#210： Got Grit？
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Summary
Dr. Angela Duckworth has spent her career researching what makes people gritty, and how we can develop this trait in ourselves. She is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. So why are some
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people more successful than others? This is a tough question to answer because it's a mixture
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of a whole bunch of factors, many of which are out of our control, things like just dumb luck
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or even our genetics. But there are a few factors that we have a say over and one of them is the
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ability to persevere even in the face of setbacks. In other words, it's grit. And my guest today has
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spent her career researching what makes people gritty and how we can develop this trait in
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ourselves. Her name is Angela Duckworth. She's a professor of psychology at the University of
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Pennsylvania and the author of the book, Grit, the Power of Passion and Perseverance. And today on
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the show, Angela and I discuss her research on grit and insights on how we can develop this important
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trait ourselves based on her visits and interactions with poor inner city students, West Point cadets,
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and Seattle Seahawks football players. It's a really great show. A lot of actionable steps
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you can start applying today to become a grittier man. And if you want to check out our show notes
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after the show for links to resources that we mentioned throughout the show, so you can delve
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deeper into this topic, visit aom.is slash grit. Angela Duckworth, welcome to the show.
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So I've been a fan of your work for a while now because I've read stuff you've been putting out
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about grit and the grit scale and your TED talk, of course. And you finally got your book out,
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Grit, the Power of Passion and Perseverance. Before we talk more about your research into the
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characteristic of grit, let's define it first. What do you mean by grit or what is grit?
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I define grit as both perseverance and passion for especially challenging long-term goals.
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Got you. So it's passion and perseverance. And what got you interested in studying or researching grit?
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It all started actually being a teacher in the classroom trying to teach kids who were going
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through puberty, you know, how to solve an algebraic equation. And that normally takes grit,
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but I think the more important thing was that I was struck by how differently some kids turned out
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at the end of the year, that, you know, some kids got higher grades than I expected them to,
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frankly, given how hard it was for them to learn the material. And other kids that I expected to do,
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you know, straight A work all year ended up doing far from that. And it was largely because they didn't
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try hard or long enough. I wanted to understand that a little better. I mean, like any well-meaning
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teacher, I told my kids to work harder and I lectured them about the importance of, you know,
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their futures. But as a psychologist, I think it's been my mission, my calling to understand why some
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kids, you know, keep trying and why kids don't, to understand, to unpack the psychology of things
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And I think it's interesting. In your book, you talk about that you weren't the first psychologist to
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research with, you know, something, something similar to grit. You talk about how the U.S. Army,
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decades before, were trying to figure out why some soldiers did well at West Point or made it all the
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way through the initial like few weeks of West Point, while others who were on the paper looked
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extremely talented. They had a lot of potential and they just faltered. So can you tell us a little
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bit about what the U.S. Army was doing with the sort of grit psychology before you got onto it?
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Well, what West Point wanted to know was why some of the cadets who had been recruited through this
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extremely, you know, kind of famously rigorous admissions procedure that requires a congressional
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nomination and a physical fitness test of, you know, your aptitude in various areas, you know,
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why is it that all of that, you know, recruiting valedictorians and varsity sports team captains,
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why is it that so many of these young women and men these days, of course, originally it was just
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men, you know, why do they drop out? You know, why do they drop out even before they've even begun
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really seriously? For example, the first summer of training at West Point is called Beast Barracks.
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Even officially it's called Beast Barracks or sometimes they just call it Beast for short.
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And in those first two months, you know, many young men and women who everyone would have thought would
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have been there at the end. They're not there anymore. So for decades, West Point had been
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trying to figure this out, you know, doing various kinds of tests. And in 2004, when I came along with
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the Grit Scale, which is just a questionnaire that captures the qualities of passion and perseverance
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I was talking about, Grit Scale ended up being astoundingly predictive. The higher your grit score,
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the more likely you are to make it through Beast.
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And so what you found too was interesting is that, you know, I think before they go in, I mean,
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people need to understand when people are accepted at West Point, they've gone through
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this filtering process, this winnowing process. This is the best of the best. It's not just academic.
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It has to have extracurriculars, fitness. And I guess some of the students are given a rating,
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right? And they thought that this rating on paper would be the, would predict how well people would do
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at West Point. But when you applied the Grit Scale or the Grit Test to these students, you found that
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some of the students who looked good on this other assessment didn't do well, while others who
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performed on the, like the Grit Scale is what predicted success getting past Beast Week.
