Overview:
Grit is the combination of passion and perseverance. Passion provides the direction for effort. Perseverance provides the ferocious determination. High performance is built on doing mundane acts over and over again for a very long time. Git is the ability to not giving up. To keep working at those skills even after setbacks. Talent and effort matter for achievements, but effort counts twice. Talent is how individuals learn to improve their skills. It takes effort to build those skills. But skills without effort leaves just skills. It takes effort to make use of the skills, to make them productive. Not just applying those skills, making those skills useful to other people. Interest in an endeavor usually starts self-oriented, but becomes oriented to being useful to others. Although there is a struggle to develop those skills, the rewards are well worth the effort. Putting in the effort and doing the tasks is satisfying when they are part of the general interest.

Developing skills and expertise takes a lot longer than normally assumed. Skills can be built by anyone over a vey long time, but not everyone is willing to go through what it takes to built those skills. Mythologizing natural talent allows individuals not build those skills because they are thought of as incapable of being built. Allows individuals to accept the status quo. To not feel a need to compete.

It is less about the intensity of effort, and more about the consistency over time. To consistently show up to do the tasks needed. To not give up when things are difficult. Most of the time, the practice is never seen. The hours of becoming do not make an appearance. What is usually seen is what has become. The final product is seen, not the mistake-ridden practice to get to the final product.

Satisfaction at a job depends on personal interest, and performance is better when what is done is of interest. Work and tasks can be the same, but different individuals can have their subjective experience be very different. Joy comes before understanding how it can benefit others. Purpose starts self-oriented, then self-disciplined practice, the becomes other-oriented. The sacrifices that an individual makes when they are in the becoming stage, is worth it because it benefits other people after.

Interests are found by interacting with the world. Discovering what captures attention and what does not. A calling and interest are developed, rather than magically appear. Gritty people tend to embody their goals. Goals that have underlying subgoals that help achieve the ultimate goal. Quitting is acceptable when the commitment is finished, and it does not serve the main goal.

Caveats?
As the book focuses on not giving up, it is biased in favor of not going up. Although reasons for quitting are provided, they are underdeveloped. There are a lot of sunk costs of sticking to what the individual thinks might be beneficial in the future, but ends up not being beneficial at all. Not giving up under certain conditions can turn the activity into an enormous waste of time and money.

Grit generally makes people better off and likely to succeed. The question then is what it means to succeed. Being on a relatively higher position to peers within an area is the success that is recognized in this book. This creates the bias that individuals highlighted in the book have all become successful, but there might have been many others who have been just as gritty, but did not succeed to the same level. ( )

Hmm, what to say about author Angela Duckworth's book "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance"...I think I can sum it up for myself at best as a three-lettered word: meh.
Who has grit and why, how do we get grit in our lives, and how can we raise/coach kids to have grit. These are the names of the chapters that make up the three parts to the book.
each section breaks down the exact same way: a statement of her hypothesis (which may take about a page or two), and then tens of pages of anecdote that supports her thoughts. Rinse and repeat.
Duckworth covers what grittiness is, is it just a stick-to-it attitude or is there more to it. Interest in your subject, deliberate practice, hope and belief, and more! Duckworth finishes with parenting for grit, if socio-economic status changes grit, and the Seattle Seahawks culture of grit (she seems to be a bit of a stan for Pete Carroll).
IN MY OPINION, nothing in here is very revelatory. She doesn't break any real new news...gritty people stick to it...gritty people have an interest in what they are doing...gritty people out last those without grit...gritty people put in more work...
what I did find interesting was her admission that the work is biased as she stated that "...I'm overlooking a whole population of grit paragons whose goals are purely selfish or, worse, directed at harming others." (p. 148) Well this throws her whole results right out the window as she admits that she only includes in her results the results of people that are pleasant to her. Not very scientific then is it and discolors everything she says that involves her research.
So if your research is iffy at best, and the rest of the book is anecdote to support your flawed research then I give this a big MEH for my thoughts on it. 2.5 stars and that is due to her ability to write well written, concise prose, which is not easy for everyone to do considering it is a work of non-fiction. ( )

"As much as talent counts, effort counts twice."

Professor and MacArthur Award winner Angela Duckworth has entered the "talent vs. effort" discussion with years of research showing that dedicated effort -- what she calls "grit"-- is far more important to success than any innate talent. While some agree (see books such as [b:Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else|4485966|Talent is Overrated What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else|Geoff Colvin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1440778775s/4485966.jpg|4642546], and [b:Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why|29434476|Helping Children Succeed What Works and Why|Paul Tough|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1459328081s/29434476.jpg|49700907], among others) critics have both questioned her research or dismissed it as nothing more than the sage old advice that's been around for ages: "Work hard and never give up."

I found this book to be very engaging and inspiring, not only for my own aspirations but also in thinking about the values and skills I hope to instill in my children. Duckworth explains her research in easy-to-understand terms, and gives plenty of real world anecdotes and examples. While I find myself more in the camp that thinks that this research is likely just the next step of the age-old "work hard" advice, for me this book still served as a motivating rallying call to keep pushing on to reach my personal and professional goals.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scriber for a galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. Note: while I was provided a galley I chose to listen to the audio version of the book, which was excellent. ( )

There are several books that try to unravel the science behind success. This book ties the findings of all the other research and coins a simple, easily understandable term "Grit." The notion that success is not necessarily a product of innate Talent has been already popularized by Geoff Colvin and Malcolm Gladwell in their excellent books. Effort and "deliberate practice" were the key findings in earlier research.

The author says success is a result of "interest" (read passion), "practice" (read deliberate practice), "purpose" (read connection-with-people or larger-than-life-goal), and "hope" (read growth mindset). A review of the key ingredients should confirm that this is an all encompassing book that brings all the aspects of the research on "success" to build a unified theory. The book has plenty of examples that illustrate each of the points. At several points, she also refers to earlier research done, consequently giving you an all rounded reading experience. ( )

Decent book on perseverance and focus. Focus on word grit annoyed me personally, along with focus on extremes in regards to grit with studies of high achievers. Life is about balance, which she quickly mentions in her conclusion, but dismisses. Having a balanced set of goals for life is important to happiness.
Somewhere between 3 and 4 stars. ( )