Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Dr. Angela Duckworth, born in 1970, has degrees in neurology from Harvard and Oxford, as well as a PhD in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Though her father repeatedly told her she was “no genius,” she won a MacArthur Fellowship, known as the “genius grant.” Along the way, she founded a tuition-free teaching program for inner-city kids, worked as a consultant at world-renowned McKinsey & Company, became a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, founded a second nonprofit that helps kids become more successful in school and beyond, and penned the best-selling book Grit. With its emphasis on hard work as the key to achievement, Grit has altered the conversation among experts in education, psychology, and business culture. Duckworth’s Grit Scale has influenced thinking on human achievement. Her life mission is to “[u]se psychological science to help kids thrive” (159).

Cognitive psychologist Anders Ericsson (1947-2020) found that people at elite levels of expertise get there after 10,000 hours of training, much of it “deliberate practice,” during which great effort is made to improve performance. This idea has become popular in the media and has influenced educators. Ericsson and Duckworth studied spelling bee contestants and found that the best ones focus on the