Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance | Angela Duckworth | Talks at Google

Ben Fried 0:01 We're here today to talk to Angela Duckworth, whose book, uh, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, was, today is the official publication date, right?

Angela Duckworth 0:10 Today is the official publication date of Grit.

Ben Fried 0:11 Cong- congratulations.

Angela Duckworth 0:13 Thank you.

Ben Fried 0:13 Um, so.

Angela Duckworth 0:15 Thank you.

Ben Fried 0:18 And incredibly gracious of her to fit time in at Google with a really, really busy publicity tour. Um, which, uh, I was getting exhausted just hearing about it a few minutes ago. So, um, for those of you who aren't familiar with, uh, Angela Duckworth's work, let me, uh, read, I'll try to briefly read a biography. Um, Angela Duckworth is professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and the founder and scientific director of the Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance the science and practice of character development. In 2013, Angela was named a MacArthur Fellow in recognition of her research on grit, self-control, and other non-I.Q. competencies that predict success in life. Uh, it's a very impressive resume. Uh, prior to her career in research, Angela founded a summer school for low-income children that was profiled as a Harvard Kennedy School case study. Um, she's been a McKinsey management consultant, a math and science teacher in the public schools of New York City, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. She has degrees from Harvard, Oxford, and the University of Pennsylvania in neuroscience and in psychology. Um, did I mention she's a MacArthur Fellow, 2013 MacArthur Fellow?

Angela Duckworth 1:24 [laughs]

Ben Fried 1:25 Um, all right. I'll stop there. And Grit is her first book, it says. So welcome again, Angela. Thank you for coming.

Angela Duckworth 1:31 Thank you, Ben. Thank you for having me. I'm delighted. Thanks.

Ben Fried 1:35 Um, so let's get right into it. If you're not familiar with her work, the TED Talk, the, uh, the, the book, um, I guess, uh, is it, maybe hopefully it's fair for me to summarize, uh, the thesis as that the power, as you put it, the power of passion and perseverance are at least as strong indicators and contributors to success or achievement as things like I.Q. and talent, which are, I think, what societally, at least, we've traditionally focused on. And, uh, that resonated enormously for me because I think at, at Google, we spend a lot of time thinking about, uh, uh, talent, I.Q., raw talent. Uh, it's kind of baked into this crazy hiring process that we have and, um, which brought me to the first question I had for you, which was, uh, do you think that, I mean, from what you know about Google, do you think that we or do you think that organizations in general select for the wrong things in the hiring process? And would, would we be better off, would organizations be better off if they looked for grit plus fit as opposed to attempting to measure innate talent?

Angela Duckworth 2:42 You know, I think the interest that we all have in talent, right? And it's not just Google. It's me, too, you know. I, I wish I were more talented. Talent's great. Um, and if you could give me five more I.Q. points, I'd take them. So it's not that, I don't think it's wrong to think about talent. I don't think it's wrong to think about potential. I do think it's useful to think about what we really mean when we say the word talent. And if you force yourself to write down on a piece of paper in a sentence that ends with a period, talent is..., it's really hard to actually fill in. Like, what do I mean? I, potential. I mean, we start to use metaphors. Here's my definition of talent, and I think it reveals that I do think it's important. Talent is the rate at which you increase in your skill with effort. Some people are going to increase their skills faster than others, and I think it's legitimate to say, those are the quick studies. Those are the talented people. I think it's legitimate for Google to look for them, right? Why not? Why not try to hire the more talented people? But in my data, I find two things. One is that more talented individuals don't always keep showing up, right? Woody Allen famously once said, "80% of success in life is just showing up." He was later asked by William Safire of The New York Times how he got to the number 80, and Woody Allen, who is not exactly a scientist, said, "Well, you know, I was gonna say 70, but it had one extra syllable."

Ben Fried 4:05 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 4:06 Nevertheless, you know, 70, 80, 60, you know, I think his point was is that his, his experience as a writer, which was the context of the, of the quote, you know, there are many people who could write a great book or who are talented in the sense that when they write they, they get better faster, but they never finish what they begin. And so what I find in my data is that talent is no guarantee of actually showing up and finishing the things that you start. The second thing is, characteristic of high achievers really in any domain, whether it's Google or outside Google, is this kind of daily discipline of trying to get better, right?

Ben Fried 4:39 Yeah.

Angela Duckworth 4:39 You know, just [laughs] you know, in sometimes, you know, microscopic, infinitesimally trivial ways, like, all those little details add up to excellence. And it's not always the people who are the quick studies who are willing to put in those hours and hours of behind the scenes unglamorous work. So sure, Google should hire talented people, but I, I do believe that you want people who are gonna stick with things when they're hard and who are gonna daily submit themselves to the Japanese principle of Kaizen, you know, continuous improvement.

Ben Fried 5:06 So on that subject, continuous improvement, you talk in the book about practice and the difference between, I think you use the words directed practice versus, uh, regular undirected practice. And it reminded me of, I think in running there's a phrase junk miles, which maybe is indicate... I've never actually been a runner, so I can only hypothesize what, what, what it means, but I guess it means kind of, uh, you know, running that doesn't really contribute to your improved conditioning. And what is the difference between directed practice and undirected practice in the spirit of Kaizen and self-improvement?

Angela Duckworth 5:36 So let's take running as actually the perfect example. So when I started to try to understand, you know, the science of achievement, right, beyond bumper sticker wisdom. You know, what, what do we really know as a science about experts and how they got that way? I quickly found myself at the doorstep of Anders Ericsson, who is, who's the world expert on world experts. He studies what experts do that make them different from the rest of us, right? It's a great job. He goes to, like, the Sudoku tournaments, and he studies-

Ben Fried 6:02 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 6:03 ... you know, World Cup soccer players. And, um, and, and he, he refers to it actually as deliberate practice.

Ben Fried 6:10 Right.

Angela Duckworth 6:10 And he would like to say that-

Ben Fried 6:11 Deliberate practice. Yeah

Angela Duckworth 6:11 ... deliberate practice is different from anything else that we do in four important ways. And I'm gonna come back to running as an example. But the first thing when you're doing truly deliberate practice is that it's extremely intentional. It's problem solving something in particular. Like, not like I'm gonna come into Google and be a better CO. Uh, w- whatever it is. Um, I, it's, it's like, you know, I'm gonna say that the first 15 seconds of my presentations are gonna be a little sharper. I mean, it's extremely, extremely precise. That's the first thing, a very specific goal that you're working on. And, and often it's a weakness, not a strength. Second is 100% focus, or as some coaches would say, like Pete Carroll at the Seahawks, practicing with great effort, right? Uh, third is feedback. Ideally- Right away, and ideally information rich. And fourth, the kind of refinement that you reflect on when you try the whole thing over again, right? In fact, these four things are incredibly straightforward, and you might wonder why only world-class experts do it. But let's come back to running. So when I heard about this research on deliberate practice, I, I asked Anders, "You know, why is it that I have gone running pretty much every day for years, and I'm not a second faster than I ever was," right? "Isn't that evidence that you're wrong? That it's not thousands and thousands of hours of practice?" He started asking me questions like, "Well, when you go out for a run, um, do you have a goal, like a certain time," right? Or, "Are you trying to run, you know, hills and shit?" "No, no, I'm taking the same route, you know, every, every time I go out around my neighborhood." And he said, "Okay, well that's great. What do you do when you're, when you're running?" I was like, "Well, I listen to NPR. Um, and, you know, any other podcast because I'm trying to distract myself." And he said, "Well, that's interesting because people who are trying to improve their running are actually concentrating on their running, and their strides, and their breathing." "All right." Then he said, "So, um, how are you getting feedback on your running? I mean, are you keeping your times? Are you measuring your heart rate? You know, do you have a coach who's looking at your form?" "No. No, and no." Right?

