Angela Duckworth Quotes & Sayings

In sum, what have we learned? First: grit, talent, and all other psychological traits relevant to success in life are influenced by genes and also by experience. Second: there's no single gene for grit, or indeed any other psychological trait. — Angela Duckworth

In other words, we want to believe that Mark Spitz was born to swim in a way that none of us were and that none of us could. We don't want to sit on the pool deck and watch him progress from amateur to expert. We prefer our excellence fully formed. We prefer mystery to mundanity. — Angela Duckworth

whatever your occupation, you can maneuver within your job description - adding, delegating, and customizing what you do to match your interests and values. — Angela Duckworth

Being a "promising beginner" is fun, but being an actual expert is infinitely more gratifying. — Angela Duckworth

Follow your passion was not the message I heard growing up. Instead, I was told that the practical realities of surviving "in the real world" were far more important than any person living a "sheltered life" such as my own could imagine. I was warned that overly idealistic dreams of "finding something I loved" could in fact be a breadcrumb trail into poverty and disappointment. — Angela Duckworth

Which is more important to success - talent or effort? Americans — Angela Duckworth

When you keep searching for ways to change your situation for the better, you stand a chance of finding them. When you stop searching, assuming they can't be found, you guarantee they won — Angela Duckworth

But if, instead, you define genius as working toward excellence, ceaselessly, with every element of your being - then, in fact, my dad is a genius, and so am I, and so is Coates, and, if you're willing, so are you. — Angela Duckworth

...grit grows as we figure out our life philosophy, learn to dust ourselves off after rejection and disappointment, and learn to tell the difference between low-level goals that should be abandoned quickly and higher-level goals that demand more tenacity. The maturation story is that we develop the capacity for long-term passion and perseverance as we get older. — Angela Duckworth

Thing Rule: You can quit. But you can't quit until the season is over, the tuition payment is up, or some other "natural" stopping point has arrived. You must, at least for the interval to which you've committed yourself, finish whatever you begin. In — Angela Duckworth

as much as talent counts, effort counts twice. — Angela Duckworth

The highly accomplished were paragons of perseverance. — Angela Duckworth

A calling is not some fully formed thing that you find," she tells advice seekers. "It's much more dynamic. Whatever you do - whether you're a janitor or the CEO - you can continually look at what you do and ask how it connects to other people, how it connects to the bigger picture, how it can be an expression of your deepest values. — Angela Duckworth

As soon as possible, experts hungrily seek feedback on how they did. Necessarily, much of that feedback is negative. This means that experts are more interested in what they did wrong - so they can fix it - than what they did right. The active processing of this feedback is as essential as its immediacy. — Angela Duckworth

figure out when and where you're most comfortable doing deliberate practice. Once you've made your selection, do deliberate practice then and there every day. Why? Because routines are a godsend when it comes to doing something hard. A — Angela Duckworth

Well okay, that didn't go so well, but I guess I will just carry on.' — Angela Duckworth

Failure is not a permanent condition. — Angela Duckworth

Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn't. With — Angela Duckworth

most dazzling human achievements are, in fact, the aggregate of countless individual elements, each of which is, in a sense, ordinary. — Angela Duckworth

Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another. — Angela Duckworth

Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare. — Angela Duckworth

Whether you think you can, or think you can't - you're right. — Angela Duckworth

At its core, the idea of purpose is the idea that what we do matters to people other than ourselves. — Angela Duckworth

A girl who is told repeatedly that she's no genius ends up winning an award for being one. The — Angela Duckworth

Nobody wants to show you the hours and hours of becoming. They'd rather show the highlight of what they've become. — Angela Duckworth

I won't just have a job; I'll have a calling. I'll challenge myself every day. When I get knocked down, I'll get back up. I may not be the smartest person in the room, but I'll strive to be the grittiest. — Angela Duckworth

I learned a lesson I'd never forget. The lesson was that, when you have setbacks and failures, you can't overreact to them. — Angela Duckworth

It soon became clear that doing one thing better and better might be more satisfying than staying an amateur at many different things: — Angela Duckworth

I have a feeling tomorrow will be better is different from I resolve to make tomorrow better. — Angela Duckworth

In sum, no matter the domain, the highly successful had a kind of ferocious determination that played out in two ways. First, these exemplars were unusually resilient and hardworking. Second, they knew in a very, very deep way what it was they wanted. They not only had determination, they had direction. — Angela Duckworth

No whining. No complaining. No excuses. — Angela Duckworth

You can't simply will yourself to like things, either. As Jeff Bezos has observed, 'One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. — Angela Duckworth

Yes, but the main thing is that greatness is doable. Greatness is many, many individual feats, and each of them is doable. — Angela Duckworth

callings have little to do with formal job descriptions. In fact, she believes that just — Angela Duckworth

...interests are not discovered through introspection. Instead, interests are triggered by interactions with the outside world. The process of interest discovery can be messy, serendipitous, and inefficient. This is because you can't really predict with certainty what will capture your attention and what won't...Without experimenting, you can't figure out which interests will stick, and which won't. — Angela Duckworth

Stop reading so much and go think. — Angela Duckworth

Staying on the treadmill is one thing, and I do think it's related to staying true to our commitments even when we're not comfortable. But getting back on the treadmill the next day, eager to try again, is in my view even more reflective of grit. Because when you don't come back the next day - when you permanently turn your back on a commitment - your effort plummets to zero. As a consequence, your skills stop improving, and at the same time, you stop producing anything with whatever skills you have. — Angela Duckworth