TEDxBlue - Angela Lee Duckworth, Ph.D - 10/18/09

Summary

The speaker, a psychologist, challenges the traditional focus on intelligence as the primary determinant of achievement. Instead, she advocates for the importance of 'grit'—a combination of passion and perseverance—citing the '10-year rule' that indicates a minimum of a decade of consistent, deliberate practice is necessary to reach world-class performance. Through various studies, she demonstrates that grit, not just talent, is a key predictor of success in diverse fields, including education, military training, and the National Spelling Bee. The talk encourages identifying and nurturing grit in young people to foster high achievement.

Takeaways

• 🧠 The script challenges the traditional view that intelligence is the primary determinant of achievement, suggesting that it may only be a small part of the story.
• 🔄 The speaker's personal journey from age 22 to 32 illustrates a life of diverse experiences but lacking in grit, which is a key ingredient for high achievement.
• 🚢 The metaphor of a fast, shiny boat that tacks in different directions highlights the importance of consistent, deliberate practice towards a single goal rather than scattered efforts.
• 🔟 The '10-year rule' is introduced, stating that no world-class performer has achieved expertise in less than a decade of consistent, deliberate practice.
• 🎓 The speaker's graduate school experience at 32, surrounded by younger peers, serves as a personal anecdote to emphasize the importance of grit over age or talent.
• 🏆 Grit is defined as a combination of passion and perseverance, the ability to sustain long-term interest and effort towards a goal.
• 🌟 Historical figures like Charles Darwin and modern studies suggest that hard work and passion may be more important than innate talent in achieving genius.
• 📊 Studies, such as the one at West Point, show that grit is a better predictor of success in challenging environments than traditional measures of talent or intelligence.
• 📚 The importance of deliberate practice is underscored, with the National Spelling Bee example illustrating that grittier kids put in targeted, focused effort on their weaknesses.
• 🎬 Success in fields like acting often requires persistence through initial failures, suggesting that the ability to persevere despite setbacks is crucial for long-term achievement.
• 👶 The script concludes with a call to understand and cultivate grit in young people, emphasizing the role of education in developing this quality for future success.

Q & A

What is the main focus of the speaker's study in achievement?

The speaker focuses on the study of 'grit' and other factors contributing to achievement, rather than just intelligence, which is traditionally the focus of many psychologists.

Why does the speaker believe that intelligence may be a small part of the story in achievement?

The speaker suggests that intelligence might be a small part of the story because it is often considered largely inherited and immutable, whereas achievement may involve other developable qualities.

What does the speaker consider as a key ingredient of high achievement?

The speaker considers 'grit' as one of the key and probably necessary ingredients of high achievement in any field.

What is the '10-year rule' mentioned by the speaker?

The '10-year rule' refers to the finding that no world-class performers in any studied domain have achieved their level of expertise with less than 10 years of consistent, deliberate practice.

How does the speaker's personal experience relate to the concept of grit?

The speaker's personal experience of changing careers and not having a singular focus until later in life led her to study grit, as she recognized her own lack of it during those years.

What is the significance of the term 'grit' in the context of the speaker's research?

In the context of the speaker's research, 'grit' refers to a combination of passion and perseverance, particularly the ability to sustain passion for a long time, which is crucial for high achievement.

How did the speaker's research at West Point Military Academy demonstrate the importance of grit?

The research at West Point showed that grit was a better predictor of cadets' survival through the challenging 'Beast Barracks' than traditional measures of talent or intelligence.

What did the speaker find about the relationship between talent and grit in her studies?

The speaker found that grittier individuals often had less talent, suggesting that it is not necessarily talent that leads to high achievement, but rather the ability to persevere and work hard.

How does the speaker define 'deliberate practice'?

Deliberate practice is defined as focused and intense work on specific areas of weakness or skill improvement, rather than simply practicing what one is already good at.

What is the significance of the graph showing the rise of skill over time in the speaker's argument?

The graph illustrates that it takes a consistent and sustained period of deliberate practice over many years to reach the level of world-class performance, supporting the argument that grit is essential for high achievement.

What is the speaker's final suggestion for educators and those interested in children's development?

The speaker suggests that educators should identify and cultivate the quality of grit in children, as it is a key factor in achieving long-term goals and success.

