part0010

O n the afternoon of May 12, 2008, one of the deadliest known earthquakes of all time hit China’s Sichuan Province, killing over 69,000 people. Nine year old Lin Hao and 29 other second grade students were at school in the small town of Yingxiu when it struck. Although Lin Hao was one of the first students out of the collapsing school building, he ran back inside to save two of his classmates. Only nine of his classmates, including the two he saved, survived. After the crisis, still aching from the injuries he sustained from the falling rubble, he was asked why he risked his life to rescue other students. Lin Hao straightened his back and matter-of-factly replied, “I was the classroom monitor. It was my job to look after my classmates.”

Lin Hao’s strong commitment to fulfilling his obligations represents the hallmark of conscientiousness. People who are conscientious hold themselves to high standards. They figure out what they’re supposed to do, how they’re supposed to do it, and they get it done. Their strength is that you can count on them. They demonstrate the big difference between people who say they’re going to do something and people who actually do it. Some people have the ability—even the conscious intention —of doing something, yet when it comes to the point of action they lack the willingness to follow through on that intention.

This relationship between ability and willingness can be understood this way: Ability + Motivation + Opportunity = Performance.

Can do refers to the abilities you have (e.g., knowledge, skills, and expertise) that enable you to perform successfully and accomplish a goal if you choose to pursue it . You might say, “I could get high grades if I wanted to study hard” or “I could start a new business if I wanted to.”

Will do refers to the motivation that enables you to turn your knowledge and skills into actions that get desired results. It often involves maintaining sustained effort over time and working through challenges and hurdles. You might say, “Whatever it takes, I will graduate from college” or “Whatever it takes, I’m going to start this new business.”

Opportunity refers to the environmental opportunities and constraints that make it easier or harder for you to achieve your goals, regardless of whether you have the necessary skills and will. Someone who is born into a family with resources such as high income, educated parents, and a home in a safe neighborhood with high quality schools is going to have a better chance of achieving a high score on college admission tests than someone who is born into a family without those resources. Someone who works in a society that has laws or cultural norms (e.g., a glass ceiling) that prevent or make it harder for some people to take on particular jobs is going to have a harder time gaining relevant skills and opportunities that can help them achieve their goals. It doesn’t mean that it is always impossible for people who face these challenges to achieve their goals, but it can take more effort, support, determination, and cleverness to do so.

In this chapter, we’ll focus on the motivation that turns “I can do it” into “I will do it.” You will learn about two characteristics that researchers have found to be associated with behaviors that are particularly powerful in predicting success: Conscientiousness and grit.

Conscientiousness has been studied for over 35 years as one of the most significant and consistent predictors of academic and job performance. Conscientious people tend to get higher grades and graduate on time from high school and college; are more likely to achieve their work goals, get promoted, be paid more for their work, have higher quality work relationships, and more job satisfaction; and also tend to be happier, healthier, and longer-lived.

It’s pretty easy to spot conscientious people. They return their emails and phone calls promptly, finish their work on time, and double-check their work to ensure it meets high standards. They keep their calendars up to date so that they rarely forget appointments. They may set two alarms before they go to bed if they have an important appointment the next morning, just in case one alarm doesn’t work. They arrive at meetings early and prepared. They are ready with back-up plan B if plan A doesn’t work. They sweat the small stuff and they don’t cut corners. They look both ways before crossing the street, follow their doctors’ orders, and pay their parking tickets. Most others view conscientious people as trustworthy, responsible, and dependable. Few would accuse them of being lazy, irresponsible, unreliable, disorganized, or impulsive. No wonder conscientiousness is one of the most consistent predictors of achievement throughout life.

Although the issue is debated, some researchers believe that conscientiousness is a personality characteristic that is in part genetically “wired in” and relatively stable over time.[ 1 ] In this view, a conscientious child is likely to turn into a conscientious adult. That said, however, all researchers agree that conscientiousness can be learned. Research shows that people tend to get more conscientious as they get older, most likely because they’ve had the opportunity to interact with increasingly complex environments (e.g., school, work, home) and learn from the consequences of their decisions and behaviors, both personally (e.g., learning from good and bad relationships) and professionally (e.g., being laid off or promoted at work).[ 2 ]

We know from psychologist Carol Dweck’s research (discussed in detail in Chapter 2) that people who have growth mindsets and believe their intelligence and personality characteristics are changeable with effort are more likely to be successful than those who believe their personality characteristics are hard-wired at birth. The belief in the malleability of personality characteristics would apply to conscientiousness as well. After all, we are shaped not only by our genes, but also by our environments and family upbringing.