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Exactly. So the whole candidate score, which is the official term that West Point uses for this
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composite of your, your SAT score, your high school rank, your leadership potential, as evidenced by
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your extracurricular activities. And finally, your physical aptitude measured by objective tests,
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like the two mile run, you roll all that into the whole candidate score. I'll tell you what it does
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predict, but it's true that it doesn't predict finishing Beast. What it does predict is this,
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if you stay at West Point, if you do hang around for those four years of training, and you graduate,
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your whole candidate score is a tremendously reliable predictor of how well you'll do.
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But as Woody Allen, the great philosopher, also, you know, comedian, said, 80% of success in life
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is showing up. And talent is no guarantee that you'll be the person who continues to show up.
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Yeah. And you talk about that in your book that I think everyone, we have this appreciation for grit
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in our heads. Like we tell our kids, you got to work hard, stick to it, do it even if you don't feel
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like it, because you'll get better at it. But then you argue in our book that when it comes to how we
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actually behave, like we prefer talent, like we want to go with the natural. Why is it? Why is
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there this disconnect where we tell, say one thing, but do another?
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Such a great question. I think there really is a deep ambivalence. You know, I mean, I love naturals
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too, in a sense, you know, I love to be dazzled. There's something very romantic about the idea of
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somebody just having a special it factor. And, you know, we've all experienced this. Maybe it
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depends on what you like to watch. But, you know, if you watch certain athletes perform or certain
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musicians, and you just, they really do have this otherworldly magical quality, or it seems like we
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like to think about that about them. On the other hand, you know, we really value effort and hard work
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and, you know, being resilient and earning your achievements, you know, being a striver.
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So I think that ambivalence is what is at the heart of experiments. For example, my colleague
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and my friend, Chia Jung-se, she has run experiments where, you know, you get to see two performers.
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They're actually equal in performance. I mean, she can even play you the same music, for example,
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and have you judge, you know, how able they are, how skilled they are, you know, how good of a musician.
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If she describes that musician to you as somebody who's a natural, who's gifted,
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then you're more likely to think that person is going to be successful and accomplished later on
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than if she gives you the same exact music, but she describes that person as a hardworking striver.
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So she's kind of uncovered a bias, a maybe slightly unconscious bias, that is nevertheless real,
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that in some ways, it's like when you go dating, and you're like, oh, really, I want to,
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you know, I want to date the nice guy, but you end up picking the cute one.
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Right, right, right. And I guess you talk about, you quote Nietzsche. Nietzsche, you know,
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100 years ago, over 100 years, had that insight that we prefer natural talent, but like, you should
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ignore that because it's, if you just sort of focus on talent, you do so to your detriment.
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Yeah, and Nietzsche's insight here comes from a debate that he was having with his, you know,
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sometime, you know, thought partner, Wagner, right? And they were talking about great accomplishment,
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and Nietzsche says, you know, speak not to me of genius, and speak not to me of inborn talents.
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And then he describes what he saw as the reality of excellence, which is, you know, a dedication to
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your craft, a relentless, a relentless commitment to self-improvement, you know, never being satisfied
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with where you are. And he said, you know, the patience to work on all the little small things
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that do end up to being, you know, someone who we can laud now as, you know, a great artist,
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as a great performer. And, you know, Wagner took the opposite view, which is that, you know,
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some people are born in a certain way, and some people aren't. But I take the Nietzschean view.
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And I think Nietzsche was also right when he tried to understand the psychology of like,
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why do we keep doing this? Like, why do we love to call someone a genius and somebody
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else not a genius? And he said that, you know, when we don't believe that we are in the same class as
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someone, when we feel like there are different species in us, then here, we do not have to compete.