Ben Fried 8:12 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 8:12 And then he said, "Are you going back every time when you run and thinking to yourself, 'What can I refine here?' Right? 'Before this next repetition, what is there that I can do differently?'" "No." And he said, "Well, then I can tell you why you're not getting any better at running."

Ben Fried 8:25 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 8:26 [laughs] And that is, those thousands of hours are not thousands of hours of deliberate practice. So I think this idea that, you know, we should be getting better at things, you know, we can unpack that a little. It's not just going out and trying hard. It's actually trying hard in those four very specific ways.

Ben Fried 8:41 So on the subject of deliberate practice, uh, and coaching, I thought it's an interesting question. What, what, um, you know, in the organization do you have theories about what roles managers can play in helping people develop in the same way? Is, is ... Or do you have opinions on how professional development works in organizations versus how it should work?

Angela Duckworth 9:00 You know, one of the things that's really important to know about human beings is that it's not that we stop growing up when we're 18, right? And if you look at the etymology of the word parent, the word parent really means to bring forth. So after we leave our own parents, right, who have tried to bring forth our ... You know, we, we kind of like leap into other situations which frankly are, are parenting situations. I mean, I had teachers, I had professors. I still do. You know, mentors who in a very authentic way are, are parenting me. All right. Now what does it really mean? What does it look like? I think that really, really great leaders do, uh, a couple of things, right? One is they model the character that they want other people to emulate. And there are two schools of thought about leadership. Some people say the leader doesn't really matter. You know, swap out one, put in the next one. Really culture's gonna happen without them. I'm in the other school of thought. I think that's absolutely wrong. Everybody watches the leader. The leader sets the pace for the entire organization. And when the leader is nice to other people ... You know, when I go and visit famous people like you or ... You know, I watch them, and I watch how they talk to the people who aren't famous. You know, I watch them, like, you know, when they order their food. You know, do they look the person in the eye? And all of those little things are being watched by all the people who work for you. No pressure.

Ben Fried 10:15 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 10:17 Um, and, and, and they're emulating you. I mean, and, and especially if they respect you. And that brings me to the next thing that leaders do. I mean, a leader is respected when they provide both the kind of demanding, challenging, it's not good enough, it's still not good enough, I need you to do this differently, bring it back to me again. It's that in combination with support.

Ben Fried 10:39 Mm.

Angela Duckworth 10:39 And, uh, and it brings me all the way back to the parenting metaphor because that's what great parents do. They're demanding, they're challenging, it's not good enough. I'm occasionally disappointing you. But at the same time, genuinely care about you. I want you to be successful, and I respect you.

Ben Fried 10:56 On, on, so on, on the subject of mentoring and parenting, I thought it was, uh, I don't know where I read it, but that, uh, you share your peer review. When you submit papers, you share, you share the negative peer reviews and grant proposal rejections with the people in your lab and your, and your students. Is that-

Angela Duckworth 11:12 It is all true

Ben Fried 11:12 ... is that true?

Angela Duckworth 11:13 And here's the thing about it, right? When, when you interview someone who's, you know, whatever, they win an award, right? So like n- or, or you just, you know, you read off someone's resume. And by the way, you only usually read the good parts, right? Like, how about the time that you completely screwed up and, you know, made this wrong deci- ... I didn't put that on my resume.

Ben Fried 11:28 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 11:28 So you couldn't read it. But you know, I, I think a lot of my work is about demystifying things like excellence, right? You know, people who succeed fail all the time. In fact, I think they fail more than anyone else. Like, that's what makes them so successful because failure provides an opportunity for information. In academia, when you submit an article, even when you're very good, odds are it's gonna get rejected. And in my world, rejection comes with a 13-page single-spaced review letter about exactly how you suck, right?

Ben Fried 11:59 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 11:59 Like, "I can't believe how badly written this," like, "Oh my God, does this person not know the meta-analysis done in 2000," you know.

Ben Fried 12:05 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 12:06 And I send those letters out as soon as I get them to everybody who's working in my lab so that they can see all the imperfection that eventually will lead to some kind of achievement. I want them to know the truth as opposed to the, you know, shiny, polished, uh, myth that I think is easy to, to fall into.

Ben Fried 12:25 Ri- wh- which feeds into the myth of talent, right? There's some people who are just so good, they appear on stage one day never having thought about what they might say, and, you know, and perform kingly or flawlessly or, or whatever the- ... the case may be, right? Whereas in reality, it was direct practice, and failure, and so on that got them there.

Angela Duckworth 12:41 And again, that person may have been, so- so take, you know, take your fu- favorite actor or actress, you know, Judi- Judi Dench. I mean, take whoever you wanna think of as somebody who's like a paragon of- of masterful performance, right? It's not that n- you know, I'm saying that anybody could have been that person. I'm not saying that we c- all could have been Einstein. But even Einstein wasn't born knowing anything about physics. Even Judi Dench had to learn how to be an actress. I mean, skills, because we are human and we are not horses or other lower order animals who are born with a lot of stuff hardwired, right? Horses don't really have to learn how to run. Hours after they're born, they run, right? Human beings are born knowing nothing. The only thing that we're born knowing is how to learn. And so skills are acquired over a lifetime. Sure, the talented progress faster if they stay with things and if they continue to work at it.

Ben Fried 13:32 Yeah, on the subject of learning, um, I guess do you think that, I- I- I wonder, is it, do you think that the educational system is set up to support and recognize grit, perseverance? It seems like the academic cycle is short with immediate feedback, and, uh, it's easy, for example, to move on from one subject to another after, you know, three or six months of study if things don't go well. Uh, is- is- is academic, are the standards we've set for academic success hurting our ability to develop grit in people? Obviously, all of them could benefit.