Outlines

00:00

🧠 The Complexity of Achievement Beyond Intelligence

The speaker, a psychologist, introduces the topic of achievement, challenging the traditional focus on intelligence as the primary determinant. They argue that intelligence, while important, may be just a small part of the story and could be misunderstood as largely inherited and unchangeable. The speaker shares their personal journey, beginning graduate school later in life, and reflects on their lack of 'grit,' a term they later define and study as a key ingredient for high achievement. They emphasize the '10-year rule,' suggesting that consistent, deliberate practice over a decade is necessary to reach world-class performance in any field.

05:01

🏆 The Emergence of Grit in High Achievers

The speaker delves into the concept of 'grit,' defined as a combination of passion and perseverance over time. They recount interviews with top performers in various fields, revealing a common trait of tenacious perseverance, or 'true grit,' rather than just talent. The speaker references historical figures and research, including Charles Darwin and Francis Galton's correspondence, to highlight the importance of hard work and passion alongside talent. They also discuss a study by Katherine Cox, which identified qualities such as perseverance and consistency in the lives of recognized geniuses, suggesting that these traits are crucial for realizing genius in the world.

10:03

🎓 Grit's Impact on Success: Studies and Findings

The speaker presents empirical evidence supporting the significance of grit over traditional measures of talent. They discuss a study conducted at West Point Military Academy, where grit was found to be a strong predictor of cadets' ability to complete the challenging 'Beast Barracks' training program. The study compared grit's predictive power to other factors such as whole candidate scores, SAT scores, and physical fitness, finding that grit was more indicative of success. The speaker also mentions replications of this study and its implications for military personnel and special forces. The discussion highlights that grit is not inherently tied to initial talent, suggesting that perseverance and consistency are what truly differentiate high achievers.

15:06

📚 Deliberate Practice and the Role of Grit in Achievement

The speaker explores the concept of deliberate practice and its relationship with grit, emphasizing the need for focused and challenging work to improve skills. They reference studies involving teacher effectiveness, National Spelling Bee participants, and the importance of targeting weaknesses in study habits. The speaker explains that gritty individuals are characterized by their ability to engage in uncomfortable, intense practice sessions consistently over time. They also touch on the '10-year rule' again, illustrating that the accumulation of deliberate practice hours is crucial for reaching the pinnacle of expertise. The speaker concludes with a call to understand and cultivate grit in children through education, drawing on examples from successful actors and the importance of sustaining effort despite initial failures.

Keywords

💡Achievement

Achievement refers to the success or accomplishment of a goal or task. In the context of the video, achievement is closely tied to the concept of 'grit,' which is posited as a key ingredient for high achievement in any field. The speaker uses her own life story to illustrate the lack of grit and how it contrasts with the consistent, deliberate practice required for mastery.

💡Intelligence

Intelligence, as discussed in the video, is traditionally viewed as a largely inherited trait that is relatively fixed throughout one's life. However, the speaker challenges this notion by suggesting that intelligence may only be a small part of the story of achievement and that it might be overemphasized at the expense of other factors such as grit.

💡Grit

Grit is defined as a combination of perseverance and passion for long-term goals. The speaker introduces this term as a critical component of high achievement, distinct from talent or intelligence. Grit is exemplified by individuals who maintain focus and effort towards their objectives over extended periods, as illustrated by the '10-year rule' mentioned in the script.

💡10-year rule

The '10-year rule' is a concept that suggests no one has become a world-class expert in a field without at least a decade of consistent, deliberate practice. This rule is used in the video to emphasize the importance of sustained effort and the role of grit in achieving expertise.

💡Talent

Talent, in the video, is presented as a multifaceted attribute that includes various forms of creativity, analytical ability, athleticism, and more. While traditionally considered a crucial element for success, the speaker argues that talent alone is insufficient without the accompanying grit to unlock and utilize one's potential.

💡Deliberate practice

Deliberate practice is a focused and structured approach to improving performance in a specific domain. It is highlighted in the video as the type of practice that leads to expertise, distinguishing it from more casual or unfocused forms of practice. The speaker uses the example of Mozart to illustrate how even prodigious talent engaged in deliberate practice to achieve mastery.

