Grit & Determination

http://blog.adamsmith.cc/2011/12/grit-determination.html

by adamsmith • 15 years ago

69 15 15 years ago

blog.adamsmith.cc

Grit & determination are for me defining factors in a person's character IMO. What initially turned me onto this was the Teach for America article on the effectiveness of teachers. One of the most surprising items on the research was the effect of grit on the teacher. More specifically:

"What did predict success, interestingly, was a history of perseverance—not just an attitude, but a track record. In the interview process, Teach for America now asks applicants to talk about overcoming challenges in their lives—and ranks their perseverance based on their answers. Angela Lee Duckworth, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and her colleagues have actually quantified the value of perseverance. In a study published in TheJournal of Positive Psychology in November 2009, they evaluated 390 Teach for America instructors before and after a year of teaching. Those who initially scored high for “grit”—defined as perseverance and a passion for long-term goals, and measured using a short multiple-choice test—were 31 percent more likely than their less gritty peers to spur academic growth in their students. Gritty people, the theory goes, work harder and stay committed to their goals longer. (Grit also predicts retention of cadets at West Point, Duckworth has found.)"

That started the initial conversation with Adam Smith. This let to a fascinating conversation with respect to startups, teaching, and everything else too.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/01/what-mak...

sayemm• 15 years ago

Buffett's most favorite founder in Berkshire Hathaway, Rose Blumkin, is the ultimate example of grit: http://www.buffettsecrets.com/rose-blumkin-nebraska-furnitur...

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/13/business/rose-blumkin-reta...

Also a cool read is Dr. Arthur Jensen's research on calculating prodigies: http://stepanov.lk.net/mnemo/jensen.html. For me, the last paragraph is the kicker:

"But the nature of this hypothesized advantage is really still uncertain. It might well turn out to be characterized more as a motivational variable than as primarily an attentional or ability variable. Why did Devi as a girl practice numbers so assiduously? Or why did the young Richard Wagner, to the consternation of his parents and teachers, repeatedly play truant from school just to be able to spend whole days concentrating on the orchestral scores of Beethoven's symphonies? Or Ted Williams, the famous baseball player, whose mother worried about the normality of his running all the way home from school every day to practice until nightfall relentlessly pitching baseballs through a hole in a backboard? It is the same story repeatedly in the biographies of the world's truly exceptional performers in every field. A good case could probably be made that the most exceptional performers and creative geniuses are much further out from the average of the general population on some kind of motivational factor than on any traits most psychometricians would consider a basic ability or cognitive capacity."

MarkMc• 15 years ago

Rose Blumkin is the classic American-immigrant-rags-to-riches-by-hard-work story. I loved this bit:

"Omaha retailers began to recognize that Mrs. B would offer customers far better deals than they had been giving, and they pressured furniture and carpet manufacturers not to sell to her. But by various strategies she obtained merchandise and cut prices sharply. Mrs. B was then hauled into court for violation of Fair Trade laws. She not only won all the cases, but received invaluable publicity. At the end of one case, after demonstrating to the court that she could profitably sell carpet at a huge discount from the prevailing price, she sold the judge $1400 worth of carpet."

-- Warren Buffett, Letter to shareholders, 1983

akg• 15 years ago

The author touches on a very important point here by distinguishing determination and grit. I think most of us, myself included, will use sheer willpower and determination to perform tasks on a super-human level, e.g., work 20 hrs/day, stop reading unnecessary emails, stop twittering, exercising, etc.

However, performing these tasks could be overlooking the big picture. Sure we can push ourselves to work 20/hrs a day and be productive, but to what end? I think true success yields from constant introspection of the "big picture", where you want to be, and how you are going to get there. It requires the discipline to assert the practices that will keep you on the path to your long-term goals without succumbing to practices that although productive in the short-run will eventually burn you out.

At times, it requires a lot more mental toughness to keep the "goal" in your sights than it does to charge ahead full-steam with everything you've got; especially when the startup landscape is so fickle.

sanj• 15 years ago

While I very much like the word "grit", I feel like opting out of 6.001 is huge mistake.

Even if you know how to program, and have been doing so for years, this is an awesome class.