Angela Duckworth 14:08 Well, if you think about younger kids, right, the kids are still in elementary school or middle school and high school. One way in which our system, I think, doesn't do a great job of encouraging grit is there's a kind of a narrowing of the focus on what it means to be successful to essentially mean what are your scores on the annual standardized tests of math and reading, and that's incredibly narrow. B- it not only leaves out a lot of things that I care about, grit, for example, for something you find meaningful, and I haven't yet met the 16-year-old who finds their standardized test scores, you know, a meaningful life goal, right? It also leaves out the kind of interests where a lot of us, probably in this room, would say that that's what they really did care about, like, you know, their sports team, you know, being on the baseball team, you know, writing for the school paper, you know, the things that kids do outside of the classroom that are unmeasured, that policymakers, not only are they not measuring and caring about them, these things are getting cut, you know, from- from schools, uh, left and right. Then when you talk about university education, right, well, you know, you do have to have a major in most schools, so that's gritty in the sense that grit means doing something in depth as opposed to being scattershot. But I'll tell you a story. I was once on a committee to decide who was gonna be elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and as you may recall, this is, you know, the honor society that, uh, y- th- there are people like me, you know, faculty who say, "Okay, well, this kid's really extraordinary as a budding academic, and this kid maybe not so." So, you know, the first kid gets on Phi Beta Kappa, and the second... So I remember looking at this one kid's record, and it was very clear to me that it was grit, and the passion for this kid was biochemistry, right? You could see in his transcript that, like, all of his classes were taken in biochem- you know, at the med school. Every summer, he was doing internships. Even before he was gonna graduate, he was gonna be a published author, which is a very hard thing to do for any kind of scientific publication. Committee gets to discussion, and people are like, "Oh, you know, I don't really see much humanities here." Like, "Oh, you know, this isn't a very good grade in his- his writing class." I was like, "Look, this kid's gonna win the Nobel Prize." Okay, I exaggerate.

Ben Fried 16:14 Yeah.

Angela Duckworth 16:14 But this kid has a passion. Let's reward that. And I argued hard enough that he did get Phi Beta Kappa, but I- I think that there is this kind of averaging. You know, people don't care about the average ability that you have across all the... Most of us in life are gonna become, if we're lucky, good at something, and it's that one thing that actually matters and not the other things that you didn't invest in.

Ben Fried 16:38 Do, uh, do you have a favorite grit story, someone who even... I mean, uh, uh, your book is full of great stories of people who demonstrated so many facets of passion and perseverance and interest and- and, uh, commitment over time. Is there a favorite one? Is there a-

Angela Duckworth 16:53 You know, it's a great job that I have. You know, so like Anders Ericsson, I kind of go around studying experts, and, um, uh, and you see it everywhere, by the way. It's not just that you have to go to the Olympics or to a chess tournament. You know, you go into a great restaurant, and this is a very trivial example, but I think it resonates for me. You go into a restaurant. You ever have, like, a great waiter or waitress? I mean, they're just so, they're considerate, and they... And I was like, you know, that is a pro. That is somebody who loves what they do and who seems to be trying to get better at it, and- and- and that is grit just as much as a famous story. I do have a story that I've recently been rereading, and that is Julia Child-

Ben Fried 17:31 Yeah

Angela Duckworth 17:31 ... and her autobiography. Um, and you may or may not know that Julia Child took until her late 30s to really figure out that she wanted to do anything at all related to food. She grew up in a wealthy family that had a cook. She said she had, and I quote, "Zero interest in the kitchen." When she was a young woman going to college, she thought she might wanna be a writer, a novelist. Then World War II happened, so she sort of, you know, went to gr- and this is not a story of grit so far. She marries Paul Child, and for his job, not for hers, they go to France, and she has a really memorable meal. It was sole meunière in a little restaurant outside of Paris, and that was the beginning of a journey, right? Not, by the way, a- an epiphany that she knew that she was gonna revolutionize the way Americans cook and introduce them to French cuisine, but, you know, one step in a journey where, you know, in the next meal, she noticed that was also different than anything she'd ever eaten. Then there was a bistro they went to. She started wandering around Paris and looking at this beautiful produce and this bread that she had never tasted before. You know, she got more interested. Somebody gave her a cookbook. Her husband, I think, gave her her second French cookbook. She found out that there were classes that she could walk to and learn French cooking. What I want to say about these stories of grit is that, one, they're, that, that is accessible. When you actually dig down into the details of how people became great, suddenly it becomes something that, you know, you might actually aspire to. And it's never really a snapshot. It's always a movie, and it's a long movie, and you might not want to see all of the scenes that, you know, could be edited out to make more drama. But in a very real sense, I think excellence is a, a long story that has, um, you know, parts that are not suspenseful, but parts are mundane.

Ben Fried 19:18 Yeah, it, like practice, it happens every day, right? You do it, uh, all the time. It gets better. Um, just so, um, yeah, I guess how measurable is grit? I mean, you actually did a bunch of pioneering work to measure it in West Point cadets, right? But is... I mean, when we think about talent and IQ and so on, there's a, a rich if somewhat colored history in the measurement of intelligence, right? Is grit equally measurable in your, in your opinion, or...?

Angela Duckworth 19:42 I think scientists have a much better grip on how to measure intelligence than they do to how to measure grit or so many other things that you could say are under this broad umbrella called character. And, you know, we've had these IQ tests really for over a century.

Ben Fried 19:56 Mm-hmm.

Angela Duckworth 19:56 Continually being refined, and in 45 minutes, I can give you your IQ score. Well, in two minutes, I can give you your grit scale score, right? So what's the difference? The difference is that my questionnaire is completely fakable. My questionnaire, I mean, really, like, I am a hard worker.

Ben Fried 20:12 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 20:13 Like, it's not, you know, it's not, uh, hard to, you know, think about what the answer is to that if you want a higher score. In an IQ test, you can't really fake it. I mean, you can't say like, "Ooh, I'm gonna guess C 'cause I know it's the right a- but I don't really know, but I'm fake..." You know, that doesn't work, right? Second thing is when you're taking an IQ test, there's no subjectivity. There's no judgment, right? You take the test. You get a score. With the grit scale, if I gave it to you and you said to yourself, "Hmm, am I a hard worker," I can only imagine the people that you would be comparing yourself to, right? When I talk about finishing whatever I begin on the scale, you're gonna compare yourself to your peers, who are all probably extremely gritty. So in addition to faking, there's what in science is called the frame of reference bias.

Ben Fried 20:56 Yeah.

Angela Duckworth 20:57 And that is your standard of comparison can vary, and here's one concrete example. In high performing charter schools like KIPP, right, eh, these are schools that are in New York, but, you know, all over the country. Kids are, are, like in, in many other schools, you know, brought to a very high standard of excellence. When kids rate themselves on items like I just read you, their mental frame is different from kids who could be just down the block at a different school that doesn't have those standards. So that distorts the, the scores to some extent. As a researcher, I know about that. I know how to adjust for that when I run statistics and so forth. I also know that there's, there's error. I know that there's the possibility of faking. What I worry about is employers or schools or, you know, government agencies who make the mistake of thinking that you can take a, a grit scale score and make those high stakes decisions that-

Ben Fried 21:50 Right

Angela Duckworth 21:50 ... the grit scale was never designed for. Like, don't hire with the grit scale.

Ben Fried 21:54 No, I'm not proposing.

Angela Duckworth 21:55 Yeah, okay, good.

