Angela Duckworth: I believe kids should choose what they want to do, b...

If you're never able to tolerate a little bit of pain and discomfort, you'll never get better.

Angela Duckworth

better never you pain

As our knees and hips and eyesight deteriorate, we become more dependable, less impulsive, kinder, and less moody. Psychologists call this the maturity principle. My own life experience fits this principle to a T.

Angela Duckworth

my-own maturity experience life

Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.

Angela Duckworth

living grit marathon life

The focus on just thinking about standardized test scores as being synonymous with achievement for teenagers is ridiculous, right? There are so many things that kids care about, where they excel, where they try hard, where they learn important life lessons, that are not picked up by test scores.

Angela Duckworth

achievement focus life thinking

Nobody gets to be good at something without effort, no matter what your aptitude is.

Angela Duckworth

nobody good effort matter

I'm not a policy oriented person. I'm constrained to what I study. But educational policy has not yet taken adequate note of the whole child. Kids are not just their IQ or standardized test scores. It matters whether or not they show up, how hard they work.

Angela Duckworth

person child study work

Being gritty doesn't mean not showing pain or pretending everything is O.K. In fact, when you look at healthy and successful and giving people, they are extraordinarily meta-cognitive. They're able to say things like, 'Dude, I totally lost my temper this morning.' That ability to reflect on yourself is signature to grit.

Angela Duckworth

yourself you morning people

I think the very idea of character, of developing not just grit, but empathy and curiosity, emotional intelligence - you know, the things that I want my own daughters to develop - the idea that we're going to get there through rewards and punishments seems completely at odds with the idea of character itself.

Angela Duckworth

you intelligence empathy character

There's this really awesome theory of human motivation - that human beings all want three things. One is to be competent, one is to belong, and one is be free, as in to have choice: to not be told what to do but to choose what to do.

Angela Duckworth

choose free choice want

Grittier students are more likely to earn their diplomas; grittier teachers are more effective in the classroom. Grittier soldiers are more likely to complete their training, and grittier salespeople are more likely to keep their jobs. The more challenging the domain, the more grit seems to matter.

Angela Duckworth

soldiers teachers training matter

There are no shortcuts to true excellence.

Angela Duckworth

true shortcuts excellence

Everybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.

Angela Duckworth

matters how me effort

During all my undergrad years and in high school, I was involved in tutoring and public service. At Harvard, I spent over 35 hours a week doing service. I was a Big Sister, I worked for the homeless, the elderly; it was the epicenter of my focus.

Angela Duckworth

service sister focus school

One of the challenges of commencement speeches is that you have this older, wiser person who is accomplished talking to young, not-yet-so-wise, not-yet-accomplished adults or, in high school or middle school, even younger.

Angela Duckworth

you high-school challenges school

Grit, in a word, is stamina. But it's not just stamina in your effort. It's also stamina in your direction, stamina in your interests. If you are working on different things but all of them very hard, you're not really going to get anywhere. You'll never become an expert.

Angela Duckworth

direction never you effort

At various points, in big ways and small, we get knocked down. If we stay down, grit loses. If we get up, grit prevails.

Angela Duckworth

stay down small grit

Gritty people train at the edge of their comfort zone. They zero in on one narrow aspect of their performance and set a stretch goal to improve it.

Angela Duckworth

performance comfort-zone train people

One thing that's true of gritty people is they love what they do, and they keep loving what they do. So they're not just in love for a day or a week. People who are really gritty - they're still interested.

Angela Duckworth

loving day love people

There is a fluency and an ease with which true mastery and expertise always expresses itself, whether it be in writing, whether it be in a mathematical proof, whether it be in a dance that you see on stage, really in every domain. But I think the question is, you know, where does that fluency and mastery come from?

Angela Duckworth

true think you dance

When people think of the word 'drive,' they often think you have it or you don't, and that's where we're wrong. Drive is something that can be encouraged by a wonderful teacher, by a terrific classroom environment, by an awesome soccer team that you are on, and it can be squashed as well.

Angela Duckworth

drive you teacher people

I believe kids should choose what they want to do, because it's their life, but they have to choose something, and they can't quit in the middle unless there's a really good reason. There are going to be peaks and valleys. You don't want to let kids quit during a valley.