💡Expertise

Expertise, in the context of the video, denotes a high level of skill and knowledge in a particular area. The script discusses how expertise is not innate but rather the result of consistent, deliberate practice over many years, underscoring the role of grit in the development of expertise.

💡Passion

Passion is described in the video as a strong emotional drive or enthusiasm for a subject or goal. It is a component of grit, alongside perseverance, and is essential for sustaining effort over time. The speaker suggests that passion alone is not enough; it must be combined with grit to achieve high levels of achievement.

💡Persistence

Persistence is the ability to continue despite obstacles or setbacks. It is a key aspect of grit, as discussed in the video. The speaker mentions that individuals at the top of their fields often exhibit a tenacious, dogged perseverance that contributes to their success.

💡Self-discipline

Self-discipline is the capacity to regulate one's own behavior, emotions, and desires. While it is an important quality, the video suggests that it is not as predictive of high achievement as grit. The speaker uses examples from studies to show that self-discipline, while valuable, is not the sole determinant of success.

💡National Spelling Bee

The National Spelling Bee is a competition mentioned in the video as a context for studying grit. The speaker conducted a study on participants and found that grit, not just verbal IQ, was a significant predictor of success in the competition. This example serves to illustrate the impact of grit on achievement in a specific, high-pressure environment.

Highlights

Intelligence is only a small part of the story of achievement, and it may be largely immutable.

The speaker's personal journey from age 22 to 32 lacked grit, despite having talent and diverse experiences.

Grit is identified as a key and probably necessary ingredient for high achievement.

The '10-year rule' suggests that world-class performers invest at least a decade of consistent, deliberate practice.

Talent alone is not enough; the capacity to unlock and utilize talent is crucial for achievement.

The speaker's inconsistent career path before graduate school contrasts with the focused grit required for high achievement.

Grit is defined as tenacious, dogged perseverance that distinguishes top performers in their fields.

Charles Darwin and Francis Galton's correspondence highlights the debate on the role of talent versus hard work in genius.

Katherine Cox's research on biographies of geniuses identified qualities like perseverance and focus as key to realized genius.

Grit, not talent, was found to be a better predictor of who would make a mark in the world.

Studies show that grit is a stronger predictor of success in challenging environments like West Point Military Academy.

Grittier individuals are not necessarily the most talented but are more likely to stay committed to their goals.

Consistent follow-through and deliberate practice are characteristic of gritty individuals, as seen in the National Spelling Bee.

Grittier kids in the Spelling Bee focus on their weaknesses and engage in targeted, intensive practice.

The graph of deliberate practice shows a plateau where most people stop improving due to lack of grit.

Early films of successful actors demonstrate the importance of perseverance despite initial failures.

The challenge for educators is to identify and cultivate the quality of grit in children.

Transcripts

Transcriber: Capa Girl Reviewer: Diba Szamosi

I'm a psychologist and I study achievement.

Most psychologists who study achievement study intelligence.

And if the last talk didn't convince you

and I have a suspicion you didn't need a whole lot of convincing,

intelligence is, there's only part of the story,

maybe a very small part of the story.

And it is, in fact possible that we even have

that small part of the story wrong.

In terms of intelligence being thought to be

something largely inherited and not developed.

Something that is relatively immutable over the course of one's life.

But I came to a study of all the other things that intelligence,

everything else, that made up achievement.

In kind of a circuitous route -- so I was 32 when I started graduate school.

You know, I turned to my left and to my right and

everybody else was drinking cappuccino and studying at

one in the morning because they were 22, not 32.

And so, I actually think my life story is a great example

of actually not have grit, not having enough grit.

Maybe some talent but not actually having --

What I now study is one of the key and

probably necessary ingredients of high achievement

in any field that you want to consider.

So, what I did between the age of 22 and 32 was many

different things all of which I think sounded good on a resume.

I was a McKinsey Consultant, I went to Oxford

for a couple of years on a prestigious fellowship.

I was the COO of a non-profit website for parents

to get school information that sounds good,

that was good, sounds good and was good.

I taught in various schools in New York

and in Philadelphia and in San Francisco.

And all this added up to a great person to have dinner with

because that person, had done a lot of interesting things

and have done most of those things actually relatively well.

But what I realized is that if you are a boat,

a really fast, shiny boat, which is going quickly towards

one destination but then tacks to another direction,

to go to another port, and then tacks again --

Essentially you end up being a really shiny boat that goes fast nowhere.