Ben Fried 21:55 I'm not, I'm not proposing that we, uh-

Angela Duckworth 21:56 Yeah

Ben Fried 21:56 ... uh.

Angela Duckworth 21:56 Didn't want that to be the headline. Didn't think it was gonna be, but.

Ben Fried 21:59 Uh, but, uh, but I do wonder, uh, I mean, it, it, uh, it seems to me like we've perfected a lot of ways of measuring a bunch of talent and intuition and so on.

Angela Duckworth 22:07 Do you want me to tell you my best ideas-

Ben Fried 22:09 Yeah, well-

Angela Duckworth 22:09 ... that haven't been, been tested yet?

Ben Fried 22:09 Please, please. Yes.

Angela Duckworth 22:11 Okay. So I have one idea that has been tested. When you look at the resumes of people who wanna be Googlers-

Ben Fried 22:16 Mm-hmm

Angela Duckworth 22:16 ... which I can also tell you I think that's interesting that you use that term Googlers, and I think I know why you do. But that's maybe for another question. Um.

Ben Fried 22:23 I would love to know why, why we do so, so yeah.

Angela Duckworth 22:25 I'm gonna tell you. I'm gonna tell you. I think it's actually, like, yeah, I think it's not trivial, so I'll tell you. But, but when you look at the resume of somebody who wants to get in here, what I would look for is evidence of grit. I'm not saying that it has to be in exactly this domain or even for the job that per- ideally, yes, but sometimes it can be like, wow, this kid was on the tennis team for three or four years in college and went from A to B in their accomplishments. Like, hoo, this kid worked... You know, I'll tell you about my own husband. Like, this kid worked for Domino's Pizza as a deliver, but, but, like, they got promoted, right? Like, they kept, you know. There, there, there's progression, and there's continuity in a high grit resume. Conversely, don't hire the people who have these sort of, like, dilettante resumes of sort of like, oh, a little bit here, a little bit there. You know, where is the evidence of passion and perseverance applied to something before they got to my, to my doorstep? So I think you can look for the res- the residue of grit, as it were, like, in people's resumes. What I don't think you should do is use the grit scale, and also, I don't think you can rely on interviews. I am of the opinion that you can interview for charisma.

Ben Fried 23:27 Mm-hmm.

Angela Duckworth 23:28 You can interview for social intelligence. You can interview for confidence. You can interview even for chemistry, like am I gonna like to sit next to this person and, and work with them? But how are you gonna interview for that quality of a person where the next day they're gonna get up, and they're gonna be the first into the office or the last out. You know, w- you know, when you give them the feedback that says, "This isn't good enough," is that person gonna genuinely reflect on that and try to improve? That's really hard to get out of any kind of short interaction. And my best idea, which hasn't been tested-

Ben Fried 23:58 Yeah

Angela Duckworth 23:58 ... right, is if there is something that people are gonna have to do at Google, and it's particular obvious to their job, right, that is really hard, where you can set up a kind of mini grit experiment, right, where you're gonna able... You're gonna let them, uh, perform, right, and learn, get feedback, see whether they take that feedback, see whether they come back for a second try, get more fed- see whether they come back for a third try. I think that would be fascinating.

Ben Fried 24:24 So assessment as opposed to interview. Right.

Angela Duckworth 24:26 Exactly, but, you know, it's like you're piloting the person, right? I mean, giving them a chance to display their grit as opposed to trying to guess at it. Do you want me to tell you why I think you use the word Googler?

Ben Fried 24:36 Well, yeah, I would love to know-

Angela Duckworth 24:37 Okay. Yeah

Ben Fried 24:37 ... why we use Googler.

Angela Duckworth 24:38 Um, so, so my dad worked for DuPont his whole life, right? It was, um, you know, he actually retired with a gold watch. I thought that was just, like, a metaphor or it's... He got one, and it said, "DuPont, better things for better living," on it. Um, spent his entire adult life there in automotive refinishing products, um, which was his passion, by the way. Um, and, you know, my dad did not talk about, you know, working at DuPont.

Ben Fried 25:01 Mm.

Angela Duckworth 25:01 He talked about being a DuPonter.

Ben Fried 25:03 Really?

Angela Duckworth 25:03 Yeah. And, um, you know, people who go to West Point graduate, you know, from West Point, so they call themselves West Pointers, right? Kids who go to KIPP, they're not students, they're Kippsters. Uh, at the Seattle Seahawks, you're not just a football player, you're a Seahawk, right? These are nouns.

Ben Fried 25:20 Right, right, right.

Angela Duckworth 25:20 They're not adjectives. And when people have a, an extremely strong cultural identity, they're usually able to express that as a noun. You know, I'm a Googler. I'm not working for any other company. There's a way that we do things here. There's a language that we use here. You probably don't use it where you are, 'cause you're not a Googler. So-

Ben Fried 25:40 Did you know we also have an adjective, Googly?

Angela Duckworth 25:43 Oh, what does that mean? Just in the, in the spirit of Googleness?

Ben Fried 25:46 Oh, I'm, I'm spending eight years trying to figure out what it means personally.

Angela Duckworth 25:48 [laughs]

Ben Fried 25:49 But, but-

Angela Duckworth 25:49 I think you should stick with Googler. Googly sounds like those little eyeballs that go-

Ben Fried 25:54 Yeah, yeah

Angela Duckworth 25:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben Fried 25:54 Well, Con-

Angela Duckworth 25:55 I mean, that's not-

Ben Fried 25:55 Conan O'Brien on stage once made that comment.

Angela Duckworth 25:57 Right?

Ben Fried 25:58 "Ooh, these are googly."

Angela Duckworth 25:58 The googly, yeah. I don't think that's the, um... I, look, l- let the marketing department decide, but-

Ben Fried 26:03 Well

Angela Duckworth 26:03 ... maybe that's what you're going for.

Ben Fried 26:04 Yeah.

Angela Duckworth 26:05 Yeah.

Ben Fried 26:05 So yeah, sadly, Googly is pretty baked in already.

Angela Duckworth 26:08 [laughs] Okay.

Ben Fried 26:08 But, uh, I'm still not sure what it means.

Angela Duckworth 26:10 Well, that does happen with culture too. Yeah.

Ben Fried 26:12 Yeah, it-

Angela Duckworth 26:12 But it probably, you know, but really these words that you... I don't know how many vocabulary, 'cause I'm not a Googler, right, so I wouldn't know. But at West Point, they have this entire glossary.

Ben Fried 26:20 Really?

Angela Duckworth 26:20 And there are all these words that you wouldn't know unless you go to West Point. So a plebe, right?

Ben Fried 26:24 Of course.

