Is Grit Overrated?<\/p>\n
The downsides of dogged, single-minded persistence<\/p>\n
By Jerry Useem[1]<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere does the power come from to see the race to its end?\u201d asks the Scottish sprinter Eric Liddell in a scene from Chariots of Fire. His answer\u2014\u201cfrom within\u201d\u2014was until recently about as far as we\u2019d come in understanding the roots of dogged persistence.<\/p>\n
Besides the famous \u201cmarshmallow test,\u201d in which preschoolers who abstain from eating one get rewarded with two, measures of motivation have remained mushy. For most of its existence, even the United States Military Academy at West Point, where the celebration of unflagging commitment is etched into the campus statuary, lacked a reliable determinant of which cadets would have the drive to endure their first seven weeks (colloquially known as \u201cBeast Barracks\u201d) and which would say no m\u00e1s and go home. SAT scores, it turned out, were no predictor, nor were ACT scores, high-school rank, physical fitness,<\/p>\n
\u201cleadership potential,\u201d or any other measure of aptitude. At one point, military psychologists even showed cadets flash cards of random images in hopes of unearthing some subconscious basis for staying power. That, too, failed. What finally did work was appallingly simple. In 2004, on their second day at West Point, 1,218 new cadets sat down with a sheet of 12 statements\u2014\u201cI finish whatever I begin,\u201d \u201csetbacks don\u2019t discourage me,\u201d and \u201cnew ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones\u201d among them\u2014that they rated on a scale from \u201cnot at all like me\u201d to \u201cvery much like me.\u201d Drawn up by Angela Duckworth, then a doctoral student and now a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the test was a cinch compared with those to come. But it successfully predicted who would be there at the end of the seven weeks. The 71 cadets who called it quits tested as well as their peers on everything but Duckworth\u2019s \u201cGrit Scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you have recently bumped into that word, grit, Duckworth is the reason. She has argued that grit can be developed\u2014and is at least as important as IQ in predicting educational success. 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.<\/p>\n
But what does Duckworth\u2019s research suggest for grown-ups, in a professional context? Quite a lot, Duckworth would say. In her forthcoming first book, straightforwardly titled Grit, Duckworth pushes into the world of careers. She argues that grit\u2014perseverance plus the exclusive pursuit of a single passion\u2014is a severely underrated component of career success, and that grown-ups, too, need a better understanding of the nature and prevalence of setbacks.<\/p>\n
Grit may be essential. But it is not attractive.<\/p>\n
The ascent of Duckworth\u2019s buzzword owes a lot to her prior doubts about her own grittiness. Clearly, she had talent\u2014a characteristic that Duckworth defines as \u201chow quickly your skills improve when you invest effort.\u201d It\u2019s what enabled her, in her 20s, to hopscotch from one station in the meritocracy to another: Marshall Scholar at Oxford (where she picked up a neuroscience degree), speechwriting intern at the White House, management consultant at McKinsey, and finally science teacher at a charter school. But at age 32, she told me recently, stricken by the thought that she was a dilettante\u2014a promising beginner who always would be one\u2014she enrolled in the doctoral program at Penn, and made a vow not to look sideways for 10 years. Then she set about solving a puzzle that had vexed her during her teaching days: how to get kids to persevere just a little longer in tackling problems that exceeded their current skill set.<\/p>\n
Initially, Duckworth guessed that the answer had to do with short-term impulse control. The preschoolers who had held out for that extra marshmallow, after all, ended up as higher academic achievers than the kids who ate the first one. But impulse control did not fully account for how long people persisted at something in the absence of positive feedback such as success. So Duckworth simply began interviewing accomplished people in various fields\u2014sales, publishing, entertainment\u2014and parsing their descriptions of how top performers operated.<\/p>\n
What distinguished high performers, she found, was largely how they processed feelings of frustration, disappointment, or even boredom. Whereas others took these as signals to cut their losses and turn to some easier task, high performers did not\u2014as if they had been conditioned to believe that struggle was not a signal for alarm.<\/p>\n
To Duckworth, here was an opening. If you could change people\u2019s beliefs about how success happens, then you had a crack at changing their behavior\u2014delaying their quitting point a crucial modicum or two.<\/p>\n
But beliefs are themselves gritty and persistent. Duckworth cites surveys supporting this point. Ask<\/p>\n
Americans which they think is more important to success, effort or talent, and they pick effort two to one.<\/p>\n
Ask them which quality they\u2019d desire most in a new employee, and they pick industriousness over intelligence five to one. But deep down, they hold the opposite view.<\/p>\n
