1 hours 12 seconds
🇬🇧 English
Speaker 1
00:05
Hello, hello. Welcome to the TED interview. I'm Chris Anderson.
Speaker 2
00:09
So, I have a hunch that today's conversation may strike you as kind of extraordinary. We're talking about ideas that could actually change how we manage our lives, how we reach that extra level, if you like. That's because I'm talking today with Angela Lee Duckworth.
Speaker 2
00:28
She's a psychologist who has dedicated her career to understanding 1 of life's most consequential questions. What does it take to be successful? I don't just mean successful in the financial sense, but successful in whatever way you want to define it. Why does 1 person realize their goals while another doesn't?
Speaker 2
00:49
What really makes the difference? So after years of studying this, what she found went in the face of what I think so many of us instinctually believe. This is how she explained it at TED all the way back in
Speaker 1
01:01
2013.
Speaker 3
01:03
The 1 thing we know how to measure best is IQ. But what if doing well in school and in life depends on much more than your ability to learn quickly and easily? I started studying kids and adults in all kinds of super challenging settings and in every study my question was who is successful here and why?
Speaker 3
01:29
My research team and I went to West Point Military Academy. We tried to predict which cadets would stay in military training and which would drop out. We went to the National Spelling Bee and tried to predict which children would advance farthest in competition. We studied rookie teachers working in really tough neighborhoods asking which teachers are still going to be here in teaching by the end of the school year and of those who will be the most effective at improving learning outcomes for their students.
Speaker 3
02:02
In all those very different contexts, 1 characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence, it wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't IQ. It was grit. Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals.
Speaker 3
02:24
Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality.
Speaker 2
02:40
So Angela introduced this idea of grit as a predictor of success that is often even more powerful than IQ, which raised a question for a lot of other people.
Speaker 3
02:51
Every day, parents and teachers ask me, how do I build grit in kids? What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic? How do I keep them motivated for the long run?
Speaker 3
03:02
The honest answer is, I don't know.
Speaker 2
03:07
Now, Angela was still early in her research, but here we are, 8 years later, and her discoveries around this same question, how can we wire ourselves to achieve great hard things, have deepened? Some of that is because she received pushback and she's woven a lot of this into her latest ideas. Anyway, today I'm really thrilled to spend an hour talking with Angela and exploring with greater nuance and depth such an important question.
Speaker 2
03:36
Let's dive right in.
Speaker 4
03:48
Okay, Angela Duckworth, welcome to the TED interview.
Speaker 5
03:52
Thank you, Chris. I'm delighted to be talking to you.
Speaker 4
03:55
We're going to be speaking together about really some of the most important things there are to talk about. You know, what it takes to actually make the most of your life. Like, it's hard to imagine topics more important than this, but we talk about words like self-control and determination and grit and perseverance and other related terms.
Speaker 4
04:16
And Angela, could you start by tell us some of your story and how you got interested in these topics?
Speaker 5
04:24
I think like so many people when you ask why am I doing this you can go all the way back to your childhood. And, you know, it's not an exaggeration to say that I grew up in a family with a father just obsessed with achievement. I mean, the highest heights of human achievement.
Speaker 5
04:44
So my dad was probably 1 of the very few people who eagerly awaited the announcement of the Nobel Prize winners each year and just marveled at human excellence, really in all its forms, you know, the Olympics and whoever was winning the accolades in any field. That's what obsessed my father and I think to some extent my extended family. You know, growing up in that kind of family culture, you have to ask yourself, what about me? What platform am I gonna stand on someday to earn my father's adoration?
Speaker 5
05:16
And I quickly figured out that I wasn't the smartest person even in my elementary school homeroom of 30 kids. So that suggested that I was not going to end up being 1 of these outliers in achievement that my dad so much admired. And I think in some ways, growing up to become a psychologist who studies things that my dad didn't talk about as much, you know, loving what you do for a really long time, sticking with things for a really long time, even when progress is uncertain or faltering. I think in a way it was, you know, a big, grand arc of trying to prove my dad wrong.