Angela Duckworth 26:24 A plebe is, you know, you know, a plebe and a firstie and a yearling, and it's like, what are those? And booyah. So at West Point, they exclaim booyah, which doesn't have an easy translation, but, like, you say it when somebody does something really good. It's like booyah. And then, you know, the whole, the whole crowd of cadets that you're in will, like, erupt in these words that you've never heard in the English language. And, and that's very important because that's what it means to be a West Pointer. You know, every company has a culture, and when that culture is really strong, people identify with it in a noun form. They speak the language. They often wear the colors. They follow the rituals. You know, it becomes part of your identity. And when I heard about Googlers, I, I thought immediately of all these other very strong cultures that are very, um, I'm not saying intentional in that, like, one person's writing the handbook. Um, but it really is part of the, you know, it is part of what makes the company great.

Ben Fried 27:18 Now, is there, is there a connection between that kind of cultural identity and grit or, and non-IQ correlates with success?

Angela Duckworth 27:27 I, I absolutely think so. So, you know, you can identify with an organization or a culture that itself is gritty. I'll give you a, a national example, right? Country of Finland has actually fewer citizens than New York City has inhabitants. It's small. It's, uh, cold. Uh, what is there to know about, uh, Finland that could be of interest to us? There's a word in Finnish called sisu, which very roughly translates to grit, but quite literally translates to your insides, to your guts.

Ben Fried 27:56 Mm-hmm.

Angela Duckworth 27:56 And if you're Finnish, you have the identity of someone who, when things are really hard, and you've given all you can, and you still are falling short, you reach down inside and you use your sisu, and you do it anyway.

Ben Fried 28:11 Hmm.

Angela Duckworth 28:11 Now, it's anatomically impossible that the Finns are walking around with this, like, extra battery pack in them. And, and if they did have that, why don't, like, the Swedes have that, right?

Ben Fried 28:21 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 28:21 'Cause it's, like, not that far and it's, you know, Scandinavia and-

Ben Fried 28:24 The Swedes invaded Finland, I think, but-

Angela Duckworth 28:26 [laughs] Yeah, they had this little bit of rivalry there, yeah, going back. But, you know, I think what's important to learn there is that you have an identity as a Finnish person, and Finnish people do things that are hard, and we have sisu, and we, and we, uh, we prevail. And I think that when you are part of an organization like West Point or on a team like the Seahawks or the Celtics, they're another very gritty team with another very gritty leader, or you work at a company like Google, that identity is very much part of why you often struggle through, when in a different context with a different cultural identity, you might not.

Ben Fried 29:00 Now, are the... I mean, expanding it to national identities and national cultures is fascinating in itself. Are, are there, you know, are there particular cultures or immigrant groups that are grittier than others or...?

Angela Duckworth 29:12 I'm sure there are. I'm sure there are, right? There are lots of countries and cultures in the world, and-

Ben Fried 29:16 I'm not trying to race bait you, by the way-

Angela Duckworth 29:18 Yeah, yeah. No, no, no

Ben Fried 29:18 ... or anything like that. I'm just, just-

Angela Duckworth 29:19 Well, I haven't looked at the question directly, but let me tell you why, right? First, let me just acknowledge, I mean, anybody who wants to say that, like, all cultures are the same, that's, that's naive. I don't have any impulse to say that. But it's really hard to q- ask the question, you know, are the Americans grittier than the French, and are the French, you know, less gritty than the Japan...? You know, and here's why. When I give my grit scale to you, you're gonna answer it as you would with your comparison group.

Ben Fried 29:43 Right.

Angela Duckworth 29:43 When I give it in Japan, they're gonna answer it with those cultural standard, not only of their company and their family and their neighborhood, but, but the whole country. I wanna tell you about a study that was done of over 60 countries where they asked people to fill out personality questionnaires. They didn't give the grit scale, but they gave a scale of conscientiousness, right? Related. It's in the family, right? Dependability, orderliness, I'm punctual, et cetera. So now you have data on dozens of countries around the world, and you can ask the question: Which countries are the most conscientious, and which ones are the least? I'll tell you what the findings are.

Ben Fried 30:17 Yeah.

Angela Duckworth 30:17 The three least gritty areas in the world were Japan, uh, this is conscientiousness, by the data, right? Japan, Korea, and China.

Ben Fried 30:29 Hmm.

Angela Duckworth 30:29 Really?

Ben Fried 30:30 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 30:31 Really? They're messy people. They, they're not dependable. They don't work hard. They're bl- really?

Ben Fried 30:37 Yeah.

Angela Duckworth 30:38 So the researchers in that study concluded that perhaps these data were being influenced by the very high standard that exists in those countries.

Ben Fried 30:47 Right, right.

Angela Duckworth 30:47 That's why it's so, so hard to make these comparisons, because two things go into your score, what you really are, and then the frame of reference, the standard to which you're holding yourself.

Ben Fried 30:58 Yeah, I, we, we should probably try to open up to questions in the room and, uh, and on the Dory. I think it's, given time, we have about 15, 20 minutes left.

Angela Duckworth 31:07 Yeah, I'd love that.

Ben Fried 31:07 Does that make sense? There's-

Angela Duckworth 31:08 Yeah.

Ben Fried 31:09 Uh, do we have live questions?

Speaker 31:13 Can you use peer assessments, especially cross-cultural or ethnic boundaries, to then get a more baseline grit comparison?

Angela Duckworth 31:20 So the problem with the peer assessments when you're talking about the cross-cultural work in particular is that, you know, who are your peers? Like, other people who also live in the same culture. So I don't think peer ratings get you out of that. But I do think that if you, and you know, I know Google is always trying to hire better, right? You know, triangulation is a great strategy. In psychology, we call it the principle of aggregation. Whenever you have imperfect data from one source and imperfect data from another source, what you do is you put more and more imperfect data together. The error cancels out, right, or the unsystematic variance there, and you get a stronger signal. So yeah, get a peer rating, and a teacher rating, and a performance task, and look at their resumes. You could even throw the grit scale in if, you know, it's only one thing among many. And when you get a consistent signal that everybody thinks this person is gritty, then you actually have a good bet that they are.

Speaker 32:13 Hey. Thank you for coming, first of all.

Angela Duckworth 32:15 Thank you.

Speaker 32:15 Also, I saw you have an audiobook, so props to you.

Angela Duckworth 32:18 I do. [laughs]

Speaker 32:18 And also, guys, she read it herself, which is-

Angela Duckworth 32:20 I did

Speaker 32:21 ... which is really sweet. Yeah.

Angela Duckworth 32:22 It was really fun, actually.

Speaker 32:23 I'm gonna listen to it, like, sped up anyway, but that's-

Angela Duckworth 32:25 [laughs] Okay.

Speaker 32:26 No, I'm joking.

Angela Duckworth 32:26 Oh, really? Like chipmunk?

Speaker 32:28 Yeah, yeah.

Angela Duckworth 32:28 Like, yeah. Okay, great.

Speaker 32:28 Three, three times.

Angela Duckworth 32:29 Okay, good.

