How to Get More Grit in Your Life

[0] Srinath Mahankali is sitting on a sofa in his family's living room in Queens, New York.

[1] He's 12 years old.

[2] His father, Srinivas, is looking up dictionary words on a laptop, reading them aloud.

[3] Shami or shamwa?

[4] Shamwa.

[5] May I have the language of words in place?

[6] It's Middle French from late Latin.

[7] Chamois.

[8] May the definition, please?

[9] A small goat -like antelope.

[10] You've probably figured out by now that Srinath was preparing for a spelling bee.

[11] It was the Scripps National Spelling Bee, the Super Bowl of Spelling Bees.

[12] Chamois, C, H, A, M, M, O, I, S, Shemois.

[13] That's right.

[14] Srinath is not the first great speller in his family.

[15] A few years ago, his older brother Arvind, won the national spelling bee and the $30 ,000 prize.

[16] Arvin's winning word, canadal, from the Yiddish.

[17] Canadal or canadal is a small mass of leavened dough cooked by boiling or steaming as with soup, stew, or fruit.

[18] It's a dumpling.

[19] Canadal.

[20] K -N -N -A -A -I -D -E -L, canadal.

[21] Srinath didn't win the nationals, but still, just to qualify, was quite an accomplishment.

[22] He got there by winning the nationals.

[23] the New York Daily News Competition.

[24] I won on the word osculatory, O -S -C -U -L -A -T -O -R -Y.

[25] Do you want to know what it means?

[26] Related to kissing.

[27] Serenath practices a lot.

[28] And practice, especially what's known as deliberate practice, is vital if you want to get really good at anything.

[29] In fact, it may be more important than the talent you're born with.

[30] With the right kind of training, any individual will be able to to acquire abilities that were previously viewed as only attainable if you had the right kind of genetic talent.

[31] That's what we talked about on a recent episode of Freakonomics Radio, how deliberate practice can help anyone get really good at just about anything.

[32] So let's assume you buy into that.

[33] You really believe that talent is vastly overrated and that with the right amount and the right kind of practice, you can excel.

[34] All right, then, here's a question.

[35] How are you supposed to push yourself to practice like that?

[36] Where does that drive come from?

[37] How can you increase your determination, your stick -to -itiveness, your, what's the word I'm looking for?

[38] Grit.

[39] Grit.

[40] Yeah, grit.

[41] Grit.

[42] May I have the definition, please?

[43] I define grit as passion and perseverance for a special.

[44] long -term goals.

[45] And what kind of question should we be asking about grit?

[46] What specifically are gritty people like?

[47] What do they do when they wake up in the morning?

[48] What beliefs do gritty people walk around with in their heads?

[49] And let me ask you this.

[50] Can someone who doesn't have a lot of grit learn to get some?

[51] My answer to that would be yes, you can.

[52] From WNYC Studios, this is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything.

[53] Here's your host, Stephen Dubner.

[54] Annette Lee grew up in New Jersey.

[55] As in many first -generation immigrant Asian families, she says, there was a lot of pressure to succeed, including intra -familial pressure.

[56] No matter what you did, you always heard about anti -so -and -so's son or uncle so -and -so's daughter who did it better, faster first.

[57] So you would come home and say, guess what, I got 15, 20, money on my SATs, and then you would hear, oh, that's too bad.

[58] You know, Auntie Rose's son got 1600, and he took him in eighth grade.

[59] So pretty much no matter what you did, you were kind of like a disappointment.

[60] Lee's parents both emigrated from China and met in the U .S. in the 1960s.

[61] Her mother was studying for an MFA in painting.

[62] Her father got his Ph .D. in organic chemistry and took a job at DuPont.

[63] They had three kids.

[64] Annette was in the middle.

[65] We had a very, I think, middle -class upbringing, you know, the four -bedroom, two -and -a -half -bath house in the suburbs.

[66] If you've seen the wonder years, like that kind of a neighborhood.

[67] In other words, it was kind of average.

[68] Average house, average job, and average children.

[69] Lease, that's how her dad saw it, Lee says.

[70] He just didn't think his kids had much natural talent.

[71] One of his favorite sayings was, you're no genius.

[72] Yeah, you're no genius.

[73] You know, I think that we grew.

[74] up a lot thinking that we were just failures.

[75] Annette Lee, we should say, became a doctor, a reproductive endocrinologist in private practice in Pennsylvania.

[76] But back when she was applying for college and was accepted by Cornell, an Ivy League school, her parents were disappointed that she didn't get into Harvard, Princeton, or Yale.

[77] And my parents' reaction was, oh my God, thank God we still have Angie.

[78] Hi, this is Angela.

[79] That is Annette's younger sister.

[80] Angie Lee, a .k .a. Angela Lee Duckworth, she did go to Harvard and to Oxford, and she got a Ph .D. in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.

[81] But their dad's whole genius schstick stayed with her.