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It lets us off the hook, you know, why try to run really hard when you're never going to be Usain Bolt,
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you know, like, it's a way of just relaxing into this comfortable identity as somebody who
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will never achieve the kind of greatness that we really admire, and therefore can accept the status
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quo. So you argue in the book that there are four factors of developing grit. Can you share what those
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factors are? Yeah, when I study paragons of grit, you know, people who really exemplify passion and
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perseverance for something that they deeply care about, I find that they have four psychological
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assets, as it were. And I think they're each acquirable, really. The first one is they have
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deep interest. You know, they have figured out how to stay interested in one thing. And to make that one
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thing new again, right? You know, you do anything for a while, the natural thing is to get bored. But what
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happens with experts is that they find differences to still attend to, they find nuances. You know,
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my guess is about you is that, you know, in some ways, you've been interviewing people about similar
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topics for a long, long time. And yet, I think there's always a newness, like something yet to
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be discovered, a nuance or a depth that you haven't yet reached. At least that's the way I feel about my
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work. Second, it's a capacity for practice, a capacity to practice your weaknesses, to get feedback
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from a coach, from a peer, to really reflect on that feedback and make a refinement and to start
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all over again in that continuous improvement cycle that I mentioned earlier. Third, a sense of purpose.
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And in here, I really mean other-centered purpose. You know, a sense of what you do is not just for
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yourself, but for your team, for your company, for your country, for your family, for the sport. You know,
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I've not interviewed a paragon of grit who doesn't have a sense that, to some extent, they're on a
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mission, and the mission involves the well-being of other people. And fourth and finally, there's
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hope. You know, learning to focus on what you can control and what you can change when things are
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not going well. Okay, there's a lot to unpack there. But before we get there, you said that these traits
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are, you can develop these psychological traits. But I'm curious, what does the research say? There's all
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this research coming out about genetics and even influencing temperament and things like that.
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Is there any research about whether grit is inborn or if it's a mixture of social upbringing or your
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environment? There was actually recently a study of twins in the United Kingdom. I think it was
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2,000 pairs of twins. And these studies basically go like this. You know, you have twins by knowing
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their relatedness to each other. And, you know, oftentimes, you know, twins raised apart. So they're in
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different families, twins raised together. You can kind of back into how much is nature and how much
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is nurture in traits like grit. And in this recent study, there was an estimate for how heritable,
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how genetic grit is. And the estimates came in as about 20% or so for passion and about 40% or so
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for perseverance. When I read that study, I actually was a little bit surprised not to find that there was
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a genetic component to how gritty we might end up being, but actually that the estimates weren't
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higher than that. Because in many studies, traits like grit end up being more heritable, you know,
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40, 50% of the variation attributable to our DNA. So the bottom line, I think, is this. Like any other
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thing that you might care about, you know, how shy you are, how tall you are, how smart you are,
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whether you're going to get skin cancer, how likely you are to be overweight or not overweight,
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there is definitely a genetic component, but it's not 100%. It's a fraction of that. So for all of the
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things that I mentioned, including grit, your experiences and your environment really matter.
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I think so. I mean, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about my genes because I can't do anything
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about them. Right. Exactly. So let's go back to this idea of this factor of interest. And it seems
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that this is where passion is connected. If you're interested in something, you're passionate in it.
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So how do you, we have a lot of young guys who listen to this podcast. They're in their late teens,
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early twenties, they're trying to figure out what they're going to do with their lives.
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And you often hear this refrain that you should follow your passion, but how do you figure out what
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your passion is or your interest is if you don't have one at the moment?
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I have always wondered why commencement speakers keep exhorting everyone to follow their passion when
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most people in the audience don't have one yet. Just like you said, you know, I would follow it if
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someone could tell me what it was. So, you know, maybe it's a little more helpful to think about
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fostering a passion because it really is an active process. When people become interested in things,
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it happens, you know, not necessarily all in a moment in time. You know, if you, if you,
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if you try to date back your interest in something like a particular sport or, you know, something
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that'll eventually become your job, your profession, it's, it's true that there are, you know,
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sometimes these memorable experiences, like the first time I got to, you know, work with a great
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coach or, you know, the first time that, you know, I realized that like writing could be something
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that I could do for a living, but invariably there are subsequent experiences. Sometimes interest
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researchers like to call this triggering and re-triggering where that interest gets deeper
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and deeper. And that requires typically, you know, supportive people around you, like, you know,
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other athletes on your team who make it an overall positive experience. One paragon of grit that I've
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closely studied is Mark Vetteri. He's a world-class chef. He's, you know, my favorite chef in Philadelphia.
