Something to readGetting ahead
Grit
A psychologist's book on the power of passion and perseverance
Why it’s worth your time
Sticking with one long-term goal through setbacks can matter as much as talent, or more, when the work is hard, Angela Duckworth argues in Grit. Read alongside its critics, it can prompt you to decide which of your goals has earned that kind of persistence.
How to decide which goals deserve your persistence
The book · About 6 hours of reading · Buy or borrow
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- Start with chapter 4.
It's where Duckworth sets out goals as a hierarchy, one top-level goal served by lower-level ones, and it includes a short version of her Grit Scale. Read the preface first if you want her story; the middle part of the book, on how she thinks grit grows, can come after.
- Write your goals as a ladder.
Put one top-level goal at the top, the one you'd keep even if every plan under it changed. Below it, list the three or four projects or habits you're using to get there now. Mark one you're holding onto out of habit more than because it still serves the top.
Good moments for this: when a long goal starts to feel like a slogafter a setback on something you care aboutat the start of a new year
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
Duckworth describes the top of the ladder as an ultimate concern, borrowing other researchers' term for a goal that gives meaning to almost everything you do. At work, that might be a kind of problem you want to solve, with your current role as one route to it. Being honest about whether the job still serves the goal can be harder than any amount of persistence.
What might make this harder
Leave the top blank and work from the bottom: list what you've kept coming back to over the past few years, at work and outside it. Duckworth's chapter on interest suggests passion tends to be found slowly, through trying things, so a blank top is a fine place to begin.
Questions people ask
What is Grit by Angela Duckworth about?
It's a 2016 book by a University of Pennsylvania psychologist arguing that sustained passion and perseverance for long-term goals help explain high achievement as much as talent does. She draws on her research with West Point cadets, National Spelling Bee finalists and teachers in tough schools, and on interviews with high achievers. The book has three parts: what grit is, how it grows from the inside, and how parents, activities and cultures can encourage it.
Should employers use the Grit Scale in hiring?
Duckworth says no. On her own site she writes that the scale is meant for research and self-reflection, that scores are easy to fake, and that it isn't appropriate for selecting employees.
What does effort counts twice mean?
It's the title of her third chapter. Duckworth argues that effort builds skill, and that effort again is what turns skill into achievement, so it shows up twice. She defines talent as how quickly your skill improves when you put in effort.
How do you develop grit?
Duckworth describes four things that help it grow: interest, practice, purpose and hope. Each gets its own chapter in the middle of the book.
What it says, and how it holds up
Grit in Duckworth's sense is narrower than the everyday word. It isn't how badly you want something this month, and it isn't toughing out whatever comes. It's holding one goal you care about for a very long time, through setbacks, while the plans underneath it change. The persistence she praises belongs at the top of your goals, with room to change course below. On her own site she says plainly that you can be too stubborn about lower-level goals and throw good money after bad.
She came to the idea as a teacher. Duckworth left a consulting job to teach seventh-grade math in New York and noticed that intelligence alone didn't explain which of her students thrived. She went on to study it as a psychologist and received a MacArthur fellowship. The book's preface, about her father telling her she was no genius, is free to read on her website.
One line of pushback since has been about measurement. Marcus Credé of Iowa State and two colleagues pooled the earlier grit research in a meta-analysis published in 2017. By the university's own news release about it, they covered 88 independent studies and nearly 67,000 people, found grit hard to tell apart from conscientiousness, and found no evidence that it's a good predictor of success; the release also reports Credé's view that a widely quoted West Point result had been misread. On her site, Duckworth's position is that grit still predicts reaching hard goals when conscientiousness and self-control are held constant. Stuti Shukla, reviewing the book in the Harvard Educational Review, raised a different gap: it says little about race, class or family income. Duckworth's site does say circumstances matter and that grit alone isn't enough; Shukla's point is that the book itself keeps its focus on the person.
Some problems at work aren't grit problems at all, by Duckworth's own line. She separates it from self-control: getting the taxes done before the deadline, or studying instead of scrolling, is about resisting a pull in the moment, not holding a goal for years. If what's going wrong is the next report or the phone beside your keyboard, habit and environment tools tend to fit better than a bigger goal. Katy Milkman's How to Change, which Duckworth introduces in a foreword, is a good next read for that kind of problem.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.