And, so my own kind of personal experience

and probably my lack of grit, actually,

led me to study this quality in some detail.

And I'm gonna mention, something that I'll get to

later in the talk but it's called the "10 year rule."

It turns out that there is really no domain of expertise

that has been studied where the world class performers

have put in fewer than 10 years of consistent,

deliberate practice to get to where they are.

So, I started graduate school in 2002 --

I have three more years on my clock -- which means

many things, among which means I can't give up until

I have at least put in my 10 years and see,

whether I've gotten anywhere.

Psychologist have been interested in the distinction

between talent and everything else for years.

Right? So, before we had words to describe it

we were also probably interested in it.

But here is a quote from Clark Hall, one of the eminent

American psychologist of the early 20th century.

He wrote a little review, he kind of reviewed the literature

that was out there, which was quite easy to do in 1928,

there was a whole lot less of it.

He said, you know there are really two things:

there's our talent and I would emphasize what

Chris said, talent is multifaceted, there's creativity,

there's visual creativity, that different from musical creativity,

there's analytical talent, there's athletic talent,

there is musical talent.

But let's put them all on one category.

There's intelligence as conventionally defined,

and then there are all those many things that are

so much worse understood in a way,

all the capacities that allow us to unlock our talents and

he would put those in the category of industry.

William James made the same distinction.

William James wrote a famous essay in 1907 called, "The Energies of Men,"

and William James who arguably is the founder of

American psychology said there are our talents and

those things that unlock our talents and we could design

all of psychology to try to understand these two things.

I would argue that we've done some amount of work on the

talents and almost nothing on the unlocking.

When I considered what is it that unlocks people's

potential, what enables people to become a world class musician,

a world class teacher, a world class performer.

I struggled with this word to call what I was becoming

to understand was one of these key ingredients.

Eventually I called it grit, which I named in part after the

somewhat mediocre western John Wayne starred in;

I'll say a little more about that but, the reason why I came

to this concept of grit was I interviewed people that I knew

that were at the tops of their fields,

so it was relatively opportunistic.

I mean I interviewed my friend who had won a MacArthur,

I interviewed investment bankers

who at least at that time were very successful.

I interviewed, musicians and professors, and alike.

And people would often say, the people who are

top in my field are the really talented ones.

But just as often, and in fact I would say more often,

people said that these individuals at the top of

their fields had this kind of tenacious, dogged

perseverance unlike anyone else that they knew and

it was actually that which vaulted them to the to the top.

So I called it "true grit" after this movie which is

really about a young girl from Yale County, Arkansas

who like in typical western form, her father is unjustly murdered,

she spends the rest of the movie avenging his death,

and Rooster Cogburn plays the one-eyed,

semi-alcoholic sheriff who follows her along.

And everyone thinks that true grit is really about

John Wayne, of course, and it's really about this young

girl who against all odds pursues a very long term,

almost impossible goal and eventually --

with the emphasis on eventually, succeeds in that goal.

And this is the quality that I study.

Charles Darwin had a half cousin named Francis Galton,

and they shared a correspondence.

I like to think that correspondence today is as rich and

personally reveling as it was when you had to put a pen to paper.

So, maybe if they had emailed they would have shared

the same kinds of conversations.

This conversation, this quote, this is actually the letter on

the left and, maybe a little more legible on the right,

was Charles Darwin's response to Francis Galton

who had written a book called "Hereditary Genius."

Francis Galton made the claim that genius had 3 parts:

one part talent, one part passion or zeal and one part hard work.

And Charles Darwin's response to that was,

"That's a really interesting idea, I thought it was all

the hard work and the passion, maybe there's a role for talent after all."

Charles Darwin himself didn't actually consider

his intellect to be at all special.

He thought he had a quite ordinary mind.

But a very specific interest and focus and a lot of zeal and hard work.

Moving up a little closer to where we are in time,

there was a graduate student at Stanford named Katherine Cox,

she was a graduate student of a professor there named Lewis Termin,

he gave us, possibly the most widely used

intelligence test today, the Sanford-Binnet IQ test.

She was doing her graduate work in a lab where

everybody studied intelligence and how to measure it

and was it possible to measure it very early in life and

could we predict genius and so forth.