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And, you know, when he remembers his boyhood, it's not that he knew when he was a kid that he was going
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to grow up to be a chef. He actually thought he'd become a musician. But if you look at his
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trajectory, he started cooking a little bit with his grandmother. You know, that was a very positive
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emotional experience. You know, he started hanging around in restaurants. He just, he washed dishes
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to make money because teenage boys like making money for, for, for good reason as well. And the people
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in the kitchen were nice to him. He had a stutter and he was a little bit of an outcast in high school.
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And when he went to the kitchen, he, you know, washed dishes. I gave him food to eat and it was
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delicious. People are nice. And he started going to kitchens more and more. So it's, it's a messy
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process. It, it doesn't happen in a moment in time. It often takes years to really grow into an
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interest. And I think for the young people who are worried that they don't have a passion,
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it's absolutely normal when you are exploring things to not yet have a passion. But what I would urge
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them to do is to keep, keep trying to, to foster one because, uh, if you don't look for it, if you
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don't try, you're certainly less likely to cultivate one than if you do. I think your story is also a
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great example of how you find your interest or your passion. Cause I mean, you started off as a
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business consultant and then you went to go teach at a, you know, lower income school. And this is this,
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then you found out, okay, I want to figure out why some kids stick with it and some kids don't.
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So you got your PhD in psychology. Uh, so this took several years to finally, to the point where
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you're, you're the grit lady. You know, and I became the grit lady. Yes, exactly. And you know,
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there was even more skipping around than that because, you know, I was a consultant in my late
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twenties and, but there was some skipping around that, that, you know, I could tell you about,
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but the point is, is that there was a lot of exploration before I figured out what I really
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wanted to do. I, you know, it's a little bit like dating, right? I mean, you know, I'm pretty glad,
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frankly, that I didn't marry the first guy that I went out with. And each time I broke up with
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someone or, you know, they broke up with me, I think it was because one of us realized that this
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isn't, you know, we weren't, we weren't going to do this for life that, you know, for one reason or
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another, there's somebody else that we could have been with and been happier. It's not that dating is a
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bad thing. But I think that if you are not at least trying to figure out something that eventually
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you will stick with, right? Then again, you know, you're not going to likely find that thing. And
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I'm so much more gratified by my life now that I have an expertise. I, you know, wake up every day
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thinking about a fairly small set of scientific questions, all related to the psychology of
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achievement. And I'll never get bored of those questions. And that's something I couldn't say
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to you when I was 22 or 25, or probably even 31. It was not until my, you know, fourth decade of life
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that I really started to hone in on what would make me so passionate and persevering in the way that I
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feel like I am today. And so, so interest, I think a lot of people, it's kind of the fun part,
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you're exploring, figuring out what you like. But the hard part about grit, and the thing I found
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hard with it, and when I throw out and I look at my life is the practice part. And it's not just,
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I think a lot of people have a miss, like a, not a good idea of what practice actually is.
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You focus a lot on deliberate practice. For our listeners who aren't familiar with this concept,
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Deliberate practice is very methodically and intentionally working on very specific aspects
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of your overall performance, then trying with complete effort to remediate those weaknesses,
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getting feedback, largely on what you're doing wrong, of course, because you're trying to do
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something you can't yet do. And then reflecting, making a small refinement, and repeating the process
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all over again. It is complete common sense, you know, what else would you do? Of course,
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you would do that. But if you ask the question, how many people are really doing that, you know,
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really honing in on something that they can't yet do, that would make them better, trying with full
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effort and concentration, seeking out the feedback about what they should do differently,
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making a refinement and starting all over again. I think a lot of people are frankly going through
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life without doing any of that. And they're just sort of doing the same thing that they did
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yesterday in a pretty unthoughtful, or in a way, mechanistic manner. Deliberate practice,
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most people experience as highly effortful, and not very fun. There are exceptions, and I think those
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exceptions are interesting. But I think the first lesson is that practice isn't supposed to be
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like performance, which can be flow-like and delightful. Practice is, for most people,
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really, really hard. Yeah. And so how do you, in your research and the people you've talked to,
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what are these individuals who are consistent with their practice? It's very hard. How do they
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keep themselves motivated to keep practicing the violin? You talk about spelling bee champions and the
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amount of hours they spend practicing spelling. How do they stay motivated for that? Even when,
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to do it, even when they're like, man, I don't want to do this anymore.