Speaker 4
05:53
Talk about a couple of incidents that made you think that, um, there was a different narrative to tell.
Speaker 5
06:01
When I looked at my dad as a role model for me, you know, not what he would talk about at the family dinner table, which really was a lot about implicitly about giftedness. But I mean, the conversations would be like, who was the smartest scientist ever? Was it Einstein or was it Newton?
Speaker 5
06:19
And who is the most gifted artist ever? Was it Picasso or was it Cezanne? These conversations had this implicit narrative that what you were looking for are those rare geniuses who changed the world and they're not like us, but that didn't exactly connect with what I saw him doing. So my dad was a chemist.
Speaker 5
06:41
He immigrated to this country when he was a young man and did his PhD at the University of Cincinnati in organic chemistry. He ended up quickly finding himself to DuPont, the chemical company. And my dad was so passionate about what he did. I mean, it was automotive refinishing products.
Speaker 5
07:01
So you get your car dented and you know, you want the color blue that matches the rest of the car, but your car is 3 years old. So it's been through the sun and the rain. And my dad worked on that, but he really did. Uh, I think love what he did.
Speaker 5
07:14
I mean, he, he, he clearly thought about it like 7 days a week, morning, noon, and night, and talked about it all the time. And he was an incredibly hard worker. So I had this contrast between, you know, a narrative, which at least I heard as being very much about, you know, who's special. But then his lived example was very much about, about what I call grit, you know, passion and perseverance over very long time periods.
Speaker 4
07:41
Your success in life is not just due to what people think of as kind of innate talent or God-given gifts or however you want to frame it. It's what you do with those things. And of course, there's this mystery as to whether grit itself is to some extent a God-given gift.
Speaker 4
07:57
But I think it's important, first of all, that we get some kind of landscape of the different terms. So talk about your early research into these topics and the path of discovery that you yourself took to understand these topics better.
Speaker 5
08:12
For me, the beginning of my scientific career, at least as a psychologist, I was a neurobiology major as an undergraduate. I had picked up a master's of neuroscience somewhere along the way, but really in the 10 years since graduating from college, I spent most of it with kids. So I was a teacher.
Speaker 5
08:28
I started and ran a summer school for less advantaged school children. And I ran a nonprofit with somebody else. Anyway, I entered the PhD program in psychology at the age of 32 is at the university of Pennsylvania, came to work with Marty Seligman, a very famous psychologist who I knew so little about psychology. I didn't even know he was famous, but when I started, I had a question, which I think is the most important thing to have as a doctoral student, you know, an authentic question from your lived experience.
Speaker 5
09:00
And for me, it was, why is it that so many of my very, very bright young students in my classroom when I was a math teacher, why is it that they didn't learn as much math as I expected them to? Because they were so bright. So it was a mystery to me. I really didn't understand my failings as a teacher to bring out their potential.
Speaker 5
09:20
The first work that I did with Marty Seligman was on this idea that when a person, young or old, has a choice between doing something not so fun in the moment, like your algebra homework that you don't quite understand and takes a lot of attention and effort. And you have a choice between that and, you know, almost anything else, like just lying down on the couch and hanging out or thinking about your friends or, or playing video games. I mean, if you have that choice between something that's immediately gratifying, like those games and something, which is delayed gratification, but more valuable, it's always a struggle. And my first study with Marty just showed that young people who were better able to choose longer-term rewards over immediate gratifications predicted their year-end report card grades better than IQ tests that we administered also at the beginning of the year.
Speaker 5
10:16
So for me, it was the first step in this journey to say, well, it can't all be about your measured IQ because look, here's report card grades that depend also on this thing that is not very highly correlated with your IQ.
Speaker 4
10:30
And I guess that is the core idea behind the famous, possibly over famous, marshmallow test. You know, kids who are given a single marshmallow can have 2 marshmallows in 15 minutes if they can wait, and then they're left with a single marshmallow sitting there. The ones that can refrain from eating that marshmallow turn out to have allegedly much better outcomes in school and in life in general.