[82] I think what my dad meant when he would say out of the blue, you know, you're no genius, is that I wasn't the smartest person that he had met, that I wasn't leagues smarter than other people my age or the people that he knew.

[83] Duckworth's career has worked out pretty well.

[84] I'm scientific director and founder of the Character Lab and a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

[85] And now she's written a book.

[86] Oh, yes, here comes the self -promotion part.

[87] I am also author of a book called Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance.

[88] Duckworth's focus is on education, and her research tries to understand how kids learn best.

[89] She used to teach seventh grade math in New York City.

[90] In the classroom, watching the successful kids and the unsuccessful ones, she came to the conclusion that a given student's natural abilities seem to matter a lot less than effort and grit.

[91] That's right.

[92] I want to redefine genius, if you will.

[93] I think most people use the word genius the way my dad means the word genius.

[94] You know, somebody who has an intellectual gift, which is far greater than what most people have in a given area in music or in mathematics in running or in dancing.

[95] And by that natural ability, they're going to far excel the rest of us, almost by destiny.

[96] I think that is what most people use the word genius for.

[97] And then they all have their handy lists of geniuses that they think of, like Mozart or Einstein.

[98] I want to define genius as greatness that isn't necessarily effortless, but in fact, greatness that is earned.

[99] However, you do earn it.

[100] And so I want to define genius as something that you accomplish yourself as opposed to something that's given to you.

[101] And that brings us, I assume, therefore, to grit.

[102] So talk about grit.

[103] First of all, let's start with how you define it.

[104] I define grit as passion and perseverance for especially long -term goals.

[105] Okay.

[106] So that sounds kind of like a no -brainer that everybody in their right mind would want to have more grit rather than less of that.

[107] So surely your argument isn't simply that grit is a good thing to have.

[108] It's that grit is what?

[109] So the message of the book is not that grit is a good thing in particular.

[110] The message of the book is that like so many other things about us that are good, we can do something to intentionally cultivate grit in ourselves and in others that we care about.

[111] Well, can you start teaching me right now or anyone listening to this how to be grittier?

[112] I mean, I want specifics.

[113] I want to know what to do.

[114] I want to know what not to do.

[115] I want to know how long I should expect these changes to take.

[116] I want to know if there are going to be relapses that I should be prepared for and so on.

[117] How do we start?

[118] Yeah.

[119] When you talk about changing character or changing grit, it feels like, well, you can't change that.

[120] It's just people are who they are.

[121] But when you actually get to the specifics, you know, what specifically are gritty people like?

[122] What do they do when they wake up in the morning?

[123] What beliefs do gritty people walk around with in their heads?

[124] When you get to that level of specifics, you realize, gosh, there's no reason why these things couldn't be taught practiced or.

[125] learned.

[126] Duckworth has learned what she's learned about grip in two main ways.

[127] One, by conducting in -depth interviews with high achievers, business people, athletes, musicians, and so on, paragon's of grit, she calls them.

[128] And two, by following groups of people, like new cadets at West Point or students in the Chicago public schools, and seeing whether a person's long -term success corresponds to their grit score.

[129] We'll hear later how she calculates that score.

[130] Through her research, Duckworth has identified four traits that gritty people have in abundance.

[131] Interest, practice, purpose, and hope.

[132] Let's start with the first thing, I think, that gritty people develop in the order in which they develop it, which is interest.

[133] So one thing that I found about paragons of grit, you know, real outliers in passion and perseverance, is that they have extremely well -developed interest.

[134] They cultivate something which grabs their attention initially, but that they become familiar with enough, knowledgeable enough, that they wake up the next day and the next day and the next year, and they're still interested in this thing.

[135] And I think that is something that we can actually intentionally decide.

[136] I want to be the kind of person who stays interested in something.

[137] And so that passion really does have to come first.

[138] What about, however, if I or my kid or someone that I really care about, if I'm a teacher, my students, what if they can't find a passion?

[139] Yeah.

[140] I don't know if there are many commencement speeches given these days that don't actually exhort people to follow their passion.

[141] And I think that just strikes the fear of God into people because they then think, oh, my God, I don't have one.

[142] Now I'm really screwed.

[143] And I think the idea of following a passion is just the wrong way to phrase it.

[144] Following a passion sounds like it's there in the world, fully formed.

[145] You just have to like dig it up under the right bush.

[146] Really, you have to foster a passion.

[147] You have to actively put some work in and try things and try them for a little while and get into them.

[148] And then you have to switch, right?

[149] Part of grit is actually doing enough exploration early on, quitting enough things early on that you can find something that you're willing to stick with.

[150] So I don't know that there's an easy prescription then for telling people how exactly to do that.

[151] But I think one misunderstanding, which is very dangerous, is to suggest to people that passion just sort of falls into your lap and it's love at first sight.

[152] It's not like that.

[153] It's not like that for the people that I've been studying.

[154] And what happens if I'm interested in something to the degree of passionate, but then my passion shifts over time?

[155] Do I feel like I'm there for a loser that I'm an anti -gridist?