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Well, you know, we should forgive ourselves for having those thoughts. I interviewed Rowdy Gaines,
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who was the 1984 gold medalist in the 100-meter freestyle. And he also, I think, set the world
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record in that same event. And, you know, he said that he hated getting up at, what, 4.30 in the
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morning in the middle of, you know, the darkness of night, getting into a bathing suit, you know,
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walking to the pool, jumping in, and not taking a leisurely, you know, lap or two. I mean,
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like pushing his body to its very limits, you know, sometimes painful, often tedious. He didn't
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love practice. And so, you know, we shouldn't beat ourselves up too much about the fact that,
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you know, we can sometimes get that feeling of like, God, this is, you know, what am I even doing
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here? Because everybody does occasionally, at least, experience that. I think one thing that
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makes it easier is to make it a habit. You know, something happens when we do something at the
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same time and in the same place in a ritualistic, routine way. And one of the things that happens is
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that, you know, to some extent, it becomes a little more automatic. I mean, many people have
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an exercise routine that, look, it's not that it doesn't take any effort, but it makes it a little
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easier that, oh, it's just what I do. I'm going to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning and I put on my
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sneakers and I'm out the door. So routine and habit are one recommendation. The other recommendation
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is to go and hang out with a lot of people who are doing the same thing. So if you're going to try
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to, you know, do something like begin running as part of your life, can you join another group of
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people who are all going to be doing the same thing? Because really, human beings are, by their
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nature, conformist to a logic. So, you know, we do what the herd does and it makes it easier if the
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herd is, you know, doing something gritty if, of course, being gritty is something that we aspire to
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ourselves. Right. And I guess imagine like having a purpose helps in that too, because you can
00:22:42.820
always connect the tedium to that higher purpose. Exactly. And, you know, it's not always easy to
00:22:49.580
see, but when you ask Rowdy Gaines, well, why did you swim, you know, so hard in practice? You know,
00:22:55.100
he laughed a little and he said, you know, I think I actually swim around the globe, you know, the
00:22:59.220
equivalent of it, right? If you add up all the, you know, each in 50 meter increments, right? But he
00:23:05.260
knew even when he was doing it, and it's not just in retrospect, right? Because he's, of course,
00:23:09.640
older now, he knew even at that moment that he had an overall passion for the sport that, you know,
00:23:15.980
the, the hours of practice put into the pool, we're, we're part of something larger. And so I
00:23:20.340
think that perspective of like, you know, this is not just sitting here, it is, it is part of a
00:23:25.800
bigger picture. I think that really does help. So I'm a parent and I'm sure that a lot of people
00:23:29.780
who are listening are parents. And this is like a trait I want to instill in my kid, like to keep
00:23:33.960
working at it, even if they don't succeed the first time, um, and persevere. Are there any tips
00:23:40.140
or in from your research that what parents can do to help encourage or foster grit in their own
00:23:45.220
children? One of the parents that I interviewed, because he himself is a paragon of grit, but you
00:23:51.240
know, like you has a, has a really deep desire to instill grit in his kids is Joe DeSena, who founded
00:23:58.940
the Spartan race. And, um, you know, he told me a story about a day where, where he lives, you know,
00:24:04.620
they live near mountains and, um, his son was on the ski team. And one day Joe was surprised because
00:24:10.740
he knew because of the time of day that it was the middle of ski practice. And his son comes in,
00:24:15.140
he's like, take it off his gloves. And, and Joe says, you know, what's up? Uh, aren't you supposed
00:24:19.660
to be out there? And his son said, it's too cold. Um, and Joe said, you better put your gloves
00:24:25.580
back on because, you know, we're going back up that mountain and we're going to ski down it.