Frankly, although I’d generally be considered a conscientious person, I’m not sure if I’m “naturally” conscientious or whether it’s a consequence of my upbringing. While I was growing up, my parents were considered to be some of the strictest parents on the block. My mom used to say, “If you say you’re going to do something, then do it” and “If you’re going to do a job, then do it right.” She’d emphatically follow up with “no ifs, ands, or buts about it,” and there was an implicit “or else” in her pronouncements. When I worked as a waitress in our family luncheonette, the motto was, “If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean.” Even if there were no customers in the luncheonette, sitting around was not allowed on the job because there was always something to be cleaned, polished, or organized. In our family, following through on our commitments was an obligation , not a choice. So, it’s hard to say whether my sense of conscientiousness is influenced mostly by my genetic makeup or if it is primarily an outcome of my upbringing.

In addition to the influence that our family background and other environments have in developing our conscientiousness, we can increase our conscientiousness by taking the initiative to learn conscientious behaviors, including the development of self-control and the ability to delay gratification. This was powerfully demonstrated in what are now called the “Marshmallow Experiments.”[ 3 ]

In the 1960s, researcher Walter Mischel and his colleagues designed an experiment to assess children’s self-control. One by one, preschoolers from Stanford University’s Bing Nursery School were set up in a small room with a table upon which was a plate with two treats (e.g., two pretzels, cookies, or marshmallows). The researcher told the children that they could eat one treat now or wait fifteen minutes and have both treats. Some children ate the treat right away and the experiment was over for them. Other children decided they would try to wait, and the researcher left the room while they waited. Before the researcher left, however, the children were told that if they wanted to eat the one treat before the fifteen minutes were up, they could ring a bell placed on the table, at which point the researcher would return and the child could eat one treat, but not both. The researchers watched the children from a one-way observation window as the children employed clever strategies to avoid temptation. Some stroked, sniffed, or licked the treat without biting into it. Others sang to themselves, covered their eyes, played with their hair, enjoyed their noses, or tried to nap.

Between 1968 and 1974, over 600 children from the Bing Nursery School participated in the study. About a third of the children ate the treat right away, a third waited an average of three minutes before ringing the bell and eating one treat, and a third fidgeted their way through the full 15 minutes and earned the two treats. The average delay time for all children was about six minutes.

After this part of the experiment, the results got even more interesting. The researchers followed 95 of the children for several decades and discovered that the longer the children waited to eat the treat when they were children, the better they were likely to fare later in life. As teenagers, those who delayed the longest before eating the treat in the original experiment (the top third) in their childhood marshmallow test had Scholastic Aptitude Test scores that were on average 210 points higher than the children who had the lowest delay times (the bottom third). As adults, the high delayers were more likely to reach higher education levels, maintained a healthier weight, and were less likely to engage in substance abuse.

Concluding that it was important for children to be able to delay gratification, the researchers wanted to know if children could learn skills in self-control. They conducted the marshmallow experiment again, but this time, before the children participated in the experiment they were taught strategies for psychologically distancing themselves from the temptation of eating the marshmallows.[ 4 ] These techniques included imagining the marshmallows as clouds, putting imaginary frames around the marshmallows to make them seem less real and more like inedible pictures, and thinking about something else completely unrelated to the treats. The children who were taught these methods were much more likely to wait out the 15 minutes without eating the treat in front of them in order to earn the two treats. It seems that self-control, like a muscle, can be strengthened.

A few years ago, the marshmallow studies were given a makeover by researcher Celeste Kidd and her colleagues at the University of Rochester.[ 5 ] Kidd redesigned the original studies based on her experiences volunteering at a homeless shelter—an environment in which possessions are often stolen and promises are often broken. She wondered whether children’s willingness to delay gratification was influenced not simply by their personalities, but perhaps also by their reasonable assessments of the reliability of the environment. In an unreliable environment where delayed gratification may not result in desired or promised outcomes, it may make sense to eat the marshmallow immediately rather than wait.

With this in mind, Kidd and her colleagues replicated the marshmallow studies with an added twist. They divided 28 children, ages 3 to 5, into two groups. Before engaging the children in the traditional marshmallow experiment, the experimenters exposed half of the children to an “unreliable” environment and the other half to a “reliable” environment. In the first phase of the experiment, each child was brought alone into a room and told he or she would be working on an art project. The child was given a box of “well used” (worn out and broken) crayons, and the experimenter explained that the child could start using the crayons immediately or wait a few minutes until the researcher would bring in a fresh new set of art supplies.