Speaker 4
10:57
It's essentially, it's the same idea, correct?
Speaker 5
11:00
It was absolutely inspired by that classic study, you know, I think the technical term is the preschool delay of gratification paradigm, but colloquially and much more memorably, it is called the marshmallow test. And I will tell you that in the last couple of years, There's been some debate, some controversy over how predictive the task really is of your long-term life outcomes. The original claim and the original findings that were published said, look, the number of seconds you can wait for 2 marshmallows instead of gobbling down 1 right away.
Speaker 5
11:33
The original claim was that it predicted everything about your life, your likelihood of committing a crime, your income, your mental well-being, your relationships. And then scientists came along and analyzed the same data, but also some additional data that have been collected. And I think there's a lively debate about how predictive it is. My own read of this research is that this delay of gratification test, the marshmallow test, is predictive of life outcomes.
Speaker 5
12:02
But when scientists say, oh, it predicts your life outcomes, I think what most people hear is it's like determinative. Like I can count the number of seconds you wait and then I can pretty much guess, you know, your salary when you're 45. And it's not at all like that. It's a probabilistic weak relationship, meaning that yeah, better than chance I can guess, but not much better than chance.
Speaker 5
12:26
And 1 of the things that I've most recently, you know, in the last, I guess, a year or so, I've been really profoundly impressed by is that life is extremely unpredictable. And yes, there's grit, and yes, there's ability, and yes, there's self-control, and yes, there's socioeconomic status, but all of these things have an element of luck to them. And in addition to them, there really is this complex unfolding of a human life that, for many reasons, is hard to predict.
Speaker 4
12:56
Okay, so we're going to come back to this question of, you know, nature versus nurture and the, um, you know, what you might do as a kid if you discovered that you were really bad at the marshmallow test or whatever. But let's first of all go on and tell me where you went from there and how, you know, self-control, if you like, or the ability to delay gratification. How does that relate to grit and to some of these other terms that you use?
Speaker 5
13:21
So, grit is the perseverance and passion for long-term goals. The distinction is this, at least it seems like this to me, people can disagree with me when we talk about like waiting for 2 marshmallows versus 1, you know, it's really a short timeframe. I mean, we're first of all talking about the order of seconds or maybe minutes, the same for us grownups.
Speaker 5
13:43
You're like, you know, should I have that second scoop of Ben and Jerry's chubby hubby, or should I not? So that time course is very short, right? You don't feel regret like 20 years later, you, you feel it probably 5 minutes later. Now the time course of grit really is different.
Speaker 5
14:01
And I think the dynamics and the fundamental causes of grit can be different. You know, when I talk about gritty people, I talk about people who continue to work on it for a very long time. That time course, I think, of goal commitment does not come from like, Oh, I'm really good at suppressing my impulses or I have these tricks that I can play to, you know, delay gratification. I think it comes from a different place.
Speaker 5
14:24
And in part it comes from really caring in a way that resonates with your values and your deepest interests about what you're doing and the ability to overcome disappointment that really shakes your confidence. And all of those dynamics are maybe cousins of what goes on with self-control, but not exactly the same thing. And last thing I'll just say on that topic is that many of the grit paragons, I call them paragons of grit because to me, they just exemplify passion and perseverance for long-term goals. You know, some of them are walking around with diagnoses of ADHD, right?
Speaker 5
14:59
Like they're not especially good at reigning in their impulses or controlling their attention, but that doesn't mean that they can't have grit.
Speaker 4
15:09
Wow. I actually find that hugely relieving to hear because I really struggle with short-term impulse control. Like certainly when it comes to food sometimes, and you know, what, what, what, you know. I wasn't gonna ask
Speaker 5
15:22
for examples.
Speaker 4
15:24
But long-term, there is a sort of constancy to some things I'm truly passionate about. So it sounds like your definition of grit, that there are several words that are key to it. And 1 of them is long-term.