Speaker 32:30 Yeah. Uh, no, but, um, so my question is, you talk about, um, this example of the biochem kid who is really, really, really deep into biochem. I, I would call him pointy, so to speak. Like, he, he dug into that thing really hard. And you're talking about how you can use grit, uh, the grit property gets you to do that, right? It's the people who, who can do that. So I had a question that's, maybe it's outside of the scope of, of, of the grit. Um, but my friends and I, we're actually very gritty people. We, we dig into things very, very deeply. But recently, particularly after graduating college, we had trouble figuring out what to actually be gritty, like, into.

Angela Duckworth 33:10 Mm.

Speaker 33:10 Right?

Angela Duckworth 33:10 Yeah.

Speaker 33:11 In college-

Angela Duckworth 33:11 What to be gritty about. Yeah.

Speaker 33:12 Right. In college, it's very easy, or even in school because, you know, it's kind of, the metric is there. You know, you get good grades. Maybe you, you pick a major, you do well in it, fine. But then in the real world, I find that my friends in particular, they have trouble being gritty, not because they, they can't be gritty, but because they, they wanna be pointy, but they don't know what to pick. And then you can be really pointy in, like, Russian literature, and then it turns out you need to make money or something. And-

Angela Duckworth 33:38 [laughs] Yeah.

Speaker 33:39 You know.

Angela Duckworth 33:39 Yeah.

Speaker 33:39 No offense. I don't, I'm just joking.

Angela Duckworth 33:40 Yeah, no, no offense to Russian lit majors-

Speaker 33:43 Yeah

Angela Duckworth 33:43 ... um, if there are any here.

Speaker 33:44 But yeah, so how do you actually go about deciding what to be pointy in, especially when the cost, uh, of picking incorrectly is, can be high?

Angela Duckworth 33:52 You know, I think that one of the things that makes it so hard is that we know the cost is high, right? It can, it can make us freeze up a little bit, right? I was at McKinsey, and you know, there are a lot of people at McKinsey who, like me, had basically spent their entire life opening doors of opportunity, right? And if I do this internship, I can do anything. And then if I go to McKinsey, anybody will hire me. Well, you know, you get to a certain point in life where you realize that that's not the game anymore. It's not opening doors of opportunity. It's actually walking through, right? And it's walking through and hearing the other doors slam shut. Now, that's even more paralyzing in terms of the anxiety that would produce when you don't have this really strong inner compass. You're like, "Okay, follow my passion. Where do I get one?" Right? And, um, and here's my advice about that. You know, I do think that really, really gritty, passionate people have two sources of motivation, and this, um, th- these are two questions to ask yourself when you're gonna ask yourself what to do with the rest of your life. One is, what are my real interests, right? And, and they're still emerging. You know, they develop over years. But for many of you, there were things that you were interested in and things that you were less interested in that were kind of boring for you around the time that you were hitting adolescence. So many gritty people will remember that they started liking to do something, you know, at 12 or 13. There are exceptions, like Julia Child, right? But interestingly, her interest at that early adolescent stage was writing.

Speaker 35:16 Hm.

Angela Duckworth 35:16 Now, you think about who Julia Child really c- you know, grew up to be. It was not just a chef, but equally, if not more so, a writer, right, of cookbooks. So, so first to kind of, like, think back down memory lane to when you were a young teenager, what are things that you absolutely hated doing, but what are things that you kind of started wanting to do spontaneously? That's a clue, right? That's a thread. The second major motivational drive of passion is purpose, you know, importance. It really is almost moral for some pe- it's like, what is the, what is the greater mission that my work serves? And if you think about your values, right, it can be, you know, I really wanna help people become their best selves, or, you know, I really care about the environment. I mean, whatever it is that is, for you, a value that you think is deeply meaningful and isn't gonna change. If you can follow that and figure out where it overlaps with interest, you finally mentioned not becoming an impoverished, you know, professional Russian literature critic, right? You know, I don't know how many jobs there are like that. You probably do need a third circle, which is reality, right, and trying to make a living. But at least starting with the first two, right, my interests and my purpose or my values, I think that's, that's more helpful than just saying, like, "Oh, well, go follow your passion," because I- most of us don't know what that even means until we actually find one. Thank you.

Ben Fried 36:43 Uh, all right. Why don't we go ...

Speaker 36:46 Okay, great. Um, I certainly enjoyed the, uh, topic and the presentation. Clearly grit has a lot of value both in, you know, professional life and personal life. A different, uh, podcast I've been listening to recently, maybe you heard it in one of your runs, by the, uh, Freakonomics authors-

Angela Duckworth 37:00 Yeah

Speaker 37:00 ... was about the power of quitting, and failing fast we might say in engineering circles.

Angela Duckworth 37:04 I think I was on that podcast.

Speaker 37:05 Oh, wow. [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 37:05 I can't remember.

Speaker 37:06 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 37:07 I can't remember. Maybe. I don't really listen to them afterwards.

Speaker 37:10 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 37:10 But go on. Yeah. And I love that podcast.

Speaker 37:12 It's a great one.

Angela Duckworth 37:13 It's a great one. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 37:14 So I was trying to figure out how to, like, combine them. Like, 'cause in their personal life, on the sort of taking off that last question, you could sort of try a lot of things until you find something you choose as a passion. Do you have any advice in the corporate world of how to combine choosing when to fail and when to stick it, stick to it?

Angela Duckworth 37:26 You know, let me use the metaphor of dating, right? Because I am personally really happy that I did not end up marrying my first boyfriend. Um, and, and so I quit on him, right? I mean, every time you break up with someone you're quitting, and, and, you know, is that a good thing? Is it a bad thing? You know, I think that for me anyway, [laughs] you know, I was dating to find my life partner, right? I guess people can date for other reasons, but I was like, "Oh, we're not gonna get married. Over." Um, and, and it, it took a few dates and guys to kind of find the guy that I'm with. This is my husband. Um, but I think it's actually exactly what we do in our careers too. I mean, you, you're exploring, right? But there are some people who are exploring with intention, and I was dating to get married, right? I mean, I wasn't really ever intending to, like, stay dating forever. I think that makes all the difference. So sure, quit, but for me, quitting the White House speech writing gig, and McKinsey, and being a teacher, it was, it was sort of a groping towards something that I wanted to stick with, you know? I was only quitting those things so that I could find something that I would never wanna quit. And when I was 32, finally, after much, you know, exploration, I, I figured that out, and it was to have the career I have. But it's, it's not a, you know, predictable, efficient process. Uh, so quitting in the service of not quitting is, I guess, my, my answer.

Speaker 38:50 Thank you very much.

Angela Duckworth 38:51 Thank you.

Ben Fried 38:53 Uh, thanks Angela so much for coming. This was-

Angela Duckworth 38:55 Thank you

Ben Fried 38:56 ... really great. Um, there's something about grit that seems very intrinsic, very natural, almost unlearnable. Do you have any recommendations for how people can increase their grittiness?

Angela Duckworth 39:06 So I want everybody in this room to watch their own language in the next day or so for the word 'just'. You know, um, whenever we say, "Ooh, they just have it. Oh, they just are, you know, a natural," or, you know, "He's just extroverted," you know, like, "How does he do that? He's just, you know, kind of a math guy," you know. We use that language, I think, when we can't explain something, right? I mean, that's when we use the word 'just'. Actually, when Nancy Reagan said, you know, "Just don't do it," or, you know, when Nike says, "Just do it," I always find that, like, deeply unhelpful. Like, could you please tell me how?

