Develop Your Grit in a Crisis

0:00Hey friends, Olivia from OLLI. Between new routines and the ultimate group project known as parenting, you need science-backed solutions that work with your life. That's where OLLI comes in. Start your mornings off right with Maltese made to support nutrition and immune health. Choose from our lineup of gut-supporting probiotics, and we've got occasional sleep support to help the whole fam chase their big dreams. Head back to class with the number one gummy supplement brand. Stock up on OLLI.com today. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

0:30When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

1:10Hi, I am Adi Ignatius, Editor-in-Chief of Harvard Business Review, and welcome to HBR Quarantine. This is Episode 2 of our show, which streams live on LinkedIn each Monday at 12 noon Eastern Standard Time and is then available on HBR's LinkedIn page and on our YouTube channel. My co-host on the show is Josh Macht, who is my longtime friend and colleague who heads product innovation at Harvard Business Publishing. We created this show to connect with the millions of you who are stuck at home. We try to tee up questions about work, about resilience, and about what's next in the world of business as we continue to confront the global COVID-19 pandemic.

1:49So this is week eight in working from home for the two of us. We have a guest today who we'll go to in a second, Angela Duckworth, who is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the bestselling book, Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance. But before we go to Angela, oh, and by the way, we're going to interview her. We're also going to give anyone who's watching a chance to ask questions as well. So put your questions in the comment box. We'll try to get to as many as possible. But Josh, before we do that, I want to ask you, week eight, how resilient are you feeling, to be honest?

2:25Well, just to say, I've always viewed you as the only extrovert in our company, so I was particularly worried that you would be the first one to crack out there. I don't know that I've cracked. I mean, I'm really looking forward to today's conversation, for sure. Last week was feeling the slog. And then, of course, here in New England, at least, the weather started to change, Adi, and it just, I mean, sort of amazing and a little scary. I saw on Instagram that someone said that Americans have grown bored with COVID, so it's over. And that kind of scared me. Going out, you really saw a lot of people.

2:59But that aside, there's definitely something about the weather that's helped. So I was feeling it last week. I don't know. Where's your mood right now? Yeah, I mean, you know, I feel like my life is sort of a cycle of sleep and then waking. And I know that's sort of the normal cycle of life, but there's something that seems tyrannical in that rhythm right now, I guess, because it's just thing after thing after thing. I did play tennis the other day and I wore a surgical glove on my left hand. And it made me think of my uncle, who was a surgeon out in California and also a tennis player. And I'd always imagined him as a kid wearing his scrubs and his surgeon's gloves.

3:36So so trying to do a little bit to not get so crazy. The tennis helps. I played a little bit of tennis this weekend with my daughter, and that felt like a little, almost normal, a little bit. Well, and I have to say, you know, the episode one, I thought went well. Judging from the response of my family members and your family members, I think our fake TV show was actually a big hit. I know. I think my family members, I don't know. I think they made all the positive comments for sure. But you know what, Adi, I have to ask you because they have asked me and a lot of people have asked, what is the deal with the wallpaper behind you?

4:13The people who don't know. So, okay, a little story. We were, remember when everybody was buying toilet paper and paper towels? We were late. And the only thing that was available at that point was wallpaper. So we put it everywhere. It's on our walls. It's in our bathroom. Two of our kids are wrapped up in it. The dog, of course. so no the wallpaper you know so i'm dining out on the fact that hbr interviewed tori birch recently and i had the wallpaper in the background and she stopped and said you know that's really good wallpaper so no oh no yeah now you're insufferable that's not i'm insufferable about my wallpaper yeah that's not okay all right so so we're going to be talking about resilience today and perseverance and grit and so we're gonna we're gonna show you our weekly tiktok clip Hey friends, Olivia from Oli.

5:01Between new routines and the ultimate group project known as parenting, you need science-backed solutions that work with your life. That's where Oli comes in. Start your mornings off right with Maltese made to support nutrition and immune health. Choose from our lineup of gut-supporting probiotics, and we've got occasional sleep support to help the whole fam chase their big dreams. Head back to class with the number one gummy supplement brand. Stock up on Ollie.com today. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

5:30When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast. That's indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. We'll maybe get at the idea of the challenge of trying to stay resilient while working from home.

6:06Engineer Dave, roll that clip.

6:17So that is HBR has a TikTok page, has a TikTok account. That's our own Paige Cohen, who is trying to show how she's trying to make it through her week eight. I had to look around and see when that dog yipping. I had to see my dog. I had like poster masks. I was like, is that my dog? Thankfully, it wasn't. So week eight, you haven't eaten the dog. That's good. You haven't cracked. Yeah. No, I haven't. I'm showing grit and determination. All right. So let's bring in our guest. So as I said, our guest today is Angela Duckworth. She's a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, author of the book Grit, the Power of Passion and Perseverance.

7:01It's a hugely successful book. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies. She has a TED Talk that's been viewed 20 million times. So let's just jump right in. Angela, thank you for being here. And I guess my first question is, how are you holding up personally? And are you as gritty as you thought you were?

