Book Summary – Grit

Why::

You might read lots of books that focus on building daily habits. This is the science behind the behaviours that influence our actions. And why some people tend to stick with it and others give up. Understanding this is the first step to creating long-lasting habits.

This book is a must-read if you want to develop good habits, be a better parent or a leader who wants to create the right culture at work.

Our misunderstanding of passion and interests leads us to try new things but also to give up too soon. What we lack is a connecting thread that bridges our daily, weekly, yearly and life goals together.

We appreciate the talented genius more than the hardworking elite performer. This thinking seeps into our lives in how we view ourselves or those around us.

Short Summary

Atomic Essay – The secret to building long-term habits.

Long Summary::

Passion is misunderstood

Grit is a combination of passion and perseverance.

If your passion is like fireworks, it will light up and then fizzle out. However, people with grit use it more like a compass that guides them on a long journey.

Passion is about consistency over time and not a short-lived obsession. Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.

Talent gets all the attention

Humans have a naturalness bias against people who seemed to have worked to achieve something versus those who achieved it through their natural talent.

Focusing all of our attention on talent means we risk neglecting other important factors like grit that contribute to success. “Gifted students program” is one example that comes to mind.

Best of human achievement = sum of ordinary individual elements

Effort matter more than talent

Effort is the secret to success, because it counts twice.

If you have 2x the talent, but 0.5x the effort, you will reach the same level of skill as the other person but will produce much less.

Talent influences how quickly we acquire skills, but effort not only builds skills it makes it productive by employing it.

Grit and Goals Hierarchy

Grit is about pursuing the same high-level goal for a long time. Connecting your day to day activities to long-term goals is the key to success.

Breaking down your goals into the following categories helps building a roadmap from where you are to where you want to be:

Warren Buffett s three step process for prioritising goals

• First, you write down a list of twenty-five career goals.
• Second, you do some soul-searching and circle the five highest priority goals. Just five.
• Third, you take a good hard look at the twenty goals you didn’t circle. These you avoid at all costs. They’re what distract you;

Focusing only on the low-level goals without any sense of direction or them adding up to something meaningful seems wasteful. On the other hand setting a long-term goal and fantasizing about the future feels good but if it doesn’t translate into reality, you live with life-long disappointment. Gabriele Oettingen, a psychologist calls this Positive Fantasizing.

Low-level goals are experiments you take on in the short-term. Some of them work. Some of them don’t. But the cost of failure is minimal if you learn from it and change your low-level goal accordingly. A project that failed, your article submission that was rejected and so on can only be temporary disappointments if you’re clear on your long-term goal.

This kind of mindset will help in finding a more efficient or fun way of reaching the same goal, only the means of achieving it have changed.

There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have more than one goal hierarchy – one for professional life and another for personal. And conflicts between the two are to be expected.

“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.”

Stanford psychologist, Catharine Cox

Are you born with grit or can you build it?

All human traits are influenced by more than one gene, so there’s no one single factor that influences our behaviour.

All our psychological traits like grit are influenced by genes and experience. Nature and nurture.

Genes that we inherit can explain why we differ from the average, but it says nothing about the average itself.

Flynn effect, a study that shows an increase of 3 IQ points every decade, indicates that we as a species are getting smarter at abstract reasoning. If people a century ago were scored against today’s norms, they would score an average of 70, borderline for mentally retarded. And people today would be rated as mentally gifted against norms of a century ago. Flynn called this the social multiplier effect

Another study shows that older people are grittier than younger people. Psychologists call this the maturity principle

Psychological assets of gritty people to overcome mental hurdles:

Interest

An interest is not like “love at first sight”. It is only the beginning of a potentially life-long interest. Unreal expectations can ruin your early interests from developing further.

Interests are developed through action, not introspection.

The process of discovery is messy and serendipitous.

Post interest discovery period is a proactive and lengthy period of interest development. The initial trigger of interest discovery must be followed by repeated triggers for the interest to develop further

Interests thrive when there is a supportive community that provide ongoing stimulation and feedback

For a beginner, novelty is new. For an expert, novelty is nuance.

To develop interests, set low-level goals first.

Practice

The Japanese word Kaizen literally translates to continuous improvement, a popular approach in the software world.

If practice is about the number of repetitions(quantity),

then deliberate practice is about quality of time, not just quantity.

Deliberate Practice vs Flow

Deliberate practice is a behaviour. Flow is an experience

Deliberate practice is for preparation, and flow is for performance.

