Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Grit, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Passion, Perseverance, and Success
Developing Grit
Psychology and Human Development
Grit and Society
Summary
Analysis
At age 27, Duckworth quit her management consulting job to become a seventh-grade math teacher at a school facing many challenges on the Lower East Side of New York City. Some of her students were obviously talented: they quickly understood new concepts and solved sample problems in class. But many of these talented students earned poor grades. In contrast, less talented but more dedicated students, who kept trying when they didn’t understand something, earned the highest grades. This surprised Duckworth, who had been “distracted by talent.” Realizing that effort mattered much more, she started wondering how to foster it in the classroom. She also noticed that even her worst students were incredibly knowledgeable about the things that actually interested them (like music and baseball).
Duckworth’s observations as a teacher foreshadowed her conclusions as a psychologist: effort trumps talent. Yet she emphasizes how she—like her father and, she will argue, the vast majority of the public—was unfairly biased toward defining success in terms of talent. This bias made her a less effective educator: she missed many crucial opportunities to help her students succeed because she underestimated the importance of teaching them grit and hard work. When she points out that even her least successful students were knowledgeable about something, she suggests that teachers often erroneously see students as untalented in general when, really, they’re just talented at something besides school. This also foreshadows Duckworth’s key point that gritty people aren’t interested in or dedicated to everything—in fact, it’s quite common for schoolwork to be their lowest priority. Rather, gritty people are those who know how to develop, deepen, and pursue a particular field about which they’re passionate.
Themes
After a year in New York, Duckworth moved to San Francisco and started teaching at the academically selective Lowell High School. Most Lowell students were more successful than her previous students simply because of their work ethic, not their intelligence. Duckworth taught a freshman algebra class for students who scored low on the school’s placement test. One of her hardest-working students was David Luong, who never spoke up in class but always turned in perfect work. Duckworth helped him switch to a more advanced class, where he struggled at first but kept working to improve. He went on to succeed in high school math, study engineering and economics in college, and earn a PhD at UCLA. Today, Luong is a literal rocket scientist.
David Luong exemplifies how people who work hard can succeed in the long term even if they don’t stand out for their extraordinary talents. Indeed, by working hard, he became more skilled at math than his arguably more talented peers. But his placement in the low-level math class also shows how schools, like the people who teach in them, are systematically biased towards talent instead of effort. While David managed to switch classes, it’s easy to see how many students wouldn’t be so lucky and would miss out on opportunities simply because they’re gritty but not talented.
Themes
Duckworth decided to become a psychologist to study her hunch that effort matters more than intelligence. In graduate school, she learned about earlier psychologists like Francis Galton, who studied the biographies of exceptional people and concluded that “ability,” “zeal,” and “the capacity for hard labor” are the keys to success. But Galton’s cousin, Charles Darwin, disagreed: he didn’t think that ability was very important at all. In fact, Darwin didn’t view himself as unusually intelligent—instead, he succeeded because he collected data meticulously and stuck with difficult problems for a long time.
As Duckworth began to develop the foundational ideas for Grit during her time as a teacher and consultant, she recognized that psychology’s experimental methods were the key to actually testing her ideas. She also emphasizes that her approach to achievement isn’t new: it has a long history in psychology, and many prominent figures, like Darwin, have advocated for the importance of grit (just by another name).
Themes
Later, American psychologist William James argued that most people fall far short of their potential because they don’t use all of their talents and resources. If this is true, Duckworth asks, why do people care so much about talent in the first place? National surveys show that Americans view effort as far more important than intelligence.
James’s point helps explain why Duckworth prioritizes grit over talent: people’s potential is useless if they never actually realize it. Valuing talent over effort is like caring about potential without even striving for actual achievement. Unfortunately, the surveys that Duckworth cites suggest that the majority of people think this way.
Themes
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Meanwhile, the psychologist Chia-Jung Tsay has found that while music experts know that effort is more important than talent, they’re still biased toward talent. She gave these experts two recordings from the same pianist but told them that one was a naturally talented performer and the other was a hard-working “striver.” The experts thought the “natural” would have a more successful career. In another experiment, Tsay found that people were more likely to endorse a business plan when they thought the entrepreneur was a “natural,” as opposed to a “striver.” Her research shows that people have a hidden “naturalness bias” towards talent and against hard work.
