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  • Grit, put simply is perseverance and passion for very long term goals.

  • To say a few more words about it, Grit is really about your stamina, how consistently you're

  • working in a certain direction, then how hard you're working in that direction.

  • It is not about intensity.

  • I've had young people come to me after talks and say "well let me just tell you how gritty

  • I am.

  • I spent 72 hours without sleeping and I did this amazing thing" and I congratulate them

  • but I say "so what did you do the next week and how many

  • years have you been working on this?"

  • So when we assess Grit by looking at people's biographies for example we don't necessarily

  • look for bursts of unusual productivity or effort, but we really look for constancy of

  • effort over time. Can you have too much grit?

  • I have actually for several years been grappling with the question of whether

  • virtues like grit are only virtues in the middle of the spectrum so do we have

  • something like the Aristotelian notion of the golden mean where excessive grit

  • as well as insufficient grit are both bad.

  • I've lately come to the opinion and it really is an opinion because I don't have

  • data to support this.

  • That it's not necessarily that you can have too much grit, what you can have is Grit

  • in the absence of other key virtues. So for example if you're an extraordinarily

  • gritty person who lacks judgment or humility or honesty or empathy and kindness you can

  • see where Grit could you know magnify ill effects.

  • But I don't necessarily think that it's the problem of being a 10 out of 10 on the Grit scale

  • Let me start off by saying that in our research

  • studies for many outcomes like finishing West Point, Grit actually is more predictive than

  • IQ or SAT scores, but i think the real question is not oh which is more important or more

  • predictive what it really is important to do is to highlight the undervalued role of

  • effort.

  • I feel like we live in a culture where we talk about talent all the time.

  • In fact I once was asked to do a media presentation and they actually even refer to people as

  • talent.

  • As in has the talent showed up? The talent show up to makeup yet? Talent has to be on

  • in five minutes.

  • So this kind of obsession we have with, you know, whether we are or are not gifted and

  • talented.

  • Whether we do or do not make some talent threshold is misplaced and if anything I would hope

  • that my research doesn't necessarily undermine talent because I think talent exists.

  • I'm not a particularly talented driver for example.

  • But but we vastly underestimate how much effort, practice, time on task, really determines ultimate

  • performance.

  • So resilience and Grit, I'm often asked the question as sort of how does resilience effect

  • grit or is resilience the same thing as grit?

  • I would say that resilience if you would define resilience as bouncing back from adversity,

  • that that that would be one of the things that would be a precursor to grit.

  • But I don't think it's exactly the same because if you're somebody who well when things are

  • hard to bounce back that is one thing that you need to be gritty but not the only thing

  • you also need a passion right you also need something that you're really committed to

  • working on over the long term and and being resilient doesn't guarantee that.

Grit, put simply is perseverance and passion for very long term goals.

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