In fact, I'd argue that if you've been programming for years, it is an even MORE awesome class.

Go get gritty. Don't skip 6.001.

adamsmith3• 15 years ago

Here were the terms of the compromise:

* that you read the textbook, and take the quizzes and final exam in the course;

* that you can skip the online problem sets and projects, except for project 3 (which will deal with Object Oriented programming);

* that you engage in some independent project. One possibility is for you to read "Code" by Lessig and work to design/implement a system informed by that perspective. A good example might be a Scheme implementation of an information/document management system -- perhaps modeled on DSpace -- with (a) encryption/DRM in a strong "IP owner" centric fashion, or (b) with a user-centric/fair-use vision. (N.B. this was 2003.)

(The independent project ended up being a failure.)

You're totally right about the great content in 6.001. SICP was amazingly meaty.

tikhonj• 15 years ago

Heh, I was about to write the same thing as Sanj--SICP was great and I'm happy I took a course on it (at Berkeley). Part of this is due to the fact that the professor that taught it was the best lecturer I've had so far, but mostly because the material was intereting.

I'm assuming your projects were basically the same as ours. Was project 3 about writing a text adventure game? If so, I find that funny: I thought that was the weakest part of the course and a complete waste of time; the Logo interpreter we did for project 4 was infinitely better in pretty much every way. Out of curiosity, when you read the book, did you cover all five chapters?

cicatriz• 15 years ago

Not that passion can't reinforce grit, but I tend to think that it's actually grit that causes passion, as Cal Newport often argues: http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/01/23/beyond-passion-the-sci...

So, indeed, what increases grit?

Sayemm's quote about prodigies seems to imply that there is something innate causing a singleminded obsession. Maybe in some cases, but there are cases like Mozart and the Polgar sisters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judit_Polg%C3%A1r#Early_life), who were basically raised into the target of their grit and passion.

I think one of the answers, as in the forth point, is environment. Take programming. In my case, I got started at a young age because I had a computer and found a programming book one time when I was bored. From there it was extremely easy to surround myself, via the internet, with people who are gritty about programming, to read books and blogs all the time, and to have projects all around me.

adamsmith3• 15 years ago

The relationship between boredom and grit, or maybe an intermediate variable like finding what you love, is an interesting one to ponder.

rmorrison• 15 years ago

Grit, as described by Adam, is one of the most important attributes of a successful entrepreneur. Both my cofounder and I believe this strongly, and have discussed this since the early days of founding our company. We still believe it wholeheartedly today.

codeonfire• 15 years ago

It occurred to me why people don't value intelligence as much as perseverance. IQ gives you instantaneous understanding of a problem. However, whatever advantage this might give, the fact that it is intelligence over time that matters. And while the Einsteins of the world may look at a problem and have an instant epiphany, it takes only moments of thinking for every one else to derive the same conclusion. To really have an advantage, Einstein would need to be in an environment where everyone else can't keep up, where an epiphany is necessary to succeed. This is not how business works. In business things are comparatively slow and steady and there is a right course of action that can be discovered in time. While Einstein might see a strategy instantly, Joe average can spend a couple hours and come to the same conclusion. In either case it may take months to implement.

jakek• 15 years ago

Here's a helpful mental hack that I've found has increased my grit as an entrepreneur:

I am very optimistic that I will be successful in the long term, but very pessimistic about the odds that the immediate next step will come easily or go well. This way, when a step proves difficult (and it very often does), it's not unexpected, making easier to keep moving forward without getting discouraged.

henchan• 15 years ago

A couple of observations. While I am now a very gritty person, looking back over my life I was not always so in practice, although the potential was there. The inflection point was an idea whose import completely enslaved me. I have no more choice to work on it than I have over whether or not to feed my children. So sometimes at least it can be about surrender of ego. The presence (absence) of other gritty people around me has been of no significance whatsoever.

Toucan• 15 years ago

After certain incidents within the Royal Navy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Iranian_seizure_of_Royal_N...) the training programme has changed to deliver more "Grit and Determination".

To answer the question on how to train it, the RN believes that it's done by pushing people through difficult situations during training and showing what's possible. I'm not convinced it's possible to self-improve grit to any significant level.

Grit & Determination

Related Stories