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 college graduation ceremonies, speakers like Will Shortz and Jeff Bezos often say things like, “follow your passion,” as do the high-grit people Duckworth has interviewed. The British journalist Hester Lacey, who interviews “mega successful” people for the Financial Times, also constantly hears versions of “I love what I do.” In contrast, when Duckworth was growing up, her father encouraged her to choose a prestigious, stable career—not to do what she loved. In fact, her father became a chemist for practical reasons, but he ended up loving his job.
Duckworth opens this chapter with a dilemma that young people face everywhere: should they choose an unstable career that they love or a stable one that they don’t? This choice is so common that both sides of it—the commencement speakers’ advice and Duckworth’s father’s—have essentially become clichés. Ordinarily, this dilemma involves choosing between an interesting life and a stable one—but Duckworth views this question from a slightly different angle. Instead, she wants to know whether people are more likely to develop grit and become “mega successful” if they choose passion or practicality.
Themes
Which is better, Duckworth asks: choosing a practical job or following one’s interests? After aggregating hundreds of studies, psychologists have reached an answer: people who choose jobs related to their interests are happier and higher-performing. However, many people don’t have the luxury of doing so. Polling finds that less than a third of American adults—and only 13 percent of adults internationally—are actually engaged at work. This shows that most people “miss the mark” and don’t find jobs they love. But this doesn’t disprove the importance of following one’s passion.
To readers who associate grit with practicality and hard work, Duckworth’s conclusion that people should follow their passions might come as a surprise. Yet, while the science on this question is very clear, the majority of people still don’t follow it. In the rest of this chapter, Duckworth will investigate why. For instance, as she hints at here, following one’s passion can be risky—after all, the research she cites didn’t ask whether people tried to follow their passions, but only whether they actually succeeded in finding work in a related field. Thus, the apparent advantage of following one’s passion doesn’t account for the risk of trying, failing, and ending up in another, potentially worse field. In other words, successfully following one’s passion is easier said than done, though it’s quite advantageous when it ends up working out.
Themes
However, many people simply don’t have a passion to follow yet. They need to foster one. The “grit paragons” Duckworth interviews don’t generally find their passion in a single flash of insight—like in the movie Julie & Julia, which shows Julia Child taking a bite of fish and suddenly falling in love with French food. Instead, Duckworth’s subjects generally “spent years exploring several different interests.” Swimmer Rowdy Gaines tried several different sports first, and chef Marc Vetri originally wanted to be a musician. In fact, Julia Child didn’t really decide to become a chef when she tried that delicious fish—instead, she started exploring other aspects of French cooking. For her whole childhood, she wanted to be a novelist.
Duckworth dispels the common myth that passion is something that happens to people, captivating them in a way they can’t control. Instead, she explains, passion is something that people build over time. It’s a process of discovery, not an instant moment of knowledge. In fact, Duckworth’s argument about passion is remarkably similar to her point about genius: most people mistake the result of a long, painstaking process for a person’s inherent qualities. (For instance, people might assume that Rowdy Gaines is a born swimmer rather than acknowledging that he has spent decades developing his interest and honing his skills.) This common mistake teaches people that passion and talent are outside of their control, despite the fact that this isn’t really the case.
Themes
Duckworth quotes a Reddit post from a 30-something who says they have no idea what direction to take their career. She mentions that many of her undergraduate students feel the same way. Psychologist Barry Schwartz, who has been teaching for 45 years, told Duckworth that many young people unrealistically wish for a career that’s perfect in every way, and that they fall in love with instantly. In reality, no career is perfect, and people often have to try new things for some time before they become interesting. This is similar to how people tend to desire a perfect romantic partner, when they should really start by finding good-enough potential matches.
The Reddit poster and Duckworth’s students think in terms of Julie & Julia: they assume that the right passion and perfect career direction will materialize out of thin air. But in reality, they have to actively create a passion and career direction over time. This is why Duckworth compares passion to romance: while love at first sight is an appealing idea, it’s naïve and impractical. In reality, people build love over time, by developing successful relationships through their own effort. Similarly, people also tend to idealize grit itself—they assume that gritty people always know and achieve exactly what they want. But in reality, it’s just the opposite: gritty people constantly cope with setbacks, confusion, and imperfection. Just like everyone else, they start out not knowing about their passions—but unlike others, gritty people work hard to develop them.
Themes
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While psychologists can’t say why certain people become interested in certain subjects, they do know that passion follows three stages: initial discovery, a long period of development, and then life-long deepening. Discovery, which almost never starts before middle school, is a gradual, messy process. It doesn’t depend on introspection, but rather on experimenting and interacting with the world. And people usually don’t even realize when they’ve started to discover a new interest.