We know this thanks to another researcher, whose work Duckworth draws on, Chia-Jung Tsay of University College London. Tsay asked professional musicians to listen to audio clips of two pianists, one described as a \u201cnatural,\u201d the other as a \u201cstriver.\u201d Despite the fact that the two pianists were really one pianist playing different sections of the same composition\u2014and in flat contradiction to the listeners\u2019 stated belief that effort trumped talent\u2014the musicians thought the \u201cnatural\u201d sounded more likely to succeed than the \u201cstriver,\u201d and more hirable. Tsay found a similar prejudice among people considering an investment proposal. Their preference for backing a \u201cnatural\u201d entrepreneur over a \u201cstriver\u201d entrepreneur was erased only when the latter was given four more years of experience and $40,000 more in capital. Whence the bias for naturals? Duckworth offered me her best guess: We don\u2019t like strivers because they invite self-comparisons. If what separates, say, Roger Federer from you and me is nothing but the number of hours spent at \u201cdeliberate practice\u201d\u2014as the most-extreme behavioralists argue\u2014our enjoyment of the U.S. Open could be interrupted by the thought There but for the grace of grit go I.<\/p>\n
Whatever its origins, the bias has practical implications. Certainly, it suggests that my deep terror of letting anyone see my half-written article drafts is not irrational but adaptive. It perpetuates a myth that I\u2019m a natural\u2014the words just flow out, folks, as fast as I can type!\u2014and hides the far more mundane truth: that the words come out fitfully and woodenly, gradually succumbing to a state of readability only after many seemingly fruitless sessions. \u201cIf people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all,\u201d Michelangelo observed. Nietzsche concurred: \u201cWherever one can see the act of becoming one grows somewhat cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which suggests that Duckworth\u2019s basic admonition, \u201cEmbrace challenge,\u201d needs a qualifier: Do it in private. Grit may be essential. But it is not attractive.<\/p>\n
This can make for confusing career advice. \u201cTry hard enough and you can do just about anything, as long as you don\u2019t seem to be trying very hard\u201d is not the stuff of school murals. Yet the combination of private toil and public ease, Duckworth agreed, may well be the beau id\u00e9al between countervailing imperatives.<\/p>\n
Still, the prevalence of hidden practice among successful people is costly to society because it obscures the amount of failure that goes into success. Go on YouTube, Duckworth suggests in her book, and try to find footage of \u201ceffortful, mistake-ridden, repetitive deliberate practice.\u201d I did, and took her point. You cannot watch Yo-Yo Ma tediously repeating a difficult passage, or Ronald Reagan practicing his speeches in front of a mirror, or Steve Jobs unveiling a half-baked iPhone. (The closest I came was the discovery of an early Rolling Stones draft of \u201cStart Me Up.\u201d Suffice it to say: The song does not work as a reggae tune.) You see only the final products. If we routinely fool others, they routinely fool us. So when we experience messy frustration, we too readily believe that we don\u2019t have the right stuff and give up.<\/p>\n
As a direct countermeasure, Duckworth told me, she started changing her interactions with the dozen young researchers who work in her lab. They needed to see the rejection letters she received from peerreviewed publications, she decided, and so she started circulating each one as it came in: pages upon pages of sometimes savage attacks of the sort professors regularly deal one another, anonymously, by way of saying an article is unfit for publication. This is not something she would have done, Duckworth quickly noted, at a less secure moment in her career. But getting a MacArthur genius grant (as Duckworth did, in 2013) allows you to, among other things, hold your failure up to others and say, in effect, this is what success looks like.<\/p>\n
Duckworth\u2019s book is at its best when it, too, is showing the mess behind success. What she proves, scientifically, is limited. Of the various groupings where she finds the Grit Scale to predict staying power\u2014Green Beret candidates, National Spelling Bee contestants, Chicago public-school students\u2014 only a couple (Teach for America participants and salespeople at a vacation-time-share company) involve a workforce. But what sticks with you are the testimonials, collected from sources as disparate as Will Smith, William James, and Jeff Bezos\u2019s mom, that relentlessly deflate the myth of the natural.<\/p>\n
If I was left with one nagging question after reading Duckworth\u2019s book, it had to do with the second part of her grit recipe. Just half of the Grit Scale\u2019s questions are designed to measure perseverance, or the determination to meet a particular challenge. The other half measure what she calls passion but might be better understood as directional consistency, or the ability to stick unswervingly to a single, superordinate goal over a period of years. Duckworth mentions a journalist who chose his path precisely because \u201cthe journalism industry was very hierarchical, and it was clear how to get from A to B to C to D.\u201d But that describes journalism maybe 15 years ago. Which made me wonder: How well does this approach\u2014 basically, pick one long-range goal, keep your head down, and don\u2019t take a step sideways\u2014hold up in an economy where career paths can twist and even vanish with little warning? Shouldn\u2019t you keep your head up, ready for the next pivot? Or have many irons in the fire, as the champions of \u201ccareer agility\u201d suggest?<\/p>\n