In the “reliable” condition, the experimenter returned with the shiny new set of art supplies as promised. In the “unreliable condition,” the experimenter returned and apologized, saying, “I’m sorry, but I made a mistake. We don’t have any other art supplies after all. But why don’t you just use these [the worn out and broken crayons] instead.” The researchers then showed each child a small sticker and told the child that he or she could use that one sticker in an art project now or wait until the experimenter returned with several packages of nicer stickers. Once again, the experimenter kept the promise to the children in the reliable condition and broke the promise to the children in the unreliable condition.

Then each of the children participated in the traditional marshmallow experiment. While the children in the reliable situation waited an average of 12 minutes and two seconds before eating the marshmallow, the children in the unreliable condition waited an average of only three minutes and two seconds. For the children who were placed in the unreliable situation, eating the marshmallow right away, rather than wait for the two marshmallows that might not come later, was a rational choice, not necessarily a reflection of an inability to delay gratification.

There are three main points to take away from these Marshmallow Experiments. First, self-control and the ability to delay gratification (both of which are characteristics of conscientiousness) in childhood are related to positive outcomes later in life. Second, self-control and the ability to delay gratification can be learned. Third, deciding whether or not to delay gratification in a specific instance may be based on a rational assessment of whether or not waiting will result in future rewards .

Learning skills in self-control and delayed gratification, as well as other characteristics of conscientiousness, can have a significant impact throughout your life. It’s not a new idea that hard work, persistence, and being reliable pay off. But we now have decades of research that demonstrates how it pays off in more ways than you probably imagined, as I’ll describe in more detail in the following sections.

Researchers are interested in what predicts academic success for many reasons: to ensure that students get the most out of their education, to help students who are struggling, to ensure that societies have educated citizens and a capable workforce, and to help students achieve their life goals. The longer someone stays in school, the more likely they are to earn higher salaries and the less likely they are to become unemployed (with the exception of Ph.D.’s who tend to earn a bit less and are slightly more likely to be unemployed than people with professional degrees). Researchers want to know who gets better grades and why, who is more satisfied with their academic experience, and who is more likely to complete their academic programs on time, rather than dropping out or taking longer to graduate.

Studies have shown that conscientiousness is one of the most significant predictors of academic success in both high school and college, in many cases more powerful than cognitive ability (as measured by scores on college entrances exams such as the SAT, ACT, or tests of general intelligence). Academic success depends what researchers call “cognitive” and “noncognitive” resources. Cognitive resources include the ability (“can do”) to score well on college entrance exams and general intelligence tests. Noncognitive resources include the motivation (“will do”) to achieve good grades, work hard, use good study habits, turn in assignments on time, work well in teams, persist as classes get increasingly challenging, and stay focused on schoolwork despite the many temptations that can lure students away from their studies.

In their article “Predicting Academic Success in Higher Education: What’s More Important than Being Smart?,” researchers Rutger Kappe and Henk van der Flier describe their study in which they followed students in a four-year undergraduate Human Resources program to determine which factors predicted academic achievement.[ 6 ] They measured academic achievement in five areas: quiz and exam grades taken during the 25 classroom lectures, as well as attendance at these lectures; proficiency in acquiring ten specific skills taught throughout the program (e.g., negotiating, debating, and conducting employee interviews); grades on ten team projects (e.g., creating team deliverables such as a health and safety manual and a training program); ratings of students’ performance in internship experiences in which they worked in business organizations in their second through fourth year of school; and grades on a required 30-page thesis and oral presentation.

The researchers also compared students’ grade point average (GPA) and how many months it took each student to graduate (with expected graduation being within four years). They gave each student an intelligence test (the Multicultural Test of Intellectual Ability for Higher Education). The researchers found that “intelligence showed only small correlations with measures of academic achievement. In contrast, conscientiousness showed large correlations with the five specific academic achievement criteria, GPA, and time to graduation.” They concluded, “More important than what a student can do, is what a student is willing to do.”[ 7 ]

In another study, researcher Michael Zyphur and his colleagues found that cognitive ability (as measured by scores on exams that assess scholastic aptitude, such as the SAT and ACT) predicted initial grades in college; but by the third semester, conscientiousness ( as measured by 20 questions on a standard questionnaire) became a more significant predictor of overall GPA.[ 8 ] They concluded that cognitive ability is particularly useful in the first semester when students are first challenged to process, integrate, and apply new information quickly at a college level. But once one understands the standards required of college-level work, the willingness to work hard, set high performance goals, engage in productive study habits, avoid distractions, and persist when faced with challenges becomes increasingly important to academic success. The researchers noted that by the time students get to college, they’ve gone through an admissions process that attempts to screen for their ability to succeed (e.g., college entrance exams and high school GPA), so characteristics other than their intelligence (such as their conscientiousness) are more significant in predicting which students will make the most of their college experience.

