Grit

Grit describes what creates outstanding achievements, based on science, interviews with high achievers from various fields and the personal history of success of the author, Angela Duckworth, uncovering that achievement isn’t reserved for the talented only, but for those with passion and perseverance.

If I approached you on the street and said: “We’re conducting a study and would like your opinion. What’s more important: hard work or talent?” you’d probably say “hard work.” It’s what you think you believe. It’s what you want to believe.

And it’s also what 66% of people say when they’re asked this question. They want to believe it too. But when it gets hard, when the other guy gets the promotion, when the third business idea fails, do you really hold on to that belief? Or do you maybe think, deep down, you don’t have enough talent after all?

In 2011, Chia-Jung Tsay made a shocking discovery. She studied that last question by giving music experts two written descriptions of a “naturally talented” and a “hard-working, striving” musician and then letting them listen to a recording of the musician performing.

The majority of the experts ended up preferring the piece by the “natural.” The kicker is that on both occasions, the exact same recording was played.

We like to tell ourselves that we believe in hard work more than in talent. But we don’t really mean it.

The funny thing is, we have no reason to. Because if you said that hard work trumps talent and really believed it, you’d be right. After looking at successful people across a wide range of disciplines, from politicians to athletes to writers, Angela set up a set of two equations, which simplify the way talent and effort are related, to make it clear how much more important effort is. In order to achieve something, you first need the right skill to be able to even start working towards the achievement. However, once you have it, you still need to use and apply the skill for a long time in order to actually get there. With a certain amount (or lack) of talent, your starting points for those two “movements” then become: Talent x Effort = Skill. Skill x Effort = Achievement. Your first bit of talent, combined with effort increases your skill level. Your increasing skill, multiplied by effort, leads to achievement. That means effort counts twice. Once for skill and once for achievement. But that doesn’t mean it’s twice as important. If you substitute the skill equation into the achievement equation, you end up with: Talent x Effort x Effort = Achievement, which means that Talent x Effort² = Achievement. Your effort is exponentially more important than…