Being a “promising beginner” is fun, but being an actual expert is infinitely more gratifying.
The separation of talent and skill,” Will Smith points out, “is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams, who want to do things. Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.
Talent counts, effort counts twice.
Gettleman. Fireworks erupt in a blaze of glory but quickly fizzle, leaving just wisps of smoke and a memory of what was once spectacular. What Jeff’s journey suggests instead is passion.
It is therefore imperative that you identify your work as both personally interesting and, at the same time, integrally connected to the well-being of others.
In very gritty people, most mid-level and low-level goals are, in some way or another, related to that ultimate goal. In contrast, a lack of grit can come from having less coherent goal structures.
Indeed, the calculated costs and benefits of passion and perseverance don’t always add up, at least in the short run. It’s often more “sensible” to give up and move on. It can be years or more before grit’s dividends pay off.
Outward Bound – so named for the moment a ship leaves harbor for the open seas – has been that challenging outdoor situations develop “tenacity in pursuit” and “undefeatable spirit.” In fact, across dozens of studies, the program has been shown to increase independence, confidence, assertiveness, and the belief that what happens in life is largely under your control. What’s more, these benefits tend to increase, rather than diminish, in the six months following participation in the program.
The focus on talent distracts us from something that is at least as important, and that is effort. As much as talent counts, effort counts twice.
For the beginner, novelty is anything that hasn’t been encountered before. For the expert, novelty is nuance.
You must zero in on your weaknesses, and you must do so over and over again, for hours a day, week after month after year. To be gritty is to resist complacency. “Whatever it takes, I want to improve!” is a refrain of all paragons of grit, no matter their particular interest, and no matter how excellent they already are.
How many of us start something new, full of excitement and good intentions, and then give up – permanently – when we encounter the first real obstacle, the first long plateau in progress?
We change when we need to. Necessity is the mother of adaptation.
It was this combination of passion and perseverance that made high achievers special. In a word, they had grit.
Grit has two components: passion and perseverance.
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.
So, why do we place such emphasis on talent? And why fixate on the extreme limits of what we might do when, in fact, most of us are at the very beginning of our journey, so far, far away from those outer bounds? And why do we assume that it is our talent, rather than our effort, that will decide where we end up in the very long run?
Without effort, your talent is nothing more than your unmet potential. Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t. With effort, talent becomes skill and, at the very same time, effort makes skill productive.
Second, they knew in a very, very deep way what it was they wanted. They not only had determination, they had direction.
Interest without purpose is nearly impossible to sustain for a lifetime.
Gritty people do more deliberate practice and experience more flow.