00:24:30.520
And I think they, I think they walked up the mountain actually, um, uh, and, and they skied
00:24:35.580
down it. And I asked him, you know, what was the, what was the lesson you were trying to teach your
00:24:39.840
son? And he said, you know, I think kids are always learning and, uh, it's not just when we
00:24:45.900
think they're learning. And I didn't want my son to learn to quit. So I, you know, took him up there
00:24:51.680
and I showed him that he could do it. Uh, I showed him that it wasn't as bad as he thought,
00:24:56.420
right. That it wasn't impossible to do something like that. Um, and I also made him realize that
00:25:01.600
like he should keep going to ski practice because if he comes in before it's over, his dad's going
00:25:06.740
to take him out and make it even harder. Um, so, so, you know, I think the lesson is that,
00:25:11.780
that the kids really are learning at all the time. And we do have an opportunity as parents
00:25:18.480
to show them what they won't come to on their own. You know, I'm a parent of a 13 and 14 year
00:25:23.740
old girl. Both of them are girls. And, um, I thought when they were younger, I, I model grit
00:25:30.520
for them. They'll just, you know, do what I do. I don't think that's enough. I think that's helpful,
00:25:35.300
but, you know, to expect kids to, you know, practice their piano when they'd rather go out
00:25:39.440
on a play date or, you know, to always be resilient when they, you know, lose a race or, you know,
00:25:44.440
to know what to do when, um, when they screw up and they do badly in a, in a class, you know,
00:25:49.760
they really need parents to, to say things to them. Like, you know, it's, it's natural to want
00:25:54.360
to quit on a hard day, but I'm not going to let you. Right. So you got to be intentional about it.
00:25:59.320
I think so. I think so. And it is very hard, isn't it? I mean, you know, parenting is so hard.
00:26:04.240
You don't want to think about it, right? Cause you're, you have other things to think about.
00:26:08.520
Yeah. Yeah. But you know, you know, but yes, I think it being intentional. Absolutely.
00:26:12.720
Yeah. One of the things I like the suggestions that you do in your own family is like the hard
00:26:16.060
thing rule where I can say more about that. Yeah. I mean, I would, I would love to hear more about
00:26:21.200
that. You know, as a parent, I, and as a psychologist, I was trying to navigate, um,
00:26:27.740
you know, in the sense that I, I knew that on the one hand, my kids needed me to help discipline
00:26:33.300
them. Right. You know, kids are five, six, seven. Again, you know, they, they, they, they invariably
00:26:38.260
need a parent to, to tell them occasionally that like, no, you absolutely have to do
00:26:42.680
your practice before you can, you know, go out and do this other fun thing outside or
00:26:46.560
whatever. Um, so on the other hand, I knew that they needed autonomy because human beings
00:26:52.160
do not pursue things with passion that they have not chosen for themselves to do. So here's
00:26:57.480
how we manage that in our family, even since our kids were very little, five years old, I
00:27:03.400
think, uh, my husband and I said that in the Duckworth family, everyone has to do a hard
00:27:08.620
thing. That's the first part of the hard thing rule that you have to have a hard
00:27:11.800
thing for my daughters. Um, you know, piano for one, um, and the other, um, was eventually,
00:27:19.720
you know, viola. But the point was, is that by heart, I meant requiring that deliberate
00:27:25.920
practice where you are intentionally trying to remediate some kind of weakness, problem
00:27:31.620
solve, uh, and get feedback and get better and better. Secondly, they have to finish what
00:27:37.860
they begin. And it was very important to my husband and myself that just like Joe DeSino,
00:27:42.820
we, we didn't want our kids to, to learn to quit in the middle of things. So they were
00:27:47.360
not allowed to quit in track when they weren't doing well and told me they wanted to quit.
00:27:51.960
They, they weren't allowed to, you know, quit in the middle of ballet before the tuition
00:27:56.060
payment was, was up. They weren't allowed to quit their instrument, you know, what, cause
00:28:00.320
they didn't feel like practicing for recital. You know, they were allowed to quit, but not
00:28:04.720
until they finished the commitment that they had already made. So, uh, so that was the
00:28:10.620
second part of the hard thing rule that they had to finish the, to the natural end point,
00:28:15.060
the natural interval. And then they could pick another hard thing, but this brings me to the
00:28:20.500
third part of the hard thing rule. And it's the last part and just as important as the first
00:28:24.860
two. And that is that nobody gets to pick your hard thing, but you, you know, I didn't tell
00:28:30.960
my kids, you know, you have to play viola and you have to play piano. Like they, they
00:28:35.460
chose these things on their own. And I think we don't have to give kids every choice, but
00:28:40.760
we do have to give them some choice because that autonomy is crucial for fostering passion.