Studies such as these give us insight into why students who demonstrate high cognitive ability don’t necessarily achieve the academic success others expect of them, and why seemingly less academically inclined students sometimes exceed expectations. In many academic situations, “will do” is at least as important as “can do.” The same is true for success in the workplace.

Who would you rather have work for you? People who are self-motivated or people who need a lot of direction and reminders to do their work? People who have high standards for their work and complete it on time or people who throw their work together carelessly and submit it late? People who do just enough to fulfill their basic job responsibilities or people who go above and beyond the call of duty? And who would you rather work with in a team? People you can depend on to get their work to you on time or those who wait until the last minute, making it hard for you to get your work completed on time? People who come to meetings on time and well-prepared or people who show up late and haven’t even read the agenda? People who return your emails with an appropriate response or people who don’t? Not surprisingly, researchers have found that conscientiousness is related to job performance.[ 9 ]

Supervisors tend to rate conscientious people’s performance higher than others[ 10 ] because conscientious employees tend to be low maintenance and high payback—they are self-motivated to get their work done with high standards and need little supervision. Conscientious people are also more satisfied with their jobs. Researchers think that this satisfaction comes from the gratification they get from doing their work well and the peace of mind they get from their job stability and higher earnings.

In a meta-analysis that explored characteristics that are associated with high team performance, researcher Miranda Peeters and her colleagues found that conscientious teams, like conscientious individuals, perform better. Teams often have an advantage over individuals because of the diversity of knowledge, skills, and other resources that team members bring to their teams. Whether or not a team leverages these team resources, however, depends on team members’ willingness to put forth the effort to perform well. In other words, a team may have the skills and resources to accomplish a task, but whether or not a team can leverage these resources for successful performance depends on team members’ willingness to work hard on behalf of the team and fulfill their responsibilities.

Although a team tends to perform better when the team as a whole has high conscientiousness, a team often performs worse if there’s a lot of variability in conscientiousness among team members because this can sometimes cause what researchers call the “sucker effect.”[ 11 ] This means that high-contributing team members may withhold effort when they see other team members slacking off. The high-contributing team members may reduce their contributions because they prefer to underperform as a team rather than feel like suckers who are being taken advantage of. The challenge for conscientious team members, then, is to figure out how to increase the conscientiousness of other team members or to continue to pursue high team performance despite the lack of effort of one or more team members. Interestingly, conscientious team members are more likely to withhold effort when they feel that other team members are capable of contributing but are choosing not to do so. They’re willing to help someone who needs the help, but they don’t want to support a free rider.

When you ask parents what they wish most for their children, they usually say that they want their children to have happy, healthy, and long lives. Most people would wish these for themselves as well. It turns out that conscientious people have an edge when it comes to overall well-being.

Researchers have been studying happiness—what they call “subjective well-being”—for over 50 years. Well-being is considered subjective because, as discussed in Chapter 1, each person decides for himself or herself what constitutes a good life. Some people want to live simply in a small cabin in the woods; others want to live in a trendy penthouse in a city. Some people want to move up the organizational ladder; others prefer the stability of staying in the same job for years because they find their creative stimulation outside work. Some people take pleasure in buying new cars every few years; others take pleasure in keeping their old car on the road for many years, as my family has done with our beloved and dented sixteen year old van (to be fair, one of my daughters disagrees with the “beloved” part of this sentence) .

1. The degree to which a person experiences more positive or negative emotions. Assessment questions include, “On a scale of 1 to 5, how happy have you felt over the past four weeks?” or “On a scale of 1 to 5, how sad have you felt over the past four weeks?”[ 12 ]

2. The degree to which a person is satisfied with the quality of his or her life overall. Assessment statements include, “I am satisfied with my life” and “In most ways, my life is close to my ideal,” and each statement is rated on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 = “strongly disagree” and 7 = “strongly agree.”[ 13 ]

Researchers have found that conscientious people tend to have more positive than negative emotions,[ 14 ] and they are also more likely to be satisfied with their lives overall. This satisfaction can be attributed in large part to the fact that they conduct their lives in ways that make it more likely that they’ll achieve their goals. They tend to have fewer extended periods of stress because they are more likely to be able to take care of themselves and the people they care about, and they are usually able to bounce back from setbacks quickly.