[156] You know, I used to think I was passionate, but now I think I'm a dilettante.

[157] So how do you handle that?

[158] One of the psychologists that I interviewed said, shame is usually not helpful as an emotion, and I would second that.

[159] So, no, I don't believe people should berate themselves for deciding that they don't want to go to medical school after all.

[160] But I will say this, it is human nature to get bored of things and to seek the novel.

[161] And I think that one of the skills that one must develop in life, if one cares not to be a dilettante, if it's a goal of yours to become expert in something, one of the skills is to learn to substitute nuance for novelty.

[162] I love that idea.

[163] To substitute nuance for novelty.

[164] So rather than constantly moving on to a new thrill, you try to find another level, another dimension of the thing you're already doing to make it more thrilling, whether it's a research project or an arpeggio, a breaststroke, or a souffle, wherever your interests lie.

[165] I think there's something of a skill there that.

[166] needs to be acquired.

[167] Otherwise, we will default to that natural human tendency to click on another hyperlink and go somewhere entirely new.

[168] Okay.

[169] So if interest is the first trait that gritty people tend to possess, and you say that is kind of the bedrock foundation, yes, that these are attained in order, yeah?

[170] Yes, that's right.

[171] I think developmentally, most people just get interested in something and then some people cultivate those interests.

[172] Those interests get developed and then deepened.

[173] And then that second stage is practice.

[174] Particularly deliberate practice.

[175] The kind of deliberate practice that kind of went viral when Malcolm Gladwell wrote Outliers.

[176] Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers, is premised on something called the 10 ,000 -hour rule.

[177] Sometimes it's called the 10 -year rule, so -called because the average number of hours of effortful practice was 10 ,000 hours over 10 years.

[178] But the real guru of deliberate practice is Anders Erickson, author of the book, peak.

[179] And I'm a professor of psychology at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.

[180] There are several components to deliberate practice, but generally it's about using good feedback to focus on specific techniques that will lead to real improvement.

[181] So anytime you can focus your performance on improving one aspect, that is the most effective way of improving performance.

[182] Angela Duckworth, in pursuit of a better understanding of grit, has collaborated with Andrews Erickson on research about deliberate practice.

[183] The second stage really does have this quality of laboring in a very methodical way and in a very unfun way for most people to get better and better at this thing that you've become interested in.

[184] I think that is a conflict that at least I personally, I know a lot of people that I know come up against, which is that.

[185] that if you try to force yourself or will yourself into becoming awesome at something that you don't have that true passion for, then the practice does become a sort of slow form of torture as opposed to a kind of work that you're willing to go through because you love the underlying thing, even if you don't love playing that E minor scale for the 1800th time today.

[186] I completely agree.

[187] And I think that is why interest must come first.

[188] You know, I think there are a lot of over -eager, probably very well -intentioned parents out there who are kind of like chaining their kids to the piano bench in hopes that, you know, that seventh hour of practice today is going to, you know, put them on course for Juilliard or Harvard.

[189] And I think they're seriously getting things out of order.

[190] I interviewed Rowdy Gaines, the 1984 gold medalist in the 100 -meter freestyle representing the United States.

[191] And, you know, he estimates that in the years up to the Olympics where he won that gold medal, he swam equivalently around the world, right?

[192] You know, roughly 20 ,000 miles.

[193] And so I asked him, you know, do you love practice?

[194] And he said, are you asking me if I love getting up at four in the morning, jumping into a cold pool and swimming laps, looking at a black line on the bottom, you know, at the very edge of my physical ability where my lungs are screaming for oxygen and my arms feel like they're about to fall off?

[195] No, I don't, but I love the whole thing.

[196] You know, I have a passion for the whole sport.

[197] And so that passion really does have to come first.

[198] Such passion plainly comes in many flavors.

[199] Olympic competition, sure, but also spelling.

[200] Okay, the first word is, alamand.

[201] Can I have the definition.

[202] That, again, is 12 -year -old Srinath Mahankali and his dad, a 17th century and 18th century court dance developed in France.

[203] Alamand, A, L, L, E, M, A, N, D, E, Alamad.

[204] That's right.

[205] It isn't just the competition that excites Srinath.

[206] It's the words themselves.

[207] I have a passion for words because I just don't really understand why they put it together in this sort of way.

[208] Like when they got words from different languages, why did they make it spell this way?

[209] that way.

[210] His mother, Bavani, remembers when your older son, Arvind, caught the spelling bug.

[211] Actually, when my first one was in, like, third grade or second grade, he was watching Scripps National Spelling Bee on TV.

[212] And then he came out with a notebook and he was writing all the words because he wanted to be on TV.

[213] Now, Arvin started writing them down those words and said, I want to do this and I want to be like that, because they are small kids.

[214] They're so impressed with the small children standing there and asking all the root questions and all that.

[215] It was fascinating.

[216] I always thought this is only for some other kids.

[217] I'm not going to make my kids do it.

[218] I always thought this is nice to watch, but I'm not expecting...