't guarantee that.