Conscientious people tend to be less impulsive and more focused on the long-term consequences of their behaviors. They tend to make choices that promote good health and long lives. In a meta-analysis of 194 studies, researcher Brent Roberts and his colleagues found that conscientious people are more likely to eat healthy, exercise, wear their seatbelts, have regular doctor appointments, comply with doctors’ recommendations, and take their medications as prescribed.[ 15 ] They are more likely to engage in safer hobbies and change the batteries on their smoke alarms. They are less likely to smoke cigarettes, drive dangerously, abuse alcohol or other substances, or engage in risky sexual behaviors or violence. Because they are planful and organized, they tend to experience less stress because they are less likely to be caught unprepared for expected and unexpected situations in their lives. Because they tend to have more job and financial security, they are likely to have more access to better health care. Conscientious people tend to have fewer illnesses, including stroke, high-blood pressure, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.[ 16 ]

Socioeconomic realities influence people’s health. Regardless of your level of conscientiousness, if you don’t have a car or access to public transportation and there are no supermarkets nearby, you may end up having to buy your groceries at the local convenience store not because you want to but because you don’t feel you have other choices. Even the most conscientious people will find it challenging to ensure good health for their families if they don’t have access to clean water, safe schools, and safe neighborhoods. In addition to socioeconomic constraints that influence health outcomes, some people are genetically predisposed to having diseases for reasons outside of their control, so their odds of having a particular disease are higher regardless of their level of conscientiousness. But when conscientious people do experience disease, it tends to progress more slowly, in part because they are more likely to adhere to their doctor’s orders.[ 17 ]

In 1921, psychologist Lewis M. Terman began a study of 1,500 boys and girls who were approximately ten years old and most of whom lived in California. Terman selected them because they were considered to be very bright students. Some were selected based on their high scores on the Stanford-Binet IQ test (which Terman helped create), and others were selected because their teachers identified them as being particularly smart. Most came from white, middle class families, although a few came from African American, Hispanic, or Asian families .

Terman’s initial interest in the students was that he hoped to demonstrate that the “smartest” kids would grow up to be remarkably successful adults, at least by societal standards. Many certainly did. Over 70% of the “Termites” (as the study participants were called) went to college, and many went on to have careers in fields that require academic success (such as lawyers, doctors, professors). Others went into technical and service fields (e.g., carpenters, pool cleaners, electronics technicians). Interestingly, the average IQ score of those who went into high-status jobs (by societal standards) differed by only five points from the average score of those who didn’t. Although a few of the study participants went on to make a big impact in their fields (e.g., Ancel Keys, the physiologist who identified the connection between cholesterol and heart disease), two children who were rejected from participating in the study later became Nobel Prize winners. As Mitchell Leslie wrote in an article about Terman and his study, “intelligence alone doesn’t guarantee achievement. But then, you don’t have to be a genius to figure that out.”[ 18 ]

Seventy years after the study began, researchers Howard Friedman and Leslie Martin analyzed the original data collected by the Terman study and interviewed the living study participants in order to better understand who lived longer and why. They published over 50 scholarly papers and a book, The Longevity Project , on their findings. Friedman and Martin were able to identify links between the way the people lived and their longevity. They were also able to debunk a few myths, including:

• Worrying is bad for your health. It isn’t; at least not for men. Men in the study who were worriers tended to outlive the men who weren’t. Whether or not someone was a worrier didn’t predict longevity one way or the other for women. It could be that men who are worriers are more likely to go to the doctor, take their medications, and live more cautiously than other men, whereas women may be more likely to make these choices as a taken-for-granted way of life.

• Taking it easy and having a stress-free life adds years to your life. Not really. Some level of stress can increase productivity, perseverance, and other good habits, which in turn result in having a stable job, steady income, and good relationships, all of which contribute to longevity. According to the researchers, depending on the circumstances, even a traumatic event such as parental divorce can contribute to a longer life if a child learns to be resilient in ways that pay off later in life.

Across the lifespan, many predictors emerged as to who would do better and who would do worse, who would live longer and who would die younger. It was not good cheer or being popular that made a difference. It was also not those who took life easy, played it safe, or avoided stress who lived the longest. It was those who—through an often-complex pattern of persistence, prudence, hard work, and close involvement with friends and communities—headed down meaningful, interesting life paths . . . and found their way back to these healthy paths each time they were pushed off the road.[ 19 ]

If being conscientious sounds a bit boring, in an interview Martin said that the most conscientious study participants “tended to get nice opportunities in life, and so they went on to live some of the most exciting and interesting lives of anyone in the study.”[ 20 ]

So far, it may seem as if I’m presenting conscientiousness as the magic formula for making all of your dreams come true. Well, not so fast. Although there is widespread agreement among researchers that conscientious people tend to fare better in life than those who aren’t conscientious, it can backfire when taken to extremes. Setting overly high standards for others can lead to micromanagement, impatience, and excessive criticism. Unchecked, conscientiousness can turn into unnecessary perfectionism, excessive rumination when making decisions, workaholism, and obsessive compulsive behavior.[ 21 ] Setting overly high standards can result in significant negative emotions when these standards aren’t met.