Speaker 39:38 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 39:38 Or are you just going to, you know, like... So, um, so, so this, this idea that when we see someone do something fluently, particularly when we can't do it, I mean, somebody who dances really well if we can't dance or plays music really well and y- we start to use words like 'just' and we say things like they're a natural. And I was actually giving a talk, it was the pre-book tour, right? Today's the first day of book tour, but, you know, I gave a talk, and I give talks all the time. I'm sure you do too. And you know, you get practice, you get feedback, you make these little refinements, tiny little ones like, "Oof, that fourth slide, I totally have to change the background color." I mean, it's really that trivial. I get off the stage and I'm talking to the person who's handling it. She's like, "You are just a natural." And I thought about the irony that I just wrote a book about, you know, uh, uh, I, I should say I recently wrote a book instead of I just wrote a. I recently wrote a book-

Speaker 40:31 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 40:32 ... [laughs] um, about, about the fact that that is a, is a, you know, such an attractive myth, as, like, a seductive myth. And I think the answer i- is this. You know, we can say that people, you know, Jerry Seinfeld would say that some people are born to be comedians and some people are not born. I think there is a sense in which people are born with different inclinations, things that they find fun to do, things that hold their interest. But if you ask the question of how they eventually became Jerry Seinfeld, right? If they eventually wrote a book that's halfway decent, or they gave a talk that's reasonably fluent, it's not just anything, except if you wanna say it is just hours and hours and hours of iteration with feedback to get better at something which maybe I did just like, you know, when I was a little kid.

Speaker 41:24 My question is, how do you, what conditions do you, for a child, now you were talking about kids, do you set in order to, I don't know, breed grittiness? So to give an example-

Angela Duckworth 41:35 Hmm. Do you have-

Speaker 41:36 I'm a, I'm-

Angela Duckworth 41:36 ... do you have kids?

Speaker 41:37 I don't have kids.

Angela Duckworth 41:38 Yeah.

Speaker 41:39 Thinking about 'em though.

Angela Duckworth 41:39 [laughs] Okay, good.

Speaker 41:41 So I'm a-

Angela Duckworth 41:41 I, I recommend them

Speaker 41:42 ... I'm a Colombian immigrant to the United States. I came here when I was five years old. Eventually graduated West Point. Low income household in New York City. Four of us living in one bedroom. Mom, Dad, sister, et cetera. So I don't know what con- I still don't know what conditions were set for me to persevere, 'cause I could've been easily in that demographic of Hispanics that end up in jail or whatever it is.

Angela Duckworth 42:04 Yeah.

Speaker 42:05 Especially in the city. So what conditions, what makes me different or people like me different than my peers that I went to high school with that perhaps did not? I don't know.

Angela Duckworth 42:14 Do you have any hypotheses? Do you have any guesses?

Speaker 42:17 I, I mean, I think parent- parenting definitely had a lot to do with it, as an example of the hardworking, you know, immigrant parents, et cetera. Um, but then outside of that, you know, in the classroom it, it may have been teachers, um- But at the end of the day, I still have to do the work and I just, I don't know-

Angela Duckworth 42:35 And you probably see people who grew up in, maybe not identical, but such similar circumstances, and they didn't end up, [laughs] you know, anywhere close to, to where you are. You know, that is itself, I think, you know, my life's work, right, is to answer your question. And, and I, and I only have an incomplete answer, but I will say this. First of all, you did inherit DNA from your mom and dad. And so when you see gritty little kids who have gritty parents, you know, you have to at least pause and, and acknowledge the fact that, you know, half of their genes came from mom, half p- came from dad, they got shuffled up. And, and in part, we are like our parents because of our shared genetic heritage. At the same time, it's absolutely unequivocal that parents model certain behaviors. It's usually the case, not always, there are exceptions, but it's usually the case that kids are modeling the work ethic and the passion of their parents. Uh, if it's not their parents, often there's another strong role model, like a particular teacher who had a big effect, or a coach and so forth. So that's maybe part of the equation. I also think that a lot of grit comes, uh, down to kind of these virtuous cycles. You know, you start to find that you have a, a thing for a certain sport. That, that becomes a, a source of pride and success. People begin encouraging you. It's an upward feedback cycle of motivation, effort, and achievement, and it, it feeds itself. I think there are people who then are on the opposite spiral, which is, you know, they get a little down at the, about themselves, they stop trying, they prove themselves right because things don't go well, and they kind of spiral in the opposite direction. And Einstein is quoted, and I am not sure I can verify this, but somebody at Google can, as saying that compound interest is what we all really need to understand. It's like that is the mystery of the universe. And I think this compounding of, you know, a little bit of grit, a little bit of effort, you know, a little bit of success, a little more grit, you know, a little more effort, a little more suc- Like, if we could understand that compounding, then maybe we could understand why, you know, kids like you ended up where you are, but we could also maybe understand why so many other d- you know, don't.

Speaker 44:38 Thanks.

Angela Duckworth 44:39 And I would like Google to help me figure that out, by the way, so it would be a... Yeah.

Speaker 44:42 You need a volunteer.

Angela Duckworth 44:43 [laughs] Great. Thank you.

Ben Fried 44:44 How are we doing for time? I think we only have till 1:00, right?

Speaker 44:47 Five more minutes.

Ben Fried 44:47 Five more minutes. And is, is Angela expected to sign books at the end too? Oh, at the end. Okay. All right. So we have five more minutes. Should we do a question on the Dory?

Angela Duckworth 44:55 Oh, yes.

Ben Fried 44:55 This is somewhat conversational. I don't mean to-

Angela Duckworth 44:57 Oh, that's okay. It's all good

Ben Fried 44:58 ... to bruise.

Angela Duckworth 44:58 Yeah, yeah. No, it's good.

Ben Fried 44:59 I'll go back.

Angela Duckworth 44:59 Wait. Oh, like a-

Ben Fried 44:59 I mean, I'll read it. I'll read it

Angela Duckworth 45:00 ... a good, let's do the hard one. Yeah.

Ben Fried 45:02 Yeah.

Angela Duckworth 45:02 I think there was a study.

Ben Fried 45:02 "There was a study of 4,000 UK students published back in February in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in which grit was not shown to be that predictive of academic success."

Angela Duckworth 45:12 "Instead, intelligence and conscientiousness were key. Do y- do you have any thoughts on that study?" Yes, I do have thoughts on that study. Um, actually one of the co-authors of that study sent me the report before it was published, and here's what I said to him. So I'll, I'll tell you the full study. So there are, um, thousands of, of British kids, about 16 years old, I think, uh, who were going through the British school system, and their grit scores on these kids, and their, also their standardized math and reading scores on the UK test, right?

Ben Fried 45:46 The A-levels or something.