Deliberate practice can be frustrating, uncomfortable and painful. Flow is immersive and enjoyable.

the thrill of getting better is one, and the ecstasy of performing at your best is another

How to setup deliberate practice:

1. Set a stretch goal that focuses on a specific weakness
2. Apply maximum concentration and effort
3. Seek immediate feedback
4. Reflect, refine and repeat
5. Make it a habit
6. Have the self-awareness to be in the moment and avoid critical self-judgement

Hope

Two kinds of hope – one that relies on the external sources and another that relies on internal effort

Suffering doesn’t lead to hopelessness, but the suffering we think we can’t control – Learned Helplessness

“Whether you think you can, or think you can’t-you’re right.”

Henry Ford

Psychologists originally believed that humans responded only to incentives and punishments and did not consider that our thoughts could influence our behaviour.

Optimists look for temporary and specific causes of their suffering while pessimists believe the reasons for their suffering are permanent.

Aaron Beck developed the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy which helps individuals objectively look at their thoughts and resulting behaviours to then change them for the better. It’s a popular form of therapy today for treating depression and anxiety disorders.

Carol Dweck known for her work on Mindset suggests there are two types – Growth Mindset and Fixed Mindset. And these are the 4 questions she uses to assess an individual’s theory of intelligence:

1. Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.
2. You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are.
3. No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit.
4. You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.

A joint study by Angela Duckworth and Carol Dweck with 2000 high school students who took the Growth Mindset Questionnaire showed that students with a growth mindset are grittier than others.

People have both tendencies in them – optimism and pessimism. But the environment around them can accentuate and amplify one of these. Whether it is parenting or work culture, it is important to foster an optimistic and growth mindset oriented outlook. And since our actions speak louder than words, it is important that we mirror our words and actions.

Just telling someone to be more optimistic or to overcome their challenges won’t help. They need to experience mastery and adversity at the same time for the brain to register it.

What can help is developing a growth mindset, optimistic pep talk and persevering in the face of adversity. With practice you can change how you think, how you feel and ultimately how you act.

Parenting

As a parent you don’t want to mollycoddle your child to the point where they will never listen to you. Neither do you want to show them tough love with an intention to only get them to follow your instructions. A selflessness to tough love is different.

“One of the major discoveries of parenting research is that what matters more than the messages parents aim to deliver are the messages children receive.”

Not all children whose parents practice wise parenting grow up to be gritty. Though they might be supportive and demanding, they may not show passion and perseverance for their own long-term goals.

Research shows kids who are more engaged in extracurricular activities always have better outcomes in grades and higher self-esteem. Pursuing and sticking with extracurricular activities requires grit and also builds it.

When children are trained on difficult tasks, it leads to Learned Industriousness. If we don’t experience the connection between our effort and reward, we default to laziness.

As parents we have the tendency to praise kids enthusiastically and complementing their talent or intelligence. A coach in an extracurricular activity will give them the feedback and praise with a neutrality a parent finds difficult.

Ideas for parents to practice:

• Show the children one hard thing you are working on that requires daily deliberate practice
• Children should pick at least one extracurricular activity of their choice
• and stick with it for at least a year (passion can be fleeting, interest takes time to develop)

Culture of Grit

Dan Chambliss said “The real way to become a great swimmer is to join a great team.

Use the human tendency of conformity by finding and joining a group of gritty people to build your own grit.

We don’t always do a cost-benefit analysis before taking action. It’s often based on our identity of who we think we are. And by being a part of a group that practices grit, we imbibe those and internalize them.

Finns think of themselves as the grittiest people in the world. They even have a word for it – sisu. Thoughts influence behaviour and behaviour creates our identity. It can be a virtuous cycle or a vicious cycle.

“The true joy in life is to be a force of fortune instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

George Bernard Shaw

Grow grit “inside out” with daily habits, deliberate practice, and “outside in” with help of parents, coaches and mentors

Grit leads to a healthy emotional life and well-being.

Grit and other character virtues:

Intrapersonal character (Will)

• Grit, self-control, self-management skills

• David Brooks calls them “resume virtues”

Interpersonal character (Heart)

• Gratitude, social intelligence and self-control over emotions

• “Eulogy virtues”

Intellectual character (Mind)

• Curiosity and zest

Longitudinal studies show each group of virtues can predict different outcomes.

Strong intrapersonal character predicts academic achievement.

Your interpersonal character will determine how many friends you have.

And the intellectual virtue shows an independent and positive outlook to learning new things.

But our plurality of character means all 3 groups plays a role.

• Author:: [[Angela Duckworth]]
• Rating: 5/5
• Full Title:: Grit – Why passion and resilience are the secrets to success
• Source:: Physical Book
• Date Finished:: [[October 17th, 2021]]