Psychologists’ three-stage model shows that, far from being instantaneous, the process of building passion is actually endless—it continues throughout people’s entire lives. Of course, as with so many of the other common assumptions that Duckworth disproves through her research, this is actually cause for optimism: it shows that people ultimately have control over whether they cultivate a passion, and that it is never too late to do so.
Themes
Next, development is an even longer process. It depends on repeatedly encountering the new interest over the course of years. Other people can help support the development of interests by providing information and positive feedback. For instance, Marc Vetri developed his interest in food by cooking with his Sicilian grandmother, washing dishes in a restaurant, and meeting numerous people in the restaurant world.
Even though a single encounter can spark an enduring interest in an area, it simply isn’t enough to generate enduring passion. Marc Vetri’s experience shows how repeated exposure is key. This shows that, while passion partially depends on influences that people control, it also largely depends on ones that they don’t—like their environment and the people around them. And the importance of role models shows how people can help others develop passion and grit—as well as how both can spread throughout a broader society or culture.
Themes
Parents frequently forget that their children have to be interested in what they do in order to work hard at it. While most people don’t work hard at what they love, they tend to work even less at what they don’t love. Duckworth concludes that “before hard work comes play.” People have to have fun as beginners, trying out new interests, before they can hope to pursue serious goals and become experts. Psychologist Benjamin Bloom says that skills develop in three periods. In “the early years,” people require supportive mentors and autonomy in order to develop their skills. Young people who rush out of this phase are generally less successful in the long term. (Duckworth will discuss Bloom’s concepts of “middle years” and “later years” in other chapters.)
The parents that Duckworth describes here make the same mistake as the young entrepreneur she mentioned at the beginning of Chapter Four: they forget that passion is just as important to grit as perseverance. In Duckworth’s estimation, it’s better for people to flounder as adolescents but discover and eventually apply themselves to a passion, than for them to learn the value of hard work but never figure out what genuinely interests them. Clearly, parents can make or break these tendencies, which is why Duckworth advises them to prioritize the long term over the short term if they want to raise innovative high achievers (rather than just respectable but mediocre professionals). Specifically, they should support their kids and give them space to develop gradually, rather than pressuring them to immediately succeed in the short term.
Themes
As case studies, Duckworth turns to the commencement speakers she mentioned, New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Shortz’s mother, a writer who loved crosswords, bought him endless puzzle books and taught him how to make and sell puzzles. Similarly, Bezos’s young mother supported his wild inventions—like the alarm he built in middle school, which went off whenever his siblings entered his room. She even supported him when he started skipping high school to do research with a professor.
Shortz and Bezos’s mothers embody Duckworth’s advice for parents: they both gave their sons sufficient autonomy to develop their own interests, then supported their sons’ interests while keeping them accountable for their actions. In particular, they recognized that academic achievement isn’t the only measure of potential or success, and they served as role models to show their sons that unconventional paths to success are possible.
Themes
High-grit people tend to change careers fewer times. For instance, Jane Golden has directed Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program for over 30 years. While many people get bored and move on to new projects every few years, gritty people find ways to deepen their interests over time. For instance, Golden used to be a painter, but she learned to see the Mural Arts Program as a new creative endeavor that would let her engage with art and her community.
Gritty people tend to identify their interests and seek out work that fulfills and deepens them. Thus, they have little need to switch career paths. Jane Golden’s long-term commitment to the Mural Arts Program embodies this: she never gets bored of her job because it fits her passion. Her story again demonstrates that grit is more about long-term commitment to a particular passion than intense short-term interest in a given area.
Themes
The psychologist Paul Silva has pointed out that babies learn about the world by seeking out novelty. While lots of people pursue novelty by constantly exploring new interests, high-grit people find novelty in the nuances within their field. For instance, art experts learn to appreciate minor details that most viewers would never notice.
Silva’s research shows that people have a constant need for novelty and change, but also that they can fulfill this need in multiple ways. For instance, Jane Golden shows how gritty people deepen their interests instead of distracting themselves with new ones: she prefers to learn more about art and activism than pursue entirely new projects.
Themes
People who haven’t yet fostered their passion must start with the discovery phase. They should ask themselves what they enjoy and care about, then start experimenting. Meanwhile, people who have already discovered their interests ought to develop them. They should try to continually engage with their interests, ask lots of questions, and look for peers and mentors who share those interests. Finally, people who have already developed their interests ought to deepen them. If possible, they should look for novelty within their field, not outside of it.
Duckworth ends by translating her analysis of psychology research on passion into concrete advice for people at different stages in their lives and careers. Of course, she reiterates that people can start discovering their passion at any point in life—but they should expect a long process of discovery rather than assuming their passion will develop instantaneously. Even though people tend to associate passion with strong determination, open-mindedness and flexibility are actually more important in the early stages.
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