For example, in a four-year study of 9,570 people, researcher Christopher Boyce and his colleagues found that, when unemployed, people who are high in conscientiousness experienced greater life dissatisfaction than those who are low in conscientiousness.[ 22 ] The researchers speculated that conscientious people may be particularly hard hit during periods of unemployment because their identities may be more tied to their work, they may be more likely to feel like failures, and they may miss the opportunity to use their strengths at work. They may also miss the income from their jobs more because financial security may be more valued by conscientious people.

Conscientiousness can also backfire when it’s not complemented with social skills. In a series of studies that included over 1,400 employees, researchers found that employees who were high in conscientiousness yet low in agreeableness (e.g., cooperativeness, helpfulness, courtesy) were rated by their supervisors as lower in effectiveness than those who were high in both.[ 23 ] It’s not surprising that agreeableness makes it easier for people to achieve their goals, especially in jobs that require working closely with others. So, if you find yourself saying at work, “I’m not here to be liked, I’m here to get the job done,” you may want to reconsider.

The relationship between creativity and conscientiousness is complicated, with little consensus among researchers about whether or not conscientious people are more or less creative than others. Conscientious people follow rules and are oriented to achievement. On one hand, following the rules and being cautious can stifle creativity. Conscientious people may also be less willing to give up their hard-earned security and take risks, especially when the status quo has been working in their favor. On the other hand, wanting to do whatever is necessary to achieve personal, team, and organizational goals can enhance creativity.

Because of their careful, systematic approach to life, conscientious people often don’t fit the stereotype that we expect from creative people. In their book Originals , Wharton researcher Adam Grant explains that the most successful entrepreneurs tend to be much more cautious than the stereotype of the fast moving, high risk-taking rebel.[ 24 ] Successful entrepreneurs tend not to be the first movers into a market. Many keep their day jobs rather than jump into their entrepreneurial endeavor with both feet. For example, two-time Grammy winner John Legend kept his job as a management consultant for two years after he released his first album. Successful entrepreneurs tend to move systematically and cautiously when implementing their ideas, which raises the odds that their ideas will work.

Grant describes how he too once believed the stereotype that the most successful entrepreneurs risked it all for a bold idea. He says that this assumption cost him dearly when he missed out on an opportunity to be an early investor in the online eyewear company Warby Parker because he felt the four founders, MBA students at the time, did not fit his image of how successful entrepreneurs brought their visions to life. Inspired by Zappos’ success at selling shoes online, the students wanted to make eyewear more affordable and accessible by selling it online. They also wanted to do good in the world by donating a pair of glasses to someone who can’t afford them for every pair of glasses they sold.

It was a great idea, but they didn’t drop out of business school to wholeheartedly pursue their dream. Three out of four of the Warby Parker founders accepted a summer internship rather than work full-time on their idea (the other had a grant to work full-time on the project during the summer). Because they didn’t devote themselves to working full-time on their new business, it took them six months to come up with a name, and even longer to set up the website. Grant declined to invest because their behavior didn’t align with his ideas of how passionate and committed entrepreneurs would behave. From his perspective, they were moving far too slowly and cautiously to be fully invested in their idea. He says “It was the worst financial decision I’ve ever made.”[ 25 ]

What I didn't realize at the time was, first of all, successful entrepreneurs are much more likely to play it safe and have back-up plans than failed entrepreneurs; and secondly, all of the time they spent working on other things was giving them the freedom to do something really original.[ 26 ]

Incoming West Point cadets go through a staggeringly tough, physically and mentally challenging program during their first seven weeks, called “The Beast.” It’s well known that many new cadets drop out of West Point before the end of those harsh seven weeks. For years West Point was unable to pinpoint why. They found no patterns related to high school rank, college entrance exam grades (e.g., SAT and ACT), physical fitness, leadership potential assessments, or any other measure that would seem to be relevant to whether a cadet would go the distance or drop out. In 2004, along came psychology doctoral student Angela Duckworth. She was given permission to give the cadets a 12-question assessment on their second day at West Point. The higher the cadets scored on this simple assessment, the more likely they were to complete The Beast as well. The lower they scored, the more likely they were to drop out.