7:18Angela Duckworth:Thank you for having me. I'm holding up okay. You know, my lifestyle hasn't changed all that much, honestly. I mean, I'm used to rolling around in my pajamas slash yoga wear slash athleisure and kind of like reading all day, taking Zoom calls. That's me personally. Obviously, like the world is falling apart in pretty much every dimension. So that's not lost on me. but I can't say that I'm personally suffering as much as most people. That's good. That's really good. But, you know, it's, I, I'm curious, Angela, because there's no question that I think a lot of people, well, there's just a slew of mental health issues that are obviously coming up for folks that we, we read about.

7:58And I think we all feel, I'm curious from your point of view, you know, the whole notion of perseverance, which is core to your ideas. How are you rethinking that in light of, you know, what we're living through right now?

8:12Angela Duckworth:It's a timely question. I don't know that the current crisis makes me rethink things in a fundamental way. I think the psychology of resilience and, you know, how the body and mind deal with adversity, you know, the principles that, you know, not only myself, but lots of scientists have been working on for years, I think are, they're playing out the way we think they would. So when you experience an adversity challenge that's threatening, so not a good thing, but a bad thing that's new that could do you harm. You know, you have a kind of a response, which is partly your body. You know, we all feel stressed.

8:52Angela Duckworth:I mean, you can feel it, you know, your sleep is disrupted. You're, you know, in acute periods, it's like you can feel like sort of muscular tension, you know, your heart rate might be elevated. Your mind gets focused on threats. I mean, you keep thinking about them. That's actually, I think the thing to know, and maybe here's where psychological science can help, like, this is not a bad response to adversity. It's part of resilience is to actually have all of those reactions. I think what's important is, like, how do you, like, manage them? In a way, how do you optimize them? And also, how do you make sure that you learn something in all this?

9:32Angela Duckworth:I think that's the other big lesson is that like, if you don't learn something in this crisis, then you weren't paying attention. Yeah, for sure. It's exhausting to having all those emotions. It is exhausting, especially though. I think if you have this secondary response, which is, oh, my gosh, I shouldn't be having those emotions or like I don't want to feel these emotions. I think actually you double the work when you lay your upon the stress response, like a meta response, which is that. Hey friends, Olivia from OLLI. Between new routines and the ultimate group project known as parenting, you need science-backed solutions that work with your life.

10:08That's where OLLI comes in. Start your mornings off right with Maltese made to support nutrition and immune health. Choose from our lineup of gut-supporting probiotics, and we've got occasional sleep support to help the whole fam chase their big dreams. Head back to class with the number one gummy supplement brand. Stock up on OLLI.com today. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

10:36It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero?

10:57Angela Duckworth:This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. You're not supposed to have the stress response. You're supposed to have the stress. You are supposed to be stressed right now. If you're not stressed, you're not alive. So, I mean, your whole story is about resilience. I mean, your whole research is about resilience. I want to, I mean, this is a big moment. This isn't a sort of minor, you know, setback that a few of us are facing that we'll bounce back from. This is a kind of once every century sort of event. You think of world wars, you think of depressions, you think of pandemics, things that shape entire generations.

11:31So I guess based on your research and your understanding of human nature and our ability to bounce back, how is COVID-19 likely to shape the generation that's coming of age now in terms of their expectations and their resilience?

11:44Angela Duckworth:You know, I just finished teaching a class for undergraduates called Grit Lab, which I launched this semester, not knowing, by the way, of course, that we were going to be in the middle of a pandemic in the middle of my class. But I said to my own students, you're living through history. And there is an opportunity here. if you think about stories that you want to tell your grandchildren about the pandemic of 2020 and how you managed it, you know, you might tell a story that begins with like, well, at first I was just totally sideswiped. I, you know, couldn't get my life together. Like all my routines fell.

12:20Angela Duckworth:I was just, I wasn't myself. I'm not proud of that. But here's what I'm really proud of, which is how I responded and how I learned and grew through these weeks. And I think that's actually what Viktor Frankl, who of course wrote Man's Search for Meaning about his experience in concentration camps, said that this is one of the major ways that we achieve meaning in life is our response to adversity. And that turns this narrative into an opportunity to demonstrate and to develop character. That's interesting. So Angela, I wonder if you want to talk about or follow this woman who all of a sudden became a Twitter sensation because she basically went online and said, I've had enough.

13:06I'm not going to be homeschooling or teaching my first grader these math worksheets. And all of a sudden it erupts. Now, so she quits. She essentially, you know, it seems to be sort of saying not what you're saying. She says, I'm not doing it anymore. And the world applauds. Interesting, Koda ends up later that day announcing that she has a Guggenheim for a book on resilience. But I'm just curious, you know, what about that emotion of wait, no, no more? How do you fit that into the narrative here?

13:37Angela Duckworth:You know, when a working professional, in this case, you know, a very accomplished scientist says like, no, I am not going to be spending six hours a day sitting next to my first grader on video calls in distance learning, you could say that's a failure of resilience. I don't think it is. And I think to understand why some things look like there are failures, but they're not, you have to understand the nature of goals. You know, what a goal is, is nothing more and nothing less than a desired future state. Right. And these can be really specific, trivial goals. Like I have a goal of being on this video conversation because it's important to me to communicate a little bit about my science.

