Angela Duckworth - Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

[Music] [Music] I'm Angela Duckworth I'm a professor of psychology at the University of

Pennsylvania and I'm also the founder and CEO of a non-profit I call character lab I study grit which I define as this

combination of loving what you do passion for what you do and perseverance working really hard and being resilient about what you do and the thing that

makes great different I think then you know just being a conscientious person or a self controlled person is that you have this passion and this perseverance

for the long-term now long term means something different if you're in third grade then if you're in middle age when I look at world-class adult performers

long-term passion and perseverance can mean following something for years decades and in some cases a lifetime you know working really toward the same

distant end even if you don't even think you're gonna get there now what does it mean when you're in third grade well I don't recommend it third graders sign up to do something for the rest of their lives they are after all still figuring

out who they are and what they're gonna do but I do think that kids in third grade first grade eighth grade can begin

to to stretch themselves a little bit to see how much attention they can put towards something that they care about and not just give up after a day or two

but just a little longer maybe than they would have without some encouragement from a wonderful teacher or a caring parent or even a classmate why do I

study grit well one reason is that it's very different from Talent it's very different from being gifted or you know smart about something now I'm not saying

that there's no difference in ability among kids that's not the message of grit that you know everybody's equal it's just that I think when we pre

occupy ourselves with with talent and IQ we can get distracted from another part of the success equation that is so important and that is you know how much

energy are you going to bring to what you do and how much energy will you bring over the long-term if we only think about talent then we maybe forget

about effort and energy about passion and perseverance in my research I find that grit and talent are hardly correlated at all and sometimes they go

in opposite directions so that somebody who's a little more able maybe a little less gritty in certain samples I find that grit predicts achieving things that

you care about especially so for example if you start West Point Military Academy are you going to finish your training grit predicts that if you are in a sales

company and you're a salesperson grit predicts whether you will stay in your job versus drop out and do something else grit is also linked to practicing really

hard on things that you can't yet do as well as you'd like but would make you better at what you do that's called deliberate practice and gritty people do more of it that's one

reason why they may be world-class if they stick with things for a very very long time

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