The assessment was Duckworth’s “Grit” scale. She defines grit as “passion and perseverance toward a long-term goal.”[ 27 ] The assessment included statements such as “I finish what I begin,” “I am diligent, I never give up,” and “I often choose a goal and later choose to pursue a different one.” Responses to these statements were on a scale from “Not at all like me” to “Very much like me.” In addition to the West Point cadets, Duckworth explored whether grit was associated with Ivy League college students’ GPAs, and it was. Highly gritty college students earned higher GPAs, even if they scored lower on the SAT Test. She also explored whether teenagers who performed best in the U.S. Scripps National Spelling Bee competition rated higher on grit, and they did. Duckworth found that the grittier teenagers spent more time studying for the spelling bee, and this paid off in their higher ranking.

Duckworth and her colleagues have found that “grit did not relate positively to IQ but was highly correlated with conscientiousness.”[ 28 ] As with conscientious people, gritty people are hard-working, self-directed, self-motivated, persistent, and able to bounce back from setbacks to get back on track. The biggest difference is that gritty people apply their focus to a single long-term goal that is extremely meaningful to them. People can be conscientious in their everyday lives while switching from one goal to another, whereas a gritty person stays focused on one important goal. Keeping their eyes on the prize is the driving force that compels gritty people to work harder, be more persistent, and be more resilient. Rejection and being told they can’t do something fuels their determination. Academy Award winner Steven Spielberg was rejected from film school three times; Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor after being told he lacked imagination; Grammy Award winner Beyoncé was told she couldn’t sing; and basketball legend Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Being gritty takes even more stamina for longer periods of time, all in the dogged persistence of achieving a single long-term goal. Grit is like conscientiousness on steroids.

The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is—I'm not afraid to die on a treadmill. … You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things . . . . But if we get on the treadmill together there's two things—you're getting off first, or I'm going to die. It's really that simple.[ 29 ]

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has demonstrated grittiness ever since she was a child. Born in the Bronx, New York, to a family that emigrated from Puerto Rico, she was raised for many years by a single mother after her father died, when Sonia was 9, of complications related to alcoholism. Her mother was an orphan, and her father never completed the third grade. Her mother worked and saved money to send Sotomayor to a Catholic school.

Sotomayor learned responsibility at age 7 when she was diagnosed with Type 1 juvenile diabetes and had to give herself daily insulin shots. In her autobiography, she said, “I probably learned more self-discipline from living with diabetes than I ever did from the Sisters of Charity.”[ 30 ] She decided that she wanted to become an attorney after watching the TV show “Perry Mason” in which actor Raymond Burr played a defense attorney (Mason) with a flair for public speaking and winning cases. She was fascinated with the way Mason eloquently presented his cases and served the law.

Sotomayor did not have the resources at home to help her pursue her dream of becoming an attorney, but she had the grit to figure it out. Inspired by the fictional Perry Mason, she practiced public speaking whenever she could. When she was ready to become the first person in her family to attend college, her friend Kenny from the high school debate team encouraged her to try to get admitted to an Ivy League college, gave her the names of colleges, and later helped her adjust to life at Princeton and then Yale Law School. She relied heavily on students with more experience to help her develop the confidence and political skills to not only survive, but thrive. She said, “Many of the gaps in my knowledge and understanding were simply limits of class and cultural background, not lack of aptitude or application as I feared.”[ 31 ]

Sotomayor expresses pride that she was one of the early beneficiaries of affirmative action, and she worked hard to live up to expectations. She was awarded the Pyne Prize (the highest academic award given to Princeton undergraduates), and she was an editor for the prestigious Yale Law Journal. She bounced back after not being offered a job after her law school summer internship with the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Reflecting on that early failure, Sotomayor said, “I would do what I had always done: break the challenge down into smaller challenges, which I would get on with in my methodical fashion.”[ 32 ] Although she didn’t initially intend to be a Supreme Court Justice, she became an outstanding attorney .

Duckworth notes that “grit is like living life as a marathon, not a sprint.” She is convinced that grit can be learned. She works with school systems to help them develop grit in children so that they have better opportunities for a good life. Today Duckworth likes to show her doctoral students the letters she receives from academic journals rejecting her articles because she wants to build students’ resilience by demonstrating to them that struggles and failures are a normal, if not desirable, part of an academic’s life.

Being overly gritty carries some of the same risks as being overly conscientious, but with a few more risks that are worth watching out for. Although people who are persistent in achieving their life goals tend to be more successful and happier with their lives, sometimes it’s healthier (and leads to more happiness) to quit, particularly when the goal is unachievable or the situation has changed to one in which the goal is no longer worth the effort required. In their article “You Gotta Know When to Fold ’Em,” researchers Gregory Miller and Carsten Wrosch report that they asked students a set of questions designed to assess the students’ willingness to detach from goals that are for some reason unattainable (e.g., due to significant life events or fundamental changes in what they believe is worth doing) and engage with new goals.[ 33 ] The students were asked to finish the statement “If I have to stop pursuing an important goal in my life…” with responses such as “it’s easy for me to reduce my efforts towards the goal,” “I stay committed to the goal for a long time, I can’t let it go,” and “I seek out other meaningful goals” (with 1 = almost never true and 5 = almost always true).

