Angela Duckworth: Grit Isn't Enough (#317)

0:00My guest today wrote the book on grit. Then she found herself in the Atlantic Ocean holding her unconscious mother while fighting a current she couldn't overpower. And that moment changed everything for her. Hi everyone, I'm Lynn Toman and Mrs. 3 takeaways. On 3 takeaways I talked with some of the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, newsmakers and scientists. Each episode ends with three key takeaways to help us understand the world and maybe even ourselves a little better. Today I'm really delighted to be with Angela Duckworth. Angela is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, a MacArthur Fellow, and one of the world's leading researchers on achievement. Her first book grit changed the way millions of people think about success and the importance of passion and perseverance.

1:03It was a number one New York Times bestseller and sold over five million copies. Her new book, which is wonderful, is situated. Angela, welcome back to 3 takeaways. Hi Lynn, I'm so excited to talk to you. Me too. You're in the ocean holding your unconscious 86 year old mother and fighting a current that you can't overpower. What happened? I was on vacation with my family and we went snorkeling in retrospect. Why would you bring your 86 year old mother on that particular part of the vacation? But there we were miles off the coast of Miami's shore and my mom was drowning and I was next to her holding her head up. But she had lost consciousness and treading water and very soon realizing that I couldn't swim her back to the boat. Yes. You spent years showing us why grit and perseverance matter.

2:06When did you begin to realize grit wasn't the whole story? Was it when you were in the ocean with your mother or sometime before that? It was before that because only days before that ill-fated snorkeling excursion and not to leave everyone on a cliffhanger. My mother just celebrated her 91st birthday. So we lived. I had realized that the situation is incredibly powerful and the people in places around us exert such a force. Sometimes we're not aware but it's always pulling at us and pushing at us to do, to think, to speak certain things. The idea that the situation can change the trajectory of your life in some ways is obvious. But as somebody who has long studied achievement, what was not obvious to me was how much you can change the situation before it changes you. So there is a game that we play not only in our heads to achieve our potential with the right mindsets and habits and so forth.

3:08But there's a very important game that we need to play outside of our heads is surround ourselves with people and put ourselves in places where we can really be our best. Did grit accidentally teach some of us to overestimate how much success comes down to individual effort? I think that's a fair question. You could argue it's a fair criticism of grit that the word grit just sounds like, oh, it's all about you against your situation. Your situation can be your enemy but you can overcome it through force of will. I don't agree with that message. I think for me as a psychologist, this dawning appreciation for just how important the situation is and also how much it is under our control to make our situation not our enemy. Our ally has been maybe 10 or so years in the making, but it's more that I have expanded my field of view that I'm expanding my aperture to take in not only the person, the hero, the achiever themselves, but also everything around them.

4:14You call the first act of your marriage just try harder and the second burn out how did two people nearly grit their way out of a marriage. Both of us grew up in kind of striver families. Our parents set very high expectations for us. I think our whole lives we realize that we were not the most gifted or talented students in any classroom or on any team. But we tried hard. Each of us growing up in similar circumstances, but of course not meeting until we were grown ups couldn't make the chorus like try harder. You know, like want to solo in the chorus don't have a great singing voice like practice longer than everyone. It worked. It worked really well for act one, which was many years. And we today would say that that was an important lesson, but I think what often happens to people is that the thing that is working for you becomes the only trick you have in the playbook. And I think the fragility of that is to not recognize that sometimes life calls for a different tactic.

5:19And the burnout act was when Jason and I had been married for a few years and we had had kids and we were starting out our careers and all we knew was trying harder. We really did experience this emotional state of burnout. And for me, I was so unhappy that I thought it was the end of our marriage. I thought that the only reasonable thing to do was to end the marriage. And then you essentially had three therapists for the two of you and you both changed your lives changed your situations. That's exactly right. You needed a therapist and I needed a therapist and then the two of us went to see a marriage therapist. To me, there was a very important lesson and one that Jason, I hope our daughters take this lesson that trying hard is great. And we did raise our daughters to try hard at everything, but that is not the only trick you have in your playbook.

6:19Sometimes you're in a losing situation and trying hard is just like being in the ocean and kicking harder and flailing your arms where you have to fundamentally change the situation itself. And going back to that story, what saved my mom and saved me was not kicking harder. It was not trying harder. It was waving my hand in the air. I asked for help. I changed the situation. There was a snorkeling instructor who saw and then that changed everything. And I want my daughters to be people who have at least two tricks in their playbook, one to try harder than anyone believes that you can try. And second, to be in a winning situation, not a losing situation so that your effort pays off. Jason, I didn't stop trying, but we fundamentally changed the situation. So we tried hard in a better situation and stayed married and raised our daughters together.

7:21That is so harrowing that your marriage almost came apart because of the two of you who are so focused on working harder. Is it a mistake to put willpower on a pedestal? Humans are better at it, but it's an extremely fragile and fallible way to achieve her goals. And when you look at people who are great at what they do, the students who come home with good report cards, the people who come home with the prizes and awards attesting to their achievements, they are not doing it by forcing themselves. They are doing it because they have put themselves into professions or contexts in which the work is intrinsically motivating. It's not that they never have to use willpower, but they rarely use willpower and they will only resort to willpower as a tactic of last resort. So I think that again, if you want to go back to the word grit and what it sounds like, I know for a lot of people grit sounds like just willpower in extremists, like willpower 11 out of 10.