Duckworth gamely admitted to me that she had not thought of this\u2014a result, perhaps, of her roots in education (where the paths to success have clear signposts) and her position in academia, one of the last truly guild-like domains. \u201cGrit may carry risk,\u201d she thought out loud, \u201cbecause it\u2019s about putting all your eggs in one basket, to some extent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even if Grit\u2019s career advice is partly outmoded\u2014or applicable only to fields where the rules of advancement remain stable\u2014it may be useful, anyway, to the extent that we need some direction to get anywhere. And if we are forced to switch paths? Well, that requires grit too. I thought of Intel\u2019s Andy Grove, a chemical engineer who, at age 32, suddenly found himself in charge of a chip-fabrication plant full of people he was supposed to manage. A more complacent person might have lunged for the comfort of his existing skill set. But Grove opened a school notebook and posed himself the question What is a manager?<\/p>\n
He pasted in news clippings (Time\u2019s description of a movie director\u2019s role, for instance), annotated these with more questions (\u201cMy job description?\u201d), and began to bear down on his fuzzy new understandings by sketching them as graphs. It\u2019s the record of a man repeatedly hurling himself against an unfamiliar challenge. In the end, the notebook was full.<\/p>\n
[1] Jerry Useem has covered business and economics for Inc., The New York Times, and Fortune.<\/p>\n
Reading Sheet<\/p>\n
Please use \u201csave as\u201d to give this file a new title each time you complete it: your name + author\u2019s name+ reading sheet <\/p>\n
1. Title & Author of Reading: <\/p>\n
2. Summary of 3-5 main points. What is this author trying to argue? Please use full sentences & use your own words: <\/p>\n
1.<\/p>\n
2.<\/p>\n
3.<\/p>\n
Hint for #3: Each WPE reading set centers around some big ideas. Often these big ideas are seen in key terms that are listed in the essay question. <\/p>\n
3. Key Terms\/big ideas in the reading set:<\/p>\n
Were any big ideas or key terms from the essay question mentioned in this essay? If so, which ones?<\/p>\n
Were there any other terms that seemed important to this reading?<\/p>\n
4. Passages Choose 3-5 useful passages (1-3 sentences) that will either help you answer the essay question, define a key term OR simply strike you as intriguing for some reason. For your own sanity, please include the page number for each passage. <\/p>\n
Passage<\/p>\n
Page #<\/p>\n
Your thoughts \/ questions\/ Why you chose it<\/p>\n
*If you are confused by part 4 of the assignment, I made a sample #4 below. Please delete sample before submitting.<\/p>\n
5. How, if at all, can you see the ideas in this reading connecting to the essay question?
Example of #4 (using a different reading critiquing our current school system). <\/p>\n
Please delete the example before submitting<\/p>\n
Passage<\/p>\n
Page #<\/p>\n
Your thoughts \/ questions\/ Why you chose it<\/p>\n
\u201cBoredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teacher\u2019s lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect.\u201d <\/p>\n
1<\/p>\n
He thinks one of the main issues is school is boredom: nobody is challenged or excited.<\/p>\n
In my opinion, I\u2019m not really sure if teachers are bored or not. I think some of my middle school teachers hated teaching, so it is possible they were bored. But I do not think they should blame the students. After all, the teachers are the ones who plan the classes!<\/p>\n
\u201cDo we really need school? I don\u2019t mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years.\u201d <\/p>\n
2<\/p>\n
Key Term: Forced schooling. Making a distinction between schooling & education. Here he\u2019s saying that school, like the time we spend in class, is unnecessary. <\/p>\n
\u201cUnschooled, perhaps, but not uneducated\u201d. <\/p>\n
2<\/p>\n
That reminds me of my uncle \u2013 he never finished primary school, but he still became a great children\u2019s book author.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur educational system is really Prussian in origin, and that really is cause for concern\u201d <\/p>\n
3<\/p>\n
I wonder what he means by this\u2026What is a Prussian education system? Why is it cause for concern?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is Grit Overrated? The downsides of dogged, single-minded persistence By Jerry Useem[1] \u00a0 \u201cWhere does the power come from to see the race to its end?\u201d asks the Scottish sprinter Eric Liddell in a scene from Chariots of Fire. His answer\u2014\u201cfrom within\u201d\u2014was until recently about as far as we\u2019d come in understanding the roots of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-93275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-paper-writing","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}