Grit: The power of passion and perseverance | Angela Lee Duckworth

0:02You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu, and today's episode of TED Talks Daily is presented by Walmart Business. Think about the most successful person you know. Chances are, when you picture what got them there, talent often comes to mind. Maybe ambition, maybe luck. But psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth spent years studying students, military cadets, and salespeople, and she kept finding the same thing. The quality that predicted who made it wasn't IQ. It wasn't social skills. It wasn't family income. It was grit.

0:43Angela Lee Duckworth: Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years. In her now iconic talk from 2013, Angela shares why this idea, that sustained effort, might matter more than raw talent, is actually quite simple, and yet why most of our systems for identifying and rewarding potential are built around opposite assumptions. To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows about building it. Angela initially left a career in management consulting to teach seventh grade math in New York City public schools.

1:31What she observed there sent her back to school to study psychology, and she eventually reshaped how researchers think about achievement. Angela argues that if we want to help kids and ourselves stick with it through the hard things, we have to get serious about figuring out how grit is really built. And she offers the most promising lead she has found so far. It's coming up.

2:02And now, our TED Talk of the day.

2:04Angela Lee Duckworth: When I was 27 years old, I left a very demanding job in management consulting for a job that was even more demanding, teaching. I went to teach seventh graders math in the New York City public schools. And like any teacher, I made quizzes and tests, I gave out homework assignments. When the work came back, I calculated grades. What struck me was that IQ was not the only difference between my best and my worst students. Some of my strongest performers did not have stratospheric IQ scores. Some of my smartest kids weren't doing so well. And that got me thinking. The kinds of things you need to learn in seventh grade math, sure, they're hard.

2:53Angela Lee Duckworth: Ratios, decimals, the area of a parallelogram. But these concepts are not impossible. And I was firmly convinced that every one of my students could learn the material if they worked hard and long enough. After several more years of teaching, I came to 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. In education, the one thing we know how to measure best is IQ. But what if doing well in school and in life depends on much more than your ability to learn quickly and easily? So I left the classroom and I went to graduate school to become a psychologist.

3:45Angela Lee Duckworth: I started studying kids and adults in all kinds of super challenging settings. And in every study, my question was, who is successful here and why? My research team and I went to West Point Military Academy. We tried to predict which cadets would stay in military training and which would drop out. We went to the National Spelling Bee and tried to predict which children would advance farthest in competition. We studied rookie teachers working in really tough neighborhoods, asking which teachers are still going to be here in teaching by the end of the school year. And of those, who will be the most effective at improving learning outcomes for their students?

4:29Angela Lee Duckworth: We partnered with private companies asking, which of these salespeople is going to keep their jobs? And who's going to earn the most money? In all those very different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't IQ. It was grit. Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is 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.

5:14Angela Lee Duckworth: Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint. A few years ago, I started studying grit in the Chicago public schools. I asked thousands of high school juniors to take grit questionnaires, and then waited around more than a year to see who would graduate. Turns out that grittier kids were significantly more likely to graduate, even when I matched them on every characteristic I could measure. Things like family income, standardized achievement test scores, even how safe kids felt when they were at school. So it's not just at West Point or the National Spelling Bee that grit matters. It's also in school, especially for kids at risk for dropping out.

6:00Angela Lee Duckworth: To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows about building it. Every day, parents and teachers ask me, how do I build grit in kids? What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic? How do I keep them motivated for the long run? The honest answer is, I don't know. What I do know is that talent doesn't make you gritty. Our data show very clearly that there are many talented individuals who simply do not follow through on their commitments. In fact, in our data, grit is usually unrelated or even inversely related to measures of talent. So far, the best idea I've heard about building grit in kids is something called growth mindset.

6:51Angela Lee Duckworth: This is an idea developed at Stanford University by Carol Dweck, and it is the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed, that it can change with your effort. Dr. Dweck has shown that when kids read and learn about the brain and how it changes and grows in response to challenge, they're much more likely to persevere when they fail because they don't believe that failure is a permanent condition. So growth mindset is a great idea for building grit, but we need more. And that's where I'm going to end my remarks, because that's where we are. That's the work that stands before us. We need to take our best ideas, our strongest intuitions, and we need to test them.

7:38Angela Lee Duckworth: 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, we need to be gritty about getting our kids grittier. Thank you.

7:58That was Angela Lee Duckworth at TED Talks Education in 2013. This talk was originally published in May of that year. And thank you to our presenting sponsor today, Walmart Business. One of the ideas Angela Lee Duckworth shared is that success isn't built in a single moment. It's the result of showing up consistently, staying committed, and making steady progress over time, even when the work isn't always visible. That idea extends beyond individuals. It's true for organizations too. So whether you're running a small business, leading a nonprofit, managing a school, or supporting a growing team, there's important work happening behind the scenes every day.

8:40Ordering supplies, stocking shared spaces, purchasing equipment, and making sure your team has what they need may not be the most visible part of your mission, but it's often what makes the mission possible. That's where Walmart Business comes in. Built specifically for organizations of all sizes, Walmart Business helps simplify purchasing with an ever-expanding assortment of trusted brands at everyday low prices. You can shop online, in-store, or through the Walmart Business app with fast and easy fulfillment options designed to fit the way your organization works. And whether you're purchasing for a large team or just planning ahead, you can save time by ordering in bulk and save money with special business pricing on select items.

9:21Because when the everyday work becomes easier to manage, you have more time to focus on the bigger picture, serving your customers, supporting your community, growing your business, and bringing new ideas to life. To learn more and sign up for a free Walmart business account, visit business.walmart.com.

9:42If you're curious about Ted's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sungmarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening. you