This is a comprehensive summary of the book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth.Covering the key ideas and proposing practical ways for achieving what’s mentioned in the text. Written by book fanatic and online librarian Ivaylo Durmonski. Members get full access.
The Book In Three Or More Sentences:
Talent has nothing to do with success. If you want results, you have to become a gritty person. What’s grit? A combination of unshakeable focus, long-term perseverance, and a never-give-up attitude. How to gain those? That’s the whole point of the book. Grit by Angela Duckworth is full of scientific studies and real-life examples from the lives of successful people who are at the very top of their field. All of those conducted to help you develop this life-changing personality trait called grit.
The Core Idea:
Humans default to laziness. In order to thrive, achieve academic excellence, become a world-class athlete, you need grit. Or in other words, to get comfortable with doing hard things. To be disciplined and to keep going even when things are falling apart.
Highlights:
- At some point, every task becomes at least a little boring. To keep going, you need enduring passion.
- Grit is a combination of passion and perseverance. You have to be passionate about what you’re doing and to keep going despite the difficulties that will surely come along.
- Understanding what you want to get out of life is crucial. Make sure you spend enough time figuring this out.
5 Key Lessons from Grit:
Lesson #1: Talent is Only Part of The Success Equation, You Also Need To Put A Lot of Effort
Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them.” Angela Duckworth
According to the author, to reach your goals you shouldn’t solely rely on talent. Talent, actually, can often misguide you and make you believe that you’re not good enough. That’s why people often abandon projects. “I’m not talented enough,” they say.
But talent is not the dominating factor when you’re trying to make something work, it’s effort.
Talent sounds sexy and a lot of people put it on a pedestal. They think that you need to be born with this gift in order to become a world-famous actor. But that’s not true. (Check my article on Talent vs Skill for more on this topic.)
Reaching greatness and being an Oscar-winning entertainer is a combination of the skills you have multiplied by the efforts you put in. The more you rely on the effort part, the more your skills will improve.
Eventually, if you do this for long enough, people will say you’re talented but you’ll know that’s not true. You were simply self-disciplined enough to get what you want from life.
Hey there, sorry to interrupt…
Since you’ve come this far, it seems that you are passionate about pursuing depth over distraction. I am too! And while what I’m about to say next probably won’t quite excite you, I have to say it…
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