And Katherine took a very different take on her own research,

she wanted to know what are these other qualities that

make for genius, that make for realized genius,

people who are actually going to do something in the world.

So she read the biographies of 300 well known geniuses

and she isolated a few qualities which really distinguish

the geniuses who made a mark on the world.

One of them was the tendency not to abandon task

from mere changeability in her words.

In other words not being a dilettante, not being a flake,

not being me from the age of 22 to 32. Right?

Sort of from one award to another, from one career

to another, never actually setting sights on a port that

I was going to consistently work towards, right?

And I think we know many extremely bright people

who don't have the capacity to stay on task,

towards one goal and keep switching from one to the other.

I teach at Penn, I see hundreds and thousands of

kids pass through Penn's, you know, Ivy League portals

and they have this conception that essentially when they go off

into the world it will be an OK and good strategy to go to

law school and if I don't like law, I filled my pre-med

requirements so I could always go back and do medical school and

if I don't like that there's always management consulting;

the fall back of any Ivy League graduate, right.

And what I want to tell them is that history and psychology

tell us that changing around a lot is actually not

a good way to get anywhere. The other quality that she

isolated in her work, in her sort of reading of biographies

was probably more predictable, I think many teachers

and even many kids might recognize that

having perseverance in the face of adversity,

setbacks, failures, that is important.

And that it's the combination of those things that I call grit.

So it's this stamina quality not just being passionate

but sustaining that passion for a long time.

And these are items that I give in a questionnaire

when I try to measure this quality in studies.

Then the perseverance part as well, right.

Setbacks don't disappoint me,

I finish whatever I begin, I'm determined.

I'm going to walk you through a couple of studies,

and then I am going to speculate and it's only going to be

a speculation about what we could possibly do for

young people to cultivate this quality.

The first study I want to tell you about was done

at West Point Military Academy.

The first summer when you go to

West Point is called "Beast Barracks."

So you show up, they check you for tattoos,

can't have a tattoo if you go to West Point,

they shave your hair, they sit you down and you take

a very long battery of psychological intelligence tests.

So I slipped in the grit scale, on this second day of

training for a group of cadets.

And like many other psychologist I had my battery of

measures kind of hoping that I would be able

to predict something over and beyond,

what else is being collected at West Point.

West Point has been collecting data for many years

on what predicts survival through "Beast Barracks."

So they lose a good number of their cadets every

summer that they do this, the first year of cadets

even though they try to select the sort of people that

are obviously not going to drop out.

So here are the results, grit is the dark blue line and

essentially how to read this graph is on the left is the percentage of

the cadets, who actually retained through the summer,

the summer of "Beast Barracks."

And on the X axis is what quartile you're in.

So at the far right hand, we have people in the top

quartile on grit scores -- 96 percent of those cadets

actually stayed through the summer.

And you can see, essentially, that there's this

positive relationship -- more grit more likely to stay.

Here is the whole candidate score, this is a weighted

average of you SAT, your GPA, how many push-ups you can do, literally.

You can see that, it's actually true that if your in the bottom 25%

of their whole candidate score you are more likely to

drop out, but isn't it interesting that the top 25% of

people on this score, which West Point has spent many

years and lots of your tax dollars trying to figure out,

the best predictor of performance.

You know, the people in the top 25% were actually just

about as likely to drop out, and self-discipline which is

being able to resist temptation, it's also an important

quality, but not such an important quality

when it comes to high achievement.

Very good quality when it comes to staying on your diet

and doing your homework, not such a good quality,

in terms of predicting extremely high challenge achievement.

That seem to be predictive as well,

not quite as predictive when you run the statistics as grit.

We replicated the study, every single year

in the last five years at West Point Academy

leading lots of military people to call me and

ask me how to increase grit in their cadets,

in their special forces officers or navy seals,

or in their air-force cadets.

But, the point here is that grit is predicting something,

people who stay in that very challenging environment

are not just the very talented ones, it's something else.

In fact this study, and in every study that

I've run since then, I was looking to see whether

the gritty people were the ones who were the talented ones.

Maybe when you really good at something it makes you stay in.

In fact we find quite the opposite,

at West Point and elsewhere we find that

the gritty people on measures of talent have less.