00:28:46.540
Yeah. I love that. Love creating that culture of, uh, of grit in your family. And speaking of,
00:28:51.320
you know, culture, like I, since your initial research has come out, uh, it seems like there's
00:28:55.660
a lot of business organizations that have been implementing some of these ideas of trying
00:28:59.260
to develop a culture of grit in their business or their organization. And you talk about, uh,
00:29:05.080
the Seattle Seahawks, uh, head coach, Pete Carroll. Um, what is Pete doing with his team to develop
00:29:11.680
this idea of grit there? You know, Pete Carroll was working on grit long before he watched my Ted
00:29:18.460
talk and called me up. I don't know whether he used the word grit, but, you know, it really captures,
00:29:24.100
I think for him, the quality of competitor that he's looking for, you know, every coach is trying
00:29:30.960
to select for the qualities that he wants. You know, that's why they care so much about scouting
00:29:35.220
and, uh, recruitment, but every coach is also interested in cultivating those same qualities
00:29:41.320
once those players get there. And, and Pete's no exception. So for Pete, I think what he's trying
00:29:46.840
to do is, you know, model commitment that, you know, I would describe as passion and perseverance.
00:29:52.060
Um, he has what I find is true of paragons of grit, which is a top level goal. You know,
00:29:58.300
really, really gritty people are usually able to articulate in a single sentence that ends with
00:30:04.620
a period, the top level goal that motivates everything that they do for Pete. It's only two
00:30:11.740
words, always compete. You have to unpack that. He, he means compete in a very pretty, basically he
00:30:18.020
means always striving to be your best. Um, he left out the part that, you know, obviously he's doing
00:30:23.800
that through coaching and football, but nevertheless, it's a, it's kind of a, a compass for him, you
00:30:29.240
know, that everything in his life is in service to that top level goal. And he's trying to get his
00:30:35.880
players to realize that, you know, that is possible for them as well. He, he does it in part through
00:30:41.980
modeling, but in part through rituals. So, uh, there's a tell your, you know, tell the truth
00:30:46.980
Monday tradition at the Seahawks where, you know, we talked about deliberate practice is working on,
00:30:52.160
you know, your relative weaknesses and getting feedback. Well, the tell your truth Monday
00:30:56.860
tradition is that the guys watch their film and they watch the things that they did right.
00:31:01.560
And they watch the things that they did wrong. And in a, in a dispassionate way, you know,
00:31:05.960
analyze it's like, okay, I should do this differently. Okay. Let me try it again.
00:31:09.260
And I think that kind of ritualizing is, is crucial to culture. And the last thing I'll just say is
00:31:15.420
that language is really important. You know, the words that we use, I think are symbolic of the
00:31:21.460
values that we hold. And, you know, when I was at the Seahawks, it was almost like, uh, being in a
00:31:26.640
foreign country, you know, somebody said to me while I was there, I speak fluent Carol. And I think what
00:31:32.280
he meant was that these phrases that are very much part of being a Seahawk, you know, finish strong.
00:31:39.700
Be early, no whining, no excuses, always compete. I mean, you know, you talk to anybody in a Seahawks
00:31:46.820
organization, they know exactly what you mean. You talk to people outside the organization and they
00:31:52.400
may or may not know because of course outside you're not a Seahawk. Right. Well, Angela, we, we
00:31:57.940
scratch, literally scratched the surface, uh, about your research and your book. Uh, where can people go
00:32:02.500
to learn more about your work as well as the book? I guess they can learn about my work primarily
00:32:09.120
through the book, but also at my website, which is AngelaDuckworth.com. All right. Well, Angela
00:32:14.420
Duckworth, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. I've really enjoyed it.
00:32:19.260
My guest today was Angela Duckworth. She's the author of Grit, The Power of Passion and
00:32:23.180
Perseverance. And it's available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information
00:32:27.940
about her, uh, book at AngelaDuckworth.com. And while you're there, you can even take the
00:32:32.560
grit scale test to see how gritty you are. And also, uh, make sure to check out the show
00:32:37.040
notes at AOM.IS slash grit for more information about the topic we discussed today.
00:32:42.200
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:32:59.680
make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy
00:33:03.840
the show and have gotten something out of it, I'd appreciate it if you give us a review on iTunes.
00:33:07.460
That'd really help us out a lot in spreading the word about the show. As always, I appreciate your
00:33:11.720
support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.