Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Name: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
SKU: 7547
Availability: InStock

4.6 | 19,635 ratings

Price: 17.05

Last update: 01-10-2025

Top reviews from the United States

Laurence N. Benz

Instant Must Read For Every Teacher, Parent, Coach, Athlete, and Caregiver

Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2016

To: All parents, teachers, coaches, athletes, students, and caregivers:

Re: the book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Dr. Angela Duckworth

Buy it. Read it slowly and deliberately. If you listen to it on Audible, set the speed at 50%.

After many years of writing book reviews primarily for friends and executives at YPO, I have have finally found a recommendation to give to this esteemed group. It is fitting Dr. Duckworth’s inaugural book debuted the week of the Kentucky Derby as I am fortunate enough to live around and know several jockeys whom I would ascribe the greatest exemplars of grit the world has ever known-what professor Duckworth refers to as grit paragons.

What Lean In did to encourage less timidity for women in the workplace, Grit will inculcate and elevate passion and perseverance for long term goals should you choose to accept the practical applications of years of related and transportable research.

By this time, you have undoubtedly heard of “grit” the construct coined, developed, and researched by Dr. Duckworth with contributions from notable colleagues along the way including the late Dr. Chris Peterson of “other people matter” fame. After validating the grit scale, she has gone on and tested tons of interesting groups from West Pointers and national spelling bee participants to teachers and athletes. The concept appears to be fairly intuitive until you get the very deep dive into the details of what passion and perseverance over the long term really mean. Is grit nature or nurture? Can you develop it? Can you have too much of it? Dr. Duckworth’s fresh writing is able to distill very difficult psychological concepts and present them in a way that anybody can explain them on the back of a napkin which is a tribute to her as both a teacher and writer.

The short TED video by the author from 2013 provides a great introduction and motivation to read the book. The polished TED presentation though is a result from one of the many transformative topics in her book-the confluence of painful effort, feedback, and immense pleasure through deliberate practice (search youtube for rehearsals pre-TED talk).

The beauty of this book is that it is really a “book of books”. It interweaves numerous related research activities and concepts, contributions of luminaries in psychology, and solid parenting guidelines (in particular the “hard thing rule”). Here is a short list of the concepts and legends that you will meet: flow, hope, resiliency, fixed vs. growth mindset, learned optimism, Sisu, talent (overrated), cognitive bias’ including “naturalness", goal setting, positive self-talk, passion, purpose, job, career, calling, William James, Nietzsche, Aristotle, Adam Grant, Martin Seligman,Anders Ericsson, Mihaly Csiksgentmihalyi, David Yeager, Amy Wrzesniewski, Justin Berg,Jane Dutton, Aaron Beck, Emilia Lahti, Carolyn Dweck, and even Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll. . As a former student of hers in the MAPP Program at University of Pennsylvania, I felt like I had I had just done a refresher course. (side note: physical therapy mentioned two different times in the book, would automatically would get a 5 star rating from me!).

My biggest personal takeaway is the influence of culture in the environment and workplace and how this alone can foster and make one “gritty”. To that end, I am proud of our healthcare company’s strategic intent: "Our Success is through meaningful work that impacts lives” and perhaps even more so one of our ten commitments that we formed in October of 2014:

I commit to Sisu – I will face challenges head-on. “In my life and work, I refuse to be derailed by people or circumstances and will face them with valor. I acknowledge ‘stuff’ can and will happen but choose to ‘power on’ even when it appears that I have reached the limits of my mental and physical capabilities.”

Thank you Dr. Duckworth for being a terrific writer, teacher, and example of this profound concept and having an impact far in excess of what I believe you ever imagined. Undoubtedly, those who read it will be driven to further a life of passion, meaning, and prosocial concerns for the long term.

A. H. Wagner

Good news! Grit, not talent, determines success—and if you don’t think you have enough, you can grow more.

Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2016

Note: I wrote this as part of a book review series I started at my workplace, thus the (slight) emphasis on work.

So, what is this book about?
According to bestselling author Stephen King, “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” I don’t know about you, but I didn’t always understand this. I used to believe that talent alone determines success—that if you have enough talent, you can be successful in something, and if you don’t have enough talent, you won’t succeed. Psychologist Angela Duckworth sets out to disprove this mistaken notion in her book. When you want to achieve an important goal, talent only gets you started. What keeps you going is a combination of passion and perseverance that Duckworth calls “grit.” For those of you who worry that you don’t have much grit (I’m talking to myself), good news: grit can grow. This book shows you how.

How difficult is the subject matter?
Duckworth is a psychologist, so naturally a lot of the material for Grit draws from her own research in the field as well as from the work of other psychologists and social scientists. However, you need not fear that this book is a bunch of statistics and clinical studies thrown together with some text. For Duckworth, the subject of grit and how it can help people thrive is her personal passion, so she shares much of what she has learned in a very approachable way: through stories. Inspiring stories about people from many different backgrounds, including West Point cadets, National Spelling Bee finalists, the women’s soccer coach at UNC Chapel Hill, a potter in Minnesota, a New York Times journalist in Kenya, the Seattle Seahawks, and students Duckworth herself used to work with when she taught seventh-grade math in New York’s Lower East Side. From these stories of gritty people doing gritty things, you’ll learn how grit is formed, how it grows, and how you can develop more grit in your own life and work.

How can this book help me in my daily work?
The subject of this book is too big to apply only to your daily work, in my opinion. Grit is a mindset encompassing one’s entire outlook on life. So if you are seeking specific practices for improving specific aspects of your work, this book will not be much help. But I believe this book can definitely help you, whatever your goals and responsibilities are, if you want to become a grittier person. And being grittier can certainly help improve your work performance.

What’s the main takeaway?
Duckworth sums it up like this: “Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.” In other words, talent is overrated; grit, a combination of passion and perseverance, is a better determinant of success.

What are some key nuggets?
Grit is chock-full of great nuggets! Here are a few:
• “In my view, the biggest reason a preoccupation with talent can be harmful is simple: By shining our spotlight on talent, we risk leaving everything else in the shadows. We inadvertently send the message that these other factors—including grit—don’t matter as much as they really do.”
• “From the very beginning to the very end, it is inestimably important to learn to keep going even when things are difficult, even when we have doubts. At various points, in big ways and small, we get knocked down. If we stay down, grit loses. If we get up, grit prevails.”
• “How you see your work is more important than your job title. And this means that you can go from job to career to calling—all without changing your occupation.”
• “When you keep searching for ways to change your situation for the better, you stand a chance of finding them. When you stop searching, assuming they can’t be found, you guarantee they won’t.”
• “The bottom line on culture and grit is: If you want to be grittier, find a gritty culture and join it. If you’re a leader, and you want the people in your organization to be grittier, create a gritty culture.”

Any caveats?
This book is not a best practices guide per se; as I said earlier, it’s about an overarching mindset. Rather than giving specific techniques, what it gives instead are insights into how you can develop a mindset of grittiness. You won’t get instant results. You’ll have to show up every day and rise every time you fall down. You’ll have to face a lot of resistance—mainly your own. But if you put in consistent effort over time and don’t give up, you’ll be a grittier person than you were before, and who knows what you’ll achieve?

Personal note:
It’s been about a month since I first read Grit, and I can report that I have grown a little grittier already. I still struggle a lot with inner resistance and the temptation to give up when things turn out to be harder than I anticipated; I’m sure these struggles will always be present to some extent. However, lately I’ve become more self-aware and often catch myself before I’m about to procrastinate or give up. I tell myself that gritty people keep going, and then I dust myself off and do my best to keep going.

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