8:29But really that's not true. How much of who a person is is based on their situation? It's not all of it. There are genes and your genes are not your situation. There's also our past, you know, wherever you grow up, the things that have happened in the past. So it's not all of it. But it is a lot. I'll give you a very recent example. I was working in San Francisco recently and I asked a friend if I could use some office space. Very generously, he said yes. And in that office space, as one does in San Francisco in this subculture, there's just like literally crates and crates of protein milk because everybody around me was protein maxing. And on the first day, I just sort of pointed to the I was working with a collaborator. We will point to these cases of protein milk and mock them, right? Or like what a funny culture this is where people have to be ingesting protein at every minute. But I'll tell you what happened by day three. We just started drinking protein milk. The situation is incredibly powerful. You are not only product of your situation, your current situation, but like gravity, it has an invisible but extremely powerful force.

9:37Now I'm back in Philadelphia and there are no cases of protein milk around me and I have no longer drinking protein milk. So people change based on the situation they're in. You have thought about many of the same questions and interviewed many thinkers. Do you agree or disagree with me about that simple but profound proposition? Absolutely. We're all different based on the people that were with, based on the situation we're in. And I think that's also why it makes it so important that we're all in positive situations which bring out our best and help us to grow. I am the quietest person in my house. They're only four of us and I am by far the quietest person. All I do is talk and tell people what I think when I imagine the professor, but not when I imagine the mom. My daughters take up a lot of the airspace as they should and you know, it doesn't have listening a lot. But I do think what you said a moment ago, Lynn is so true.

10:37There are people who bring out our best. There are people like friends who bring out our empathic kind side and then there are people who, you know, give the opposite. And I think if we can navigate to be surrounded by the people and in the places that bring out the best, I mean, it really, I think it can change everything. Let me give you a famous example. Taylor Swift was talented before she moved to Nashville. What did Nashville give her the talent and grit alone couldn't? When teenage Taylor Swift begged her mom and her dad to move from the line missing Pennsylvania, not far from where I live, to Nashville, Tennessee, the country music capital of the world. She was exercising precocious judgment. I think Taylor Swift knew that all the talent and effort in the world would not get her to where she wanted to be in why missing Pennsylvania.

11:41I mean, why missing Pennsylvania, which is a lovely little suburb if you haven't been there. It's a great place to grow up unless you want to be a country music star. I think when she went to Nashville, she realized that she had found her tribe. She fit right in. And I do think that was pivotal and she has said in so many words much the same. Angela, if your research shows how important the situation and the people around us are, it raises a difficult question for parents. How much should parents try to engineer their children's environment? And when does that become over parenting? Like Mr. Rogers of Mr. Rogers neighborhood, I think a lot of parenting comes down to putting your children in situations that bring out their best. He observed that many parents will throw up their hands and exasperation and say, I can't Johnny behave better when they should be asking the question with curiosity and empathy.

12:44Where can Johnny behave better? What are the situations in which I have observed my child be their best? Be curious and confident and gritty and honest. I mean, where have I observed my daughter or my son be their best? Which teachers bring out their best? Which sports teams? Which musical instruments? How does this actually get operationalized? It comes down to your child's school. For example, I think that's an enormous decision. Is that engineering? You could call it that, Lynn. I think if you get these big decisions right and your child is in a situation where their friend group has the values and aspirations that you would like your own child to have, then you're not fighting headwinds as a parent. So I do think that situational parenting, as I would call it, is I think the wisest kind of parenting there is.

13:44Absolutely changing the situation for your kids so that the water they're swimming in is the water that they should be swimming in, I think is really the best kind of parenting that you can do. So essentially getting the big decisions right and reframing the question to where do they do well? Absolutely. And that takes a little bit of observation. The wisest parents watch their children with curiosity to see where they come alive, what they try harder at, and then they try to line up the opportunities to really help their kids thrive in those kinds of situations. We haven't yet talked about AI, but many people are obsessed with what AI will allow us to do. Should we be more worried that constant use of AI will make us less gritty? I think that if you allow AI to do all your thinking, you will not be good at thinking. If you allow AI to do all your writing, you will not be good at writing.

14:47Because if there's one lesson about a chief event that has been a through line from the very beginning of my career, it is that the quality of time on task very much determines how well you will be at that task. You cannot become a better writer unless you write and you cannot become a better musician unless you play music. So to the extent that we let the genie do our writing and thinking, and we don't take all those extra hours and do extra writing and thinking or something productive, we will be diminished in our capabilities. Yeah, I think that's such a big risk because it's so tempting for so many people. Angela, what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today? Your physical and social situation is more powerful than you might assume. So number one is to have situational awareness and to recognize the power of the situation. Number two, to seize situational agency and to consider that you have control not only over your thoughts or your actions, but over your circumstances that you can pick your peers, you can curate your personal space, you can change your culture, if you're willing to move where you work or live.

16:06Finally, that if I've sold you on situational awareness and I've sold you on situational agency to say that we have an opportunity to be situationally responsible when we want to help another person, the instinct is to give them lectures on willpower or to just exhort them to motivate themselves. But if you can take a step back, pause and ask what situation would be the best for this person, how can I help them find that better situation? That is the wisest way that we could be apparent that we could be a leader and that we can be a good neighbor or as a good citizen. I love that Angela. It is a pleasure to have you back on free takeaways and I really love to your book situator. Thank you. Lynn, I look forward to our next conversation. Thank you so much for having me. If you're enjoying the podcast and I really hope you are, please review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps get the word out.

17:14If you're interested, you can also sign up for the three takeaways newsletter at threetakeaways.com where you can also listen to previous episodes. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram and Facebook. I'm Lynn Toman and this is three takeaways. Thanks for listening.