The key to success? Grit - Angela Lee

Angela Lee Duckworth explained  that when she was 27 years old, she took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school.

After several years of teaching, she realized that IQ wasn't the only thing separating the successful students from those who struggled,  and came with the conclusion that what we need in education is a much better understanding of students and learning from a motivational perspective, from a psychological perspective. What if doing well in school and in life depends on much more than your ability to learn quickly and easily?

That's why she decided to graduate school to become a psychologist. She started studying kids and adults in all kinds of challenging settings, and in every study her question was, who is successful here and why? In her research,one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't neither social intelligence nor good looks and physical health, it wasn't IQ either . It was grit.

She defined grit as passion and perseverance for very long-term goals, sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.For her,the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know and how little science knows about building it. 

So far, the best idea she has heard about building grit in kids is something called "growth mindset", it's belief is that the ability to learn is not fixed, that it can change with your effort, so failure isn't a permanent condition.

Growth mindset is a great idea for building grit. However, Angela explains that we need more, and that's the work that stands before us. We need to measure whether we've been successful, and we have to be willing to fail, to be wrong, to start over again with lessons learned.
In other words, adults need to be gritty about getting their kids grittier.