Angela Duckworth Built Her Career on Grit. Her New Book Says It’s Not Always Enough
‘Situated’ explains what else factors in.
Angela Duckworth, Photo courtesy Masters of Scale
Angela Duckworth spent over a decade convincing the world that effort beats talent. Her new book uncovers the element that argument left out.
“The default settings of the modern world, the situation if you don’t change it proactively, are not healthy,” the Penn psychologist says on the latest episode of Masters of Scale. “If you’re not proactive about putting yourself in places and with people that are good for you, the default settings are not necessarily going to be what is best for you.”
Duckworth tells host Jeff Berman that Situated, released earlier this month, isn’t a walk-back of the book that made her famous.
If there’s a message of Grit, it’s
“If there’s a message of Grit, it’s that effort matters, and effort matters arguably more than natural talent,” she says. “If there’s a message of this second book, it’s that the outside game matters, too, because all of that effort pays off more … in some environments, in some cultures, in some places, with some people, and less so in others.”
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You can have all the grit in the world and still be grinding in a room where it doesn’t compound.
Situated examins a different kind of advantage
Duckworth’s case study is Cody Coleman, who emailed her in 2013 to tell her his story: born in a prison near Trenton, New Jersey, then earned a near-perfect GPA at MIT, a Google internship, and a Stanford computer science PhD. He now runs the AI company Coactive.
He is, as she puts it, “a paragon of grit.” But that isn’t the part she finds instructive.
Source: www.inc.com
