
The truth about grit - robg
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/08/02/the_truth_about_grit/?page=full
======
0xdefec8
Growing up, my best friend was always one of the smartest and successful kids
in the class. But he also had an annoying habit of going around making offhand
remarks about how he hadn't cracked a book until 10 minutes before the finals
and still aced it, etc...

Although I shouldn't have let it get to me, it definitely did since we were
always competitive. And it took quite a few years before I realized how stupid
it was to believe that he could possibly be relying on innate intelligence to
know things like obscure Gettysburg lieutenants or isotope neutron counts,
whatever.

Anyways, as it turns out, we became roommates after college and I finally got
to see the man behind the curtain. The kid's a workhorse! Sure he's still
brilliant, but I had no idea how intense his work ethic was. His job requires
all sorts of certification exams, and he would be locked in his room 10 hours
a day for weeks at a time just memorizing, memorizing, memorizing...

Anyways, I'm sure Einstein wouldn't have wanted people to know that he used
flashcards either :)

~~~
zmimon
Maybe not your friend, but there are people in this world who truly have
"photographic" memories. I had one such friend at university and it frustrated
me no end that we could go to a lecture and then he would go out that night
and do no study whatsoever while I would study hard, and he would show up the
next day with _much_ better recall than me. Not just important concepts but
any small detail about exactly what was on the board at the time ... he could
just read it off from the mental image in his mind with no effort at all.

~~~
biohacker42
I always wondered is there a downside to a mind like that.

------
ambulatorybird
Reminds me of a couple of anecdotes my father told me about his days as a
physics undergrad. The first was about a time when he would get somewhat
discouraged after studying for hours and making little progress. So at one
point he asked some of his really talented classmates (more talented than him)
how much they studied and how far they got. They all replied that after hours
of studying, they would maybe get through 3-4 pages of the textbook. It was
somewhat enlightening for him to learn that even the geniuses couldn't breeze
through the material like one might breeze through a dime-store novel.

The second anecdote was about the time my father was getting letters of
recommendation for grad school. He got the usual positive letters, each with a
couple of paragraphs praising his abilities and intelligence. My father then
asked one of his friends (a much more talented friend) if he could look at one
of _his_ letters. The friend's letter consisted of a single sentence which
contained the words "Nobel prize material". It was at this point that my
father gave up physics.

Anyhoo, I guess my point is that grit is of course important, but as other
commenters have noted, talent can't be dismissed either. We all have upper
bounds, which aren't always as high as we might like.

~~~
BrentRitterbeck
_They all replied that after hours of studying, they would maybe get through
3-4 pages of the textbook._

I think this may be the most important trait of those who succeed. Success
requires hard work. I don't know of any other way to success.

~~~
rfreytag
Originality is valuable.

And it takes consistent hard work and courage to be and think differently and
survive until its value is found.

------
jacquesm
This article touches on a favorite subject of mine, the over-reliance on IQ
tests as some meaningful metric of how someone will perform in a given job.

Smarts are good to have, but without hard work it's useless. Like a powertool
without a competent handler. As an employer I've found over the years that the
people that worked out best were not necessarily the ones that appeared to be
the smartest, but the ones that were willing to go the distance. In my circle
of entrepreneur friends the same pattern pops up.

In the book 'outliers' there is a whole chapter dedicated to the story related
in the article about the experiment with the gifted children, it's an
interesting read.

------
ivanyv
Why don't they teach us about this early on in life? Wait a second, my father
has been telling me this for years :D

Only after being hammered to death by life (and my father's gentle reminders)
I'm beginning to finally understand it.

I suppose one needs to understand/experience it our own way.

------
10ren
It's the Carol Dweck stuff again - always worthwhile.

It's more straightforward to apply this to a goal that has been defined by
others, such as a test, a sport etc. In product development, it's more
difficult, because one needs to define what the product is to do* - and to
redefine that when and if needed.

* You can have a problem-in-search-of-a-solution, or a solution-in-search-of-a-problem. The first is easiest: to make a product by setting out to solve a _problem_ \- problems them become a resource, a raw material. The other way is to come up with a fantastic idea - a _solution_ \- and then to go in search of a problem it solves (or one can just "throw it over the fence" and see if anyone works out a way to use it).

------
edw519
_Nobody is talented enough to not have to work hard, and that’s what grit
allows you to do._

I love this quote.

Reminds me of Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant. All 3 very
talented. And all 3 were always the last one out of the gym.

It also give me (and all the rest of us hope). Whenever I'm stuck on something
(and think I may be slipping in talent, perish the thought), I know that all I
have to do is keep at it until I figure it out.

Talent + Grit + Time = Results

The ratio of addends on the left doesn't matter. The sum does.

~~~
dmix
Constant Learning + Grit + Time = Results

~~~
justin_vanw
Not talent? Some people violently deny that people have any difference in
potential. I can't even formulate a reply, how do you argue with someone who
claims the sky is orange and never blue?

Talent is roughly the ability to learn and apply that learning. So you want
people to have 'constant learning', but ignore that they first have to be
capable of learning that material at all.

~~~
gaius
Talent definitely does matter. Michael Jordan trained like a madman it's true
- but _training_ didn't make him that tall. Genetic potential fully realized
(through effort over time) is that part of the equation.

~~~
sachinag
The reason Jordan will always be better than Kobe, according to Phil Jackson:
Jordan's hands are insanely large and allow him to do things later than Kobe
because he can grip the ball at any position.

~~~
kragen
Couldn't Kobe get surgery to fix that?

~~~
bkudria
Wouldn't that be cheating?

~~~
gaius
Apparently not:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/tennis/tennis-star-to-
und...](http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/tennis/tennis-star-to-undergo-
breast-reduction-1692707.html)

Surgery to improve sporting performance is OK but steroids are not. Weird,
huh?

------
quickpost
Or as Gladwell says: "Talent is the Desire to Practice."

------
astine
I've read this article before, but not on this website.

------
anatoly
Wow, a boston.com story about git? Sounds unlikely on the face of it.

Oh, wait.