Speaker 4
15:36
You described it as the long-term pursuit of those things that you really care about, I think. Give me the more detailed definition of grit.
Speaker 5
15:47
Well, I'll trade you. I'll give you the more detailed definition of grit if you wouldn't mind elaborating, because I am really curious about how you came to have the goal that you have, but I'll go first. So grit is the perseverance and passion for long-term goals that I alluded to.
Speaker 5
16:08
More specifically, what perseverance looks like over stretches of years or decades is really 2 things. 1 is resilience in the face of obstacles and setbacks. So, you know, you don't get tenure and you go find your way at a different university or your first and second and third attempt at a startup are catastrophic failures and you're undaunted and you try for a fourth time, maybe in a different way, but you're still trying to build something. That's 1 kind of perseverance.
Speaker 5
16:40
It's kind of rising to the occasion perseverance. But the other kind of perseverance is like lowercase P perseverance. And I think this is less glamorous but just as essential and that is that people who are gritty tend to be working in a diligent daily way to improve. So I think this is the mundanity of excellence that a sociologist named Dan Chambliss wrote about.
Speaker 5
17:02
He stayed as a resident with swim teams at all levels, including Olympic hopefuls, but also the swim team around the corner. And what he said after a half decade of study is that when you really ask the question, what makes an Olympic athlete an Olympic athlete, it's mundane. It's this daily dedication to trying to improve in tiny, tiny ways to become better at the craft that you've devoted yourself to. So that's perseverance and more fine grain detail.
Speaker 5
17:31
And then passion, I think is a really a kind of a commitment that comes from having interest in what you do, which is itself fascinating because people have interests in, in things that I don't think people fully understand why. I mean, I'm interested in psychology and also I'm interested in food. I love words. Why?
Speaker 5
17:51
Why am I not interested in history? I don't know. Why did I not grow up to love art the way my mom does? I really don't know.
Speaker 5
17:59
But my interest is in psychology and then my values. I love kids, I really do. I care about them more than grownups and I think for me, my work has this passion because it's at the intersection of a few of my interests, psychology, writing, et cetera, and my values, like helping kids. And I think if you put all that together, you get a pretty complex portrait of what it means to be gritty and what leads to grit.
Speaker 5
18:24
And if you then start to ask yourself, like, oh, is that the same thing as being able to delay gratification when the second marshmallow is there, but you have to wait for it. Like you quickly realize that it can't quite be exactly the same thing.
Speaker 4
18:38
I mean, look, this goes to the fundamental riddle about your work, because I think the critique of your work, if I can summarize it, would be something like, Angela, it sounds like what you're saying is that kids fail because frankly, they're just not trying hard enough. They're not working hard enough. How tone deaf can you be?
Speaker 4
18:59
Do you have any idea what it's like for some of these kids? What if you grew up in a home where your parents didn't have any time to read with you or work with you? What if you woke up hungry? What if you came to school in a neighborhood where you felt unsafe?
Speaker 4
19:14
You know, how dare you focus on the individual instead of addressing structural issues? Yeah. That's just sort of an extreme version of the critique.
Speaker 5
19:23
Yeah, no, it's not that extreme, actually. I think it's pretty accurate. So this critique has been, I think, louder and louder in recent years.
Speaker 5
19:33
And I think that's partly because a society as a whole is kind of waking up to the inequalities and the unfairness that has been around for a very long time, you know, really all over the world, but certainly in the United States and then that would lead you to say well Why are you talking about, you know individual capabilities like grit and you know What an individual can do despite the odds That sounds like you're ignoring the odds and maybe undermining the greater good by diverting attention and energy and maybe even resources away from what we should be doing like, you know policy changes and scholarships and more than just scholarships, right? Like make the playing field even, don't celebrate the people who dug themselves out of a hole. And I think there's a legitimacy to that that I first want to just agree with. I think most social scientists are well aware that there is no mythic place where, you know, your life outcomes are just about your individual agency.
Speaker 5
20:36
And there's no