Angela Duckworth 45:47 The, it's, uh, something like that, [laughs] I guess. Right. Yeah. Not British enough to know, right? But it's a standardized achievement test, and we've all taken them, so we know what they are. Uh, the finding is this: grit does predict their standardized test scores, but not quite as well as a measure of conscientiousness, which we were already talking about. You know, dependability, being able to control your impulses, um, that sort of thing. So yes, grit predicted, but maybe not quite as, uh, as much, and also intelligence was a better predictor in that study. I don't find that all that surprising. I also don't, um, I mean, I don't question those findings for one moment. I think they're, they're very real. For me, my complaint is that if you're gonna equate your standardized test scores when you're 16 in things that frankly most 16-year-olds are not, are not invested in, right? It's not a meaningful personal goal. If you're gonna equate that with success or even, you know, with academic achievement, grades, for example, do not send all the same signal as your test scores. Grades are a better predictor of college persistence than your standardized test scores.

Ben Fried 46:48 Mm.

Angela Duckworth 46:48 So they're not interchangeable. There's information that's carried by, you know, grades that's not carried by test scores. There's information carried by your extracurricular activities that's not embedded in your test scores. My complaint is not with the finding itself, but the, the idea that that is everything that we would need to know about success for those kids. So I guess that's the, the major thing that I'll say about that study, and I think that it's very important to recognize that grit isn't the only im- important thing in the world. I study high achievement in challenging circumstances. It's in those circumstances where the goal also matters to you that I think grit emerges as, uh, you know, the most reliable predictor and not just a moderately predictive one.

Ben Fried 47:31 Should we go back to a li-

Angela Duckworth 47:33 Yeah

Ben Fried 47:33 ... live question?

Angela Duckworth 47:34 Hi. Yeah.

Speaker 47:34 I got a live question.

Angela Duckworth 47:36 Yeah. Give it to me.

Speaker 47:36 Um, what if you're applying your amazing grit to the wrong thing?

Angela Duckworth 47:39 Mm.

Speaker 47:39 Let's say I wanted to be a film star, but I have no grasp of what the world actually wants from a film star. When should I just say, "I should probably stop trying to do that and apply my grit to something else where I might actually be more successful"?

Angela Duckworth 47:51 Yeah. So for example, what if you're trying to be a film star and you're just disastrously untalented, right? There's, like, nothing that you could do-

Speaker 47:57 You have less talent than-

Angela Duckworth 47:57 ... that you would ever be, right? So that's one way that you could be wrong. The other thing that you could be wrong in is that you're picking an industry that, like, is gonna melt like, you know, like the polar ice caps, right? Like, the whole industry is gonna go away. And, you know, that happens these days, right, in, in ways that are faster than before. So there's lots of ways that grit can get you into trouble, right? I think the question is this. You know, you gotta take risks in life. There's no getting away, really. For even if you do nothing, you're taking a risk. What grit means is to put your left foot in front of your right foot [laughs] and then your left foot again, and keep heading in a certain direction. And you're absolutely right that you might end up somewhere that you didn't wanna be, but you can guarantee yourself that you'll never get anywhere by switching direction every few paces or not walking forward at all. So yeah, there's absolutely risk in being a paragon of grit, but I'd say there's a guarantee of failure at not being passionate and persevering.

Ben Fried 48:52 So a related question to the one he just asked is, is, is grit in a continuum with obsession? Is there a bright line between grit and obsession, or are they unrelated?

Angela Duckworth 49:02 No, I think there is actually a strong family resemblance between grit and obsession. You know, one of the individuals that I interviewed, but I, I didn't put her into the book partly because I forgot to push record when I was, uh, interviewing her, was Temple Grandin.

Ben Fried 49:14 Yeah.

Angela Duckworth 49:14 And I don't know if you know her work-

Ben Fried 49:16 Yeah, of course, yeah

Angela Duckworth 49:16 ... but she's, you know, famously autistic, and she, she writes about her autism. And in her words, "A little bit of obsession gets a hell of a lot of work done." Um, and-

Ben Fried 49:25 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 49:25 ... you know, this idea that you wake up... I mean, I'm obsessive. If you woke me up at 3:00 in the morning, which sometimes just happens to me, you know, like you wake up and you have to go to the bathroom, and you... You know what I'm thinking about? I'm thinking about grit. I'm thinking about like, "Why did that person do that? You know, it's so interesting. Like, where did they get the m-" I think about it all the time. I think about it in the shower. I think about it in yoga when I'm supposed to not be thinking about anything, but I'm thinking about grit, right? Like Shavasana Pose, you're supposed to be doing nothing, and I'm like, "I wonder where that, you know, is gonna..." You know, it's, it is an obsession. The difference may be between the way most people think about obsessions and the way gritty people think about ob- their obsessions is, you know, when they say, "I love what I do", they love that they love what they do.

Ben Fried 50:06 Wow.

Angela Duckworth 50:06 There's no sense in which they would trade that life for, for any other. And, and that's how I feel about my own work.

Ben Fried 50:12 Yeah. I think we have time for one more question. Should we...?

Angela Duckworth 50:19 Yeah. Hi.

Speaker 50:20 Hi. So a lot of your examples of people that have shown great grit, like Julia Child, she starts at 30 and then becomes this great success, they all seem to be underdogs that then succeed. Do they have to be?

Angela Duckworth 50:31 You know, you don't have to be an underdog, but I am fascinated by underdog psychology because, and I'll, I'll, I'll say these, uh, words to you and I wonder if they'll resonate. There is characteristic of many, many grit paragons that I've studied a sort of, "I'll show you" rebel- you know. Like, "You know what? I don't think you're really cut out to be a programmer. Grr." You know, just this like, you know, fear. It's an aggression almost. You, and I felt that when I was, you know, failing my neurobiology class my freshman year of college, and my very well-meaning teaching assistant, my TA, said, "You know, you really should withdraw from this course because you're going to get an F on your transcript, and you don't know this yet because you're 18, that's not a good thing to have." Right? And I felt a kind of, you know, like a hot anger. I mean, I marched out of that office to the registrar's office, and I not only didn't drop the course, I declared my major in neurobiology-

Ben Fried 51:25 [laughs]

Angela Duckworth 51:26 ... that very day. What the hell is that, you know? The, "I'll show you" response I think is fascinating. I don't fully understand it.

Ben Fried 51:32 Yeah.

Angela Duckworth 51:32 But it's fascinating that, you know, the same exact experience can either lead people to feel like, "I'm a loser, I give up", or the precisely opposite psychological reaction. And I think it's not maybe necessary, but it's very, very common to paragons of grit.

Ben Fried 51:51 I think we're out of time. Hey, Angela, thank you so much.

Angela Duckworth 51:54 Thank you, Ben.

Ben Fried 51:54 That was fascinating-

Angela Duckworth 51:55 I had so much fun

Ben Fried 51:55 ... and phenomenal. Thank you.

Angela Duckworth 51:56 I really enjoyed it. Thank you.