The truth about grit

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/08/02/the_truth_about_grit/?page=full

by robg • 17 years ago

56 29 17 years ago

jacquesm• 17 years ago

This article touches on a favorite subject of mine, the over-reliance on IQ tests as some meaningful metric of how someone will perform in a given job.

Smarts are good to have, but without hard work it's useless. Like a powertool without a competent handler. As an employer I've found over the years that the people that worked out best were not necessarily the ones that appeared to be the smartest, but the ones that were willing to go the distance. In my circle of entrepreneur friends the same pattern pops up.

In the book 'outliers' there is a whole chapter dedicated to the story related in the article about the experiment with the gifted children, it's an interesting read.

edw519• 17 years ago

Nobody is talented enough to not have to work hard, and that’s what grit allows you to do.

I love this quote.

Reminds me of Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant. All 3 very talented. And all 3 were always the last one out of the gym.

It also give me (and all the rest of us hope). Whenever I'm stuck on something (and think I may be slipping in talent, perish the thought), I know that all I have to do is keep at it until I figure it out.

Talent + Grit + Time = Results

The ratio of addends on the left doesn't matter. The sum does.

dmix• 17 years ago

Constant Learning + Grit + Time = Results

ellyagg• 17 years ago

Constant learning is part of grit, and you can't take talent out of the equation.

ltbarcly3• 17 years ago

Not talent? Some people violently deny that people have any difference in potential. I can't even formulate a reply, how do you argue with someone who claims the sky is orange and never blue?

Talent is roughly the ability to learn and apply that learning. So you want people to have 'constant learning', but ignore that they first have to be capable of learning that material at all.

christofd3• 17 years ago

Ah, a Canadian ;) Those hockey players. Btw - those 2 Rails projects of yours are well done.

10ren• 17 years ago

It's the Carol Dweck stuff again - always worthwhile.

It's more straightforward to apply this to a goal that has been defined by others, such as a test, a sport etc. In product development, it's more difficult, because one needs to define what the product is to do* - and to redefine that when and if needed.

* You can have a problem-in-search-of-a-solution, or a solution-in-search-of-a-problem. The first is easiest: to make a product by setting out to solve a problem - problems them become a resource, a raw material. The other way is to come up with a fantastic idea - a solution - and then to go in search of a problem it solves (or one can just "throw it over the fence" and see if anyone works out a way to use it).

ambulatorybird• 17 years ago

Reminds me of a couple of anecdotes my father told me about his days as a physics undergrad. The first was about a time when he would get somewhat discouraged after studying for hours and making little progress. So at one point he asked some of his really talented classmates (more talented than him) how much they studied and how far they got. They all replied that after hours of studying, they would maybe get through 3-4 pages of the textbook. It was somewhat enlightening for him to learn that even the geniuses couldn't breeze through the material like one might breeze through a dime-store novel.

The second anecdote was about the time my father was getting letters of recommendation for grad school. He got the usual positive letters, each with a couple of paragraphs praising his abilities and intelligence. My father then asked one of his friends (a much more talented friend) if he could look at one of his letters. The friend's letter consisted of a single sentence which contained the words "Nobel prize material". It was at this point that my father gave up physics.

Anyhoo, I guess my point is that grit is of course important, but as other commenters have noted, talent can't be dismissed either. We all have upper bounds, which aren't always as high as we might like.

BrentRitterbeck• 17 years ago

They all replied that after hours of studying, they would maybe get through 3-4 pages of the textbook.

I think this may be the most important trait of those who succeed. Success requires hard work. I don't know of any other way to success.

rfreytag• 17 years ago

Originality is valuable.

And it takes consistent hard work and courage to be and think differently and survive until its value is found.

slackenerny• 17 years ago

letters of recommendation

Sadly it's very true; there is hardly more damning praise in physics than "diligent hard worker".

ivanyv• 17 years ago

Why don't they teach us about this early on in life? Wait a second, my father has been telling me this for years :D

Only after being hammered to death by life (and my father's gentle reminders) I'm beginning to finally understand it.

I suppose one needs to understand/experience it our own way.

0xdefec8• 17 years ago

Growing up, my best friend was always one of the smartest and successful kids in the class. But he also had an annoying habit of going around making offhand remarks about how he hadn't cracked a book until 10 minutes before the finals and still aced it, etc...

Although I shouldn't have let it get to me, it definitely did since we were always competitive. And it took quite a few years before I realized how stupid it was to believe that he could possibly be relying on innate intelligence to know things like obscure Gettysburg lieutenants or isotope neutron counts, whatever.

Anyways, as it turns out, we became roommates after college and I finally got to see the man behind the curtain. The kid's a workhorse! Sure he's still brilliant, but I had no idea how intense his work ethic was. His job requires all sorts of certification exams, and he would be locked in his room 10 hours a day for weeks at a time just memorizing, memorizing, memorizing...

Anyways, I'm sure Einstein wouldn't have wanted people to know that he used flashcards either :)

comatose_kid• 17 years ago

I have a counter example. I've known one guy who aced his EE degree, receiving the highest marks in his graduating class. He also scored the second highest in his graduating class for his economics degree. He earned both degrees simultaneously. I knew him really well, and he usually copied assignments and spent no more than a day studying for exams. I think he was really good at getting the most from the lectures.

noahlt• 17 years ago

"The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'."

zmimon• 17 years ago

Maybe not your friend, but there are people in this world who truly have "photographic" memories. I had one such friend at university and it frustrated me no end that we could go to a lecture and then he would go out that night and do no study whatsoever while I would study hard, and he would show up the next day with much better recall than me. Not just important concepts but any small detail about exactly what was on the board at the time ... he could just read it off from the mental image in his mind with no effort at all.

biohacker42• 17 years ago

I always wondered is there a downside to a mind like that.

anatoly• 17 years ago

Wow, a boston.com story about git? Sounds unlikely on the face of it.

Oh, wait.

quickpost• 17 years ago

Or as Gladwell says: "Talent is the Desire to Practice."

astine• 17 years ago

I've read this article before, but not on this website.

The truth about grit

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