Miller and Wrosch found that adolescents who continued to pursue an unattainable goal had increased concentrations of C-reactive protein, which is a molecule that is associated with health issues related to inflammation. In other studies, Wrosch and his colleagues found that people who were able to detach from unattainable goals and invest in new ones reported higher subjective well-being (e.g., happiness), lower stress, and higher self-mastery (e.g., belief that one has control over what happens in his or her future).

Another risk of excess grit is that you can become so invested in achieving your goal that you lose interest in other important parts of your life (e.g., your health, relationships, and community). As researcher Walter Mischel, the creator of the original marshmallow experiments says, “a life with too much [self-control and delayed gratification] can be as unfulfilling as one with too little.”[ 34 ]

• First: Take the assessment in Figure 4.1 at the end of this chapter and identify the areas in which you are strongest and weakest. Identify one thing you will do to increase your conscientiousness . What behavioral change (or skill) will give you, the people who depend on you, and your organizations the biggest payback? To increase your conscientiousness, for example, do you need to work harder, be more organized, be more punctual, or be more reliable? To increase your grit do you need to figure out how to stay more focused on your long-term goal rather than get distracted by activities that don’t add value?

• Second: Create a systematic plan for developing that skill . What will you do every day to develop the skill? You can find excellent resources online and at your nearby library to help you develop each of the skills associated with conscientiousness. You can take workshops, read books, and participate in free online courses (e.g., through Coursera, edX) on time management, organization, planning, systematic decision making, resilience, and more.

When I wrote my first book, I had a hard time staying focused on the book, which was an important long-term goal for me to change. One issue was that I had two small children at home, and one of my goals was to spend time with them. Another issue was that I was easily distracted in ways that had nothing to do with the children. So I took a time management course and learned one technique—logical stopping points—that made all the difference. The technique was simple: Don’t stop what you’re working on until you reach a logical stopping point—the end of a paragraph, the end of a page, or the end of a chapter. It seems simple, but it requires a great deal of discipline for people who are easily distracted. Today, I use the concept of logical stopping points whenever I have a long-term, difficult goal to achieve (e.g., designing a new course or writing this book that you’re now reading), and it continues to serve me well.

• Third: Manage the context . Create structure and habits so that you don’t have to think about how you want to behave. For example, you can work in less distracting environments. You can set aside an hour or two at work every day to work on projects that require focus. You can set alarms to remind you to get to meetings on time. You can use apps that will block you from going online for a specific period of time (e.g., three hours). One well known time management technique is the simple Pomodoro Technique.[ 35 ] Developed by Francesco Cirillo when he was a university student who had a hard time focusing on his studies, it requires only a timer, your commitment to setting the timer for at least 25 minutes, and focusing on your task until the timer goes off. That’s it—a small win that helps create the momentum for longer-term wins.

• Fourth: Hold yourself accountable by measuring your progress . Another way to increase your focus and motivation is to regularly measure your progress. As discussed in Chapter 3, SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals. SMART goals are small wins that, when taken together, lead to big changes. How many times this week did you arrive at meetings on time and prepared? How much progress have you made on your project?

Angela Duckworth describes self-made businessman Warren Buffet’s strategy by which one can identify his or her most important goal—meaning the one that most deserves grit. First, list up to twenty-five goals. Second, circle the five that are the highest-priority—those that are most aligned with what’s most important to you in life. Third, look at the goals that you didn’t circle, and do not put much time and energy toward those goals, because they’ll distract you from your top goals. Buffett says it more starkly: Avoid the goals on the second list “at all costs.” Deciding what you’re not going to do is as important as deciding what you will do. Fourth, make a plan for achieving your top five (or fewer) goals.

Duckworth adds another step. She recommends that you ask yourself, “To what extent do my top five goals serve a common purpose?” Buffett is known to be clear about his priorities. Despite his wealth (he’s worth over $60 billion), he lives frugally in the house he bought in 1958 for $31,000 (which today would be around $260,000). And he has pledged to donate 99% of his wealth to charitable causes when he dies, with most of it going to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is dedicated to lifting people out of poverty to lead healthy, productive lives. The point is that Buffett knows what matters most to him and what doesn’t, and he makes choices that are aligned with his long-term goals.