# Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance | Angela Lee Duckworth | TED

*TED* · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H14bBuluwB8

## Summary

Angela Lee Duckworth describes leaving a management consulting job to teach seventh grade math in New York City, where she noticed that IQ did not distinguish her best and worst students. She became a psychologist and studied success in challenging settings including West Point, the National Spelling Bee, tough schools, and private companies. Across all these contexts, grit—passion and perseverance for long-term goals—emerged as the strongest predictor of success. She admits science knows little about how to build grit, though Carol Dweck's growth mindset is the best idea so far.

## Key points

- Duckworth left a management consulting job at 27 to teach seventh grade math in New York City public schools.
- She observed that her strongest students did not necessarily have the highest IQ scores.
- She studied success in West Point, the National Spelling Bee, tough-neighborhood schools, and private companies.
- Grit, not social intelligence, good looks, physical health, or IQ, was the significant predictor of success in every context.
- Grit is defined as passion and perseverance for very long-term goals, living life like a marathon, not a sprint.
- Grittier juniors in Chicago public schools were significantly more likely to graduate, even when matched on family income and test scores.
- Talent doesn't make you gritty; in the data, grit is usually unrelated or inversely related to measures of talent.
- The best idea so far for building grit is Carol Dweck's growth mindset, the belief that the ability to learn can change with effort.
- Duckworth calls for testing ideas and being willing to fail and start over—being gritty about getting kids grittier.

## Notes

### From consulting to the classroom
- At 27, Angela Lee Duckworth left management consulting to teach seventh grade math in New York City public schools.
- She noticed that IQ was not the only difference between her best and worst students; some strong performers did not have stratospheric IQ scores.
- She became convinced every student could learn the material—ratios, decimals, the area of a parallelogram—if they worked hard and long enough.

### Becoming a psychologist
- She concluded education needs a better understanding of students and learning from a motivational and psychological perspective.
- She left teaching for graduate school and studied kids and adults in super challenging settings, asking: who is successful here and why?

### The research studies
- West Point Military Academy: predicting which cadets would stay in military training and which would drop out.
- National Spelling Bee: predicting which children would advance farthest in competition.
- Rookie teachers in tough neighborhoods: who would still be teaching by year's end and who would be most effective at improving learning outcomes.
- Private companies: which salespeople would keep their jobs and earn the most money.

### Grit as the predictor of success
- In all these contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success: grit.
- It was not social intelligence, good looks, physical health, or IQ.
- Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals; having stamina; sticking with your future day in, day out, for years.
- Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.
- In Chicago public schools, grittier high school juniors were significantly more likely to graduate, even when matched on family income, standardized achievement test scores, and how safe kids felt at school.

### Building grit
- The most shocking thing about grit is how little science knows about building it.
- Talent doesn't make you gritty; many talented individuals do not follow through on commitments.
- In the data, grit is usually unrelated or even inversely related to measures of talent.
- The best idea so far is growth mindset, developed at Stanford by Carol Dweck: the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed and can change with effort.
- Kids who learn about how the brain changes and grows in response to challenge are more likely to persevere when they fail.
- The work ahead: test our best ideas and strongest intuitions, measure success, and be willing to fail, be wrong, and start over—in other words, be gritty about getting our kids grittier.

## Transcript

[00:00] Transcriber: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast

[00:12] When I was 27 years old, I left a very demanding job in management consulting for a job that was even more demanding: teaching. I went to teach seventh graders math in the New York City public schools. And like any teacher, I made quizzes and tests. I gave out homework assignments. When the work came back, I calculated grades. What struck me was that IQ was not the only difference between my best and my worst students. Some of my strongest performers did not have stratospheric IQ scores. Some of my smartest kids weren't doing so well. And that got me thinking. The kinds of things you need to learn in seventh grade math, sure, they're hard: ratios, decimals, the area of a parallelogram. But these concepts are not impossible,

[01:07] and I was firmly convinced that every one of my students could learn the material if they worked hard and long enough. After several more years of teaching, I came to the conclusion that what we need in education is a much better understanding of students and learning from a motivational perspective, from a psychological perspective. In education, the one thing we know how to measure best is IQ. But what if doing well in school and in life depends on much more than your ability to learn quickly and easily? So I left the classroom, and I went to graduate school to become a psychologist. I started studying kids and adults in all kinds of super challenging settings, and in every study my question was,

[02:01] who is successful here and why? My research team and I went to West Point Military Academy. We tried to predict which cadets would stay in military training and which would drop out. We went to the National Spelling Bee and tried to predict which children would advance farthest in competition. We studied rookie teachers working in really tough neighborhoods, asking which teachers are still going to be here in teaching by the end of the school year, and of those, who will be the most effective at improving learning outcomes for their students? We partnered with private companies, asking, which of these salespeople is going to keep their jobs? And who's going to earn the most money? In all those very different contexts,

[02:47] one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't IQ. It was grit. Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint. A few years ago, I started studying grit in the Chicago public schools. I asked thousands of high school juniors to take grit questionnaires, and then waited around more than a year to see who would graduate. Turns out that grittier kids

[03:43] were significantly more likely to graduate, even when I matched them on every characteristic I could measure, things like family income, standardized achievement test scores, even how safe kids felt when they were at school. So it's not just at West Point or the National Spelling Bee that grit matters. It's also in school, especially for kids at risk for dropping out. To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it. Every day, parents and teachers ask me, "How do I build grit in kids? What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic? How do I keep them motivated for the long run?" The honest answer is, I don't know. (Laughter) What I do know is that talent doesn't make you gritty.

[04:35] Our data show very clearly that there are many talented individuals who simply do not follow through on their commitments. In fact, in our data, grit is usually unrelated or even inversely related to measures of talent. So far, the best idea I've heard about building grit in kids is something called "growth mindset." This is an idea developed at Stanford University by Carol Dweck, and it is the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed, that it can change with your effort. Dr. Dweck has shown that when kids read and learn about the brain and how it changes and grows in response to challenge, they're much more likely to persevere when they fail, because they don't believe that failure is a permanent condition.

[05:29] So growth mindset is a great idea for building grit. But we need more. And that's where I'm going to end my remarks, because that's where we are. That's the work that stands before us. We need to take our best ideas, our strongest intuitions, and we need to test them. We need to measure whether we've been successful, and we have to be willing to fail, to be wrong, to start over again with lessons learned. In other words, we need to be gritty about getting our kids grittier. Thank you. (Applause)