Grit

Grit

There is no substitute for hard work.

I have recently finished 'Grit' by Angela Duckworth, a particularly driven woman, I am not sure I would want to be part of her family if she puts all the principles of the book in practise all the time!  However as I am prone to procrastination and just down right laziness on times I took a lot from this book.

Her basic premise is that you don't get anything without hard work.  Seems obvious but its a little more involved than just throwing yourself at a project or idea.  The hard work consists of deliberate practise of something over a long period of time.

Angela, along with many other writers, does not think that talent, or genius, or gifted are terribly useful terms, for they suggest that someones ability has to do with genetic makeup rather than practise. This has several implications; when we consider ourselves not gifted, genius, etc we give ourselves an excuse for quiting.  In suggesting to children that they are talented rather than they work hard we give them a false sense of achievement. So Angela's theory is:

TALENT X EFFORT = SKILL

SKILL X EFFORT = ACHIEVEMENT

So there are no short cuts to excellence.

Effort counts twice, which is encouraging.  Once in getting to your goal, And again in building up the ability to keep going.  In other words effort build up grit.

Goals


 Warren Buffet, the self made billionaire suggest that wee write down 25 goals, then pick just 5 of them.  Our focus should be on those 5 and we should avoid the others as distractions.  I love to try lots of things but I can see that jack of all trades master of none is true for me.


Angela suggests we then break up these goals into one 'Ultimate Goal' and then make all other goals work towards this particular goal. I suppose an illustration of this is my daughter who wants to work in historic research, she first gained a good degree, and experience in the research and archiving world, she then found that in order to get to job she wanted she needed a Masters Degree.  To get a Masters she needed to work to pay for it.  So she took a job which paid relatively well and allowed her the time to complete her Masters.  So everything served the goal to get the job she wanted.

In order to do this we have to take a long term view.

Cox has proposed the following indicators for those who will stick to the plan and the hard work it involves.

1. The degree to which he works with distant objectives in view (as opposed to hand to mouth).  Active preparation for later life.  Working towards a definite goal.

2. Tendency not to abandon tasks from mere changeability.  Not sticking something fresh because of novelty, not looking for a change.

Goals Which Ones?

Its all very well pointing the way to reach your ultimate goal if you have one in mind, but what about those who have do not have purpose?  Or those who have not worked on a ultimate value list?  The following may offer some sort of help.

Four things help discover and promote work towards a goal;  interest, practise, purpose and hope.

Interest.

Very simply, what are your interests?  Is there a theme? Are you an outdoors person? are you spiritual? Do you love being with people?  What hobbies do you have? the list is endless.  Sit down and brain storm on a piece of paper, make a mind map, and have a look if there is a direction your interests go in.

The aim is to foster interest in yourself and in others.

Practise.

Commit to deliberate practise.  Make a time and place that you stick to, this is the hardest part for most people and certainly the hardest part for me.. I love new things and I want to explore them all.  I limit myself to learning one new thing a year, and I try to drop one thing as well.  In this way I sort out those things which are life enhancing rather than life limiting.

For practise to be effective it is better if you give your self definite targets to work towards. If its weight loss it is not enough to say I will lose 1lb a week, the deliberate practise come into planning how you will lose that pound, say eat less calories or exercise more.  Of course those decisions come with their own practise.  If I am going to exercise more, how, what and when, come into the equation.  Some use SMART targets.

Purpose.

Three Bricklayers were working on a building, the first one said 'I am laying bricks' the second 'I am building a church', the third 'I am building God's House'  All were building but the third had purpose.

We all tend to stick with things if they are intrinsically meaningful to us.

We tend to gain purpose from watching those we admire, and then in the first instance modelling ourselves on them until we make the jump into our own achievements.

Yeager:  "reflect on how your work can make a difference to a group or society"

Wrzeniewski: "Think about how in small but meaningful ways you can change your current work to enhance its connection to your core values.

Hope.

The only way I think hope works is if we have positive encouragement, either through a mentor or through our own reading.  Find those authors which encourage, work on finding the positive and ditching the cynical and the negative.