So it's by no means a guarantee of grit that

you actually start of as one of the gifted.

Here I am gonna run quickly through some other studies.

This is a grit measured by looking at peoples resumes

for consistency and follow through I would have gotten

a terrible grit score for my resume,

would have gotten grit for breath, low for grit.

This is actually looking at grit in college resumes

as a predictor of the teacher effectiveness in a teacher's

under resourced communities.

And we measured teacher effectiveness the way

it should be measured, which is the academic progress

of their kids. And no other thing, I think,

would substitute for that.

We did a great study, and I mean it was just fun,

of the National Spelling Bee kids.

I called up the director of the National Spelling Bee,

who herself was a National Spelling Bee champion,

she corrected the spelling on my email on her return,

and that was fine too.

And these kids are extraordinary children, and I think

many people have this stereotype that Spelling Bee kids

are verbal geniuses and the ones who win

the Spelling Bee are sort of more genius-like

than the ones who don't win the Spelling Bee.

So I asked the director if that were true and she said,

"I don't think so but I don't know what it is."

So we surveyed kids before they actually went to the Bee

and what we found is that, again grit is the dark blue line,

so the kids who actually placed higher in the finals

of the National Spelling Bee were higher in grit and

here is they verbal IQ, verbal IQ did predict,

but again, the kids who were really high in verbal IQ

tended to be lower in grit.

So they were not merit, they were inversely related

and self-discipline here, being able to resist temptation,

stay on a diet, do you homework when you need to --

Interestingly, the kids who were very high in

self-discipline did do better.

But there was also the slacker group,

in a bottom 25% of self-discipline who also did quite well

but just about as well as the top.

So again self-discipline, great for doing homework,

terrific predictor of GPA, not such a great predictor

of are you gonna find a blue man group and stay with it, etc.

In a follow-up study to this one we investigated why

is it that gritty kids are wining the Spelling Bee.

So we recruited another sample of kids from

the following year Spelling Bee, we sent them surveys,

we measured they grit on self-report questionnaires,

but then we asked them very detailed question about

what they did. So it turns out the kids who were in

the National Spelling Bee competition,

they're studying anywhere from an hour a week to

scarily 35 or 40 hours a week but what differentiate kids

who are gritty from kids how are not gritty

it's not just the hours of work that they are putting in

they're putting the hardest kind of work in.

They are not studying the words they are already know,

they're not sitting around being quizzed on

what's pretty much coming easily,

they isolate what they don't know, they identify their own

weaknesses and then they work just on that.

And that seems to characteristic of high achievement

and what grit enables you to do.

It's basically, being in a very uncomfortable place

for some part of your day working extremely hard and then

to get up and do it all over again and again and again.

There is a graph that goes with this 10-year-old,

that I mentioned at the beginning of the talk,

this is the deliberate practice graph, this graph actually

accurately describes the rise of skill, the gain in skill

over time for really just about any domain that's been studied.

Even Mozart, who some would argue is proof of concept for genius --

Mozart must have been born as great as he was

because who else could have been composing

melodies that we're still listening to, at the age of 5 or 6.

It turns out that Mozart also fits this graph but he was

doing probably 8 hours of deliberate practice a day,

from as early as he could sit up,

whereas most of class performers only do 4.

But Mozart at very early age had already accumulated

basically 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.

Here is the interesting thing on the graph,

so it's really 10 years since you started discipline

till you get to world class peak performers.

And another interesting point about this which

you can't see from this graph is that

most people do this, they don't have the grit to

essentially sustain this deliberate practice over all

this time and they basically plato here.

I want to end with a couple of quotes.

If you look at early films of people that we all love --

maybe you love Will Smith -- I do --

maybe you love Matt Dillon or Rob Lowe,

take any Academy Award winning actor and

go watch one of their first films.

More likely than not it was terrible.

So the interesting thing is what makes somebody

have a terrible film, which is poorly reviewed,

and actually stay with it?

Whatever it is, I think Will Smith has got it,

and he was also very funny when he talks about it.

And I think Woody Allen has it.

And I think that essentially the question for the Blue [unclear] School

and for the rest of us who are interested in children is

whatever that is, let's figure it out and then

through the art which is teaching and education

let's bring it to children.

Thank you very much.