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Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Angela Duckworth
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What is Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance about?
In this groundbreaking New York Times bestseller, Angela Duckworth shows everyone who strives for success—whether a parent, student, educator, athlete, or businessman—that the secret to outstanding performance is not talent, but a unique blend of passion and perseverance, which she calls "grit.”
Key ideas of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Effort Counts Twice
Talent multiplied by effort builds skill, and skill multiplied by effort drives achievement, so consistent effort matters more than raw ability.
Passion as Long-Term Compass
Grit is not intense bursts of motivation but a stable, years-long commitment to a top-level goal that guides every daily decision.
Grit Can Be Grown
Interest, deliberate practice, purpose, and hope are four learnable assets that build grit across any environment or background.
Read an excerpt from the summary
You're No Genius
Angela Duckworth grew up listening to her father tell her she was no genius. He said it the way some fathers say pass the salt—casually, often, with the air of an obvious fact. She didn't qualify for the gifted program in third grade. She never learned piano or violin. Her parents were Chinese immigrants who didn't lecture anyone about hard work; they simply did it. Decades later, in 2016, she got a phone call. The MacArthur Foundation had named her a Fellow. The grant is informally called the genius grant. She read her finished book aloud, chapter by chapter, to her father, who has Parkinson's, and at the end he nodded and smiled.
That is where Grit begins, and it's the right place to start, because the book's central claim is that the people we call geniuses are usually mislabeled. What looks like a natural gift is almost always the visible tip of ten years of stubborn, unglamorous work. Duckworth's argument is that achievement is less about how brilliantly you start and more about whether you keep showing up. She calls the combination of long-haul passion and patient effort grit, and after twenty years studying it across classrooms, military barracks, sales floors, and Olympic pools, she's convinced it's the trait worth obsessing over.
This is a book about the gap between what we could become and what we actually become. William James named that gap in 1907 when he wrote that compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. James thought most people use a small fraction of their possible powers. Duckworth spent her career trying to figure out who closes that gap and how the rest of us can copy them.
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Continue in the appWho is it for?
- Anyone who wants to understand why talent alone rarely predicts long-term success.
- Anyone who feels stuck after an early setback and needs a framework for getting back on track.
- Anyone who manages, coaches, or parents young people and wants to build resilience rather than just reward ability.
- Anyone curious about the science of achievement and what actually separates high performers from the rest.
About the author: Angela Duckworth
Angela Duckworth is a psychologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studies self-control, grit, and the science of achievement. She is the founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit that supports research on character development in children.
She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2013, sometimes called the genius grant, and has advised the White House, the World Bank, and major sports organizations. Her TED talk on grit is one of the most-watched of all time.
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