Tsay’s research highlights a particularly extreme example of the paradox that Duckworth has just pointed out. Specifically, even experts who understand that effort supersedes talent still show an unconscious bias toward valuing talent. Whether this bias is based in nature or culture, fighting it—as scholars like Duckworth and Tsay hope to do—is clearly a significant challenge. Making people value effort instead of talent means fundamentally changing the culture of entire societies.
Themes
Chia-Jung Tsay’s life also represents the difference between naturals and strivers. She has multiple degrees from Harvard, two PhDs, and a successful piano performance career. Many people might assume she’s innately talented. But actually, she chalks her music success up to practice and effort. She learned the piano and continues to play it not because of outside pressure, but because she loves it.
Duckworth’s analysis of Tsay’s life shows how the difference between talent- and effort-based explanations is in the eye of the beholder. In other words, people can interpret the same story as evidence of genius or evidence of hard work, depending on their personal biases. While this helps explain the popular cultural obsession with genius, it also shows that people can overcome this obsession by teaching people to habitually attribute success to grit and hard work.
Themes
McKinsey, the consulting firm where Duckworth once worked, published a famous report called The War for Talent. It argued that companies’ success depends on attracting inherently talented people. In fact, McKinsey is obsessed with finding “bright” people. Duckworth’s McKinsey interview consisted of absurd brain teasers, like estimating the number of tennis balls manufactured in the US. It even sorts candidates by SAT scores. Duckworth and her colleagues knew absolutely nothing about business when they started. And yet they were supposed to advise multibillion-dollar companies on management. These companies hire McKinsey in large part because their employees are supposedly the “best and brightest.”
McKinsey’s view of achievement is very similar to Duckworth’s father’s: both think that talent almost exclusively determines whether people succeed or fail. Duckworth points out that this assumption pervades McKinsey’s entire culture, from its publications to its interview process. The company places emphasis on SAT scores and a candidate’s ability to solve brain teasers, thinking that this is a way to measure people’s inherent talent. In other words, McKinsey believes that people who can quickly do mental math will make better business decisions than experienced businesspeople who are somewhat slower at mental math. It also assumes that the business challenges its clients face are the kind of problems that should be solved through individual analytic reasoning alone. But Duckworth’s experience working there shows how absurd, ineffective, and unrealistic this theory of talent truly is. She clearly saw that experience would help her run multinational companies better than anything else.
Themes
Prominent journalists have heavily criticized McKinsey’s focus on talent. While McKinsey promotes firing “untalented” employees and paying “talented” ones far more than their peers, in reality, companies tend to perform badly once they start doing so. Some, like Enron, have completely collapsed. When employees fight to show off their talent, Duckworth argues, the most smug, dishonest, and selfish ones tend to get promoted, and companies start to prioritize short-term profits over long-term success. It’s little surprise that Enron’s CEO, who insisted on firing 15 percent of the company’s employees every year, was a former McKinsey consultant.
Duckworth suggests that, because inherent “talent” in the business world is largely a mirage, McKinsey’s efforts to identify it often end up rewarding the people most willing to boast about their own perceived talents. (It doesn’t help that the executives selecting new “talent” tended to get their jobs through the same process.) In reality, Duckworth implies, companies should train their employees instead of constantly evaluating them. McKinsey’s disastrous effects on the companies it advises—and on society as a whole—show why the bias toward talent can be so dangerous. But its continued success as a consulting firm also shows that corporate leaders still tend to believe in the myth that talent leads to achievement, even if this belief works to their own detriment.
Themes
Talent is certainly a good thing, Duckworth writes, but focusing on it too much is risky because it leads people to neglect everything else. For instance, Scott Barry Kaufman, a successful research psychologist and Duckworth’s colleague, was labeled learning disabled in elementary school. But in high school, a teacher showed him that he could actually grow and improve, and he started taking on challenges. He became a star cellist, succeeded in his classes, and ended up graduating with honors from Carnegie Mellon University. Duckworth notes that she, too, initially scored too low on an IQ test for her school’s gifted and talented program. But these tests to measure talent are far from perfect.
Duckworth agrees that inherent talent does exist. She just thinks that its importance tends to get wildly overblown. Scott Barry Kaufman’s story shows how people can overcome a lack of inherent talent through moderate effort and a belief in their own capacity to grow. In fact, it only took a few years of serious effort for Kaufman to pull ahead of his supposedly more talented peers. His potential was vastly greater than he thought—and yet most of the people with more potential than him simply never fulfilled that potential.
Themes