14:21Angela Duckworth:OK, when I said that goal, like it's it's a goal to be on this video conversation. And then I said, because it's important to me to communicate about this, like the psychology of resilience. that's a higher level goal. And human beings have goals that are nested in hierarchies. Like you can imagine visually a pyramid. And I don't know this scientist personally, but I imagine that there is a higher level goal that is more important than be on this video first grade class. Maybe the higher level goal is, you know, make sure my kid develops into a great person. And when you understand that people have hierarchies of goals, then you can...

15:00Angela Duckworth:Hey friends, Olivia from Oli. Between new routines and the ultimate group project known as parenting, you need science-backed solutions that work with your life. That's where Oli comes in. Start your mornings off right with Maltese made to support nutrition and immune health. Choose from our lineup of gut-supporting probiotics. And we've got occasional sleep support to help the whole fan chase their big dreams. Head back to class with the number one gummy supplement brand. Stock up on Oli.com today. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

15:31When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

16:00Angela Duckworth:understand that when they, you know, disengage or quit on a goal, it may be because there's a higher level goal that is better served by some alternative means. So maybe she's like letting her kid do something else that's better with their time. And maybe she has even higher level goals, like keep my family and my sanity intact. And anyway, I could discern a little bit of that in what I saw from this narrative on Twitter. And I think when we understand that goals are higher, higher goal, it also gives us permission to, to, to disengage from goals that are not serving our higher level purpose. Yeah.

16:34You can tell what you're saying a little bit liberating. And it sounds, it feels like that's what she tapped into. Everyone collectively wanted to say enough because let's focus on what really matters.

16:45Angela Duckworth:Exactly. And when you, when you, when you phrase like what really matters, you're, you're implicitly talking about the higher level goals, right? Like, so, so I completely agree with that. Yeah. Now, before I ask my next question, I want to remind any, the people who are reviewing that you can raise your own questions about grit and perseverance and anything else in the comment box. So, and if you just joined us, we are here with Angela Duckworth, who is the Character Lab CEO and the author of the bestselling book, Grit. But so Angela, so Josh and I went online and took your grit scale quiz. I scored a 3.3.

17:24Josh scored a 4.4. Yes. Is he 1.1 better than me?

17:29Angela Duckworth:Well, let me ask you a question, Adi. What were the items on the grit scale where you think that it kind of docked your score, that you didn't quite, quote unquote, do as grittily as Josh? Yeah, it was interesting. And so I took it right after that to see if it was easy to game. And I got a 5.0. Yes. So it turned out, yes, if you're, for some reason, want to game the grid scale. Please don't use this in, you know, HR. Go on. Yeah, do not use this. Yes. Well, you didn't want to beat me. Okay. So I did. I did actually technically beat Josh. And frankly, it was pretty gritty of me to go back and take it a second time.

18:04It is. It is. I commend you. True. I think I think it was I think I was acknowledging that, you know, that maybe I will sometimes change perspective. I think it was it was something like that that docked me those points that Josh, who was lying probably when he took the test, didn't really admit to.

18:24Angela Duckworth:So so I'll let you in on a little secret. It's not a secret, but but it may not be well known. And so I developed the grit scale in my first year, I think, of graduate school. And the questions on the grit scale that are about passion are, you know, the product of a first year graduate student. So so what I was really trying to get at was, you know, having some consistent higher level goal or focus that gives meaning and purpose to everything else you do. So, for example, OK, I'm a psychologist and I have experienced the entire pandemic as a psychologist. Just everything to me, I'm interpreting, trying to understand like what people are really motivated by, how our attention might be biased, et cetera.

19:04Angela Duckworth:And that is what I was trying to get at with the passion subscale. Not that you, you know, aren't flexible in your thinking, but more that you have some kind of through line to what interests you, to what you're committed to. So now understanding that, Adi, if that was the spirit of the questions, which I may not have worded the best way, do you feel like you have that kind of consistency of passion, that you love what you do and that in a way you can see the world through this lens that is somewhat consistent over time? Yeah, well, when I find it, you can't take me off it. You know, when I find something and I am devoted to it, you cannot take me off it.

19:46It just bothered me that there was some rating that Josh was 1.1. We don't have to spend forever on this, but I'll tell you. So, Adi and I have been playing tennis forever. And it's amazing. And we're pretty evenly matched. Hey, friends. Olivia from Oli. Between new routines and the ultimate group project known as parenting, you need science-backed solutions that work with your life. That's where Oli comes in. Start your mornings off right with Maltese made to support nutrition and immune health. Choose from our lineup of gut-supporting probiotics. And we've got occasional sleep support to help the whole fan chase their big dreams.

20:20Head back to class with the number one gummy supplement brand. Stock up on Oli.com today. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast.

20:53That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. We're competitive, as you can see, about everything. and when if he ever goes down by a game or two this guy has like a crazy determination like i can't it's just the will and you feel it so there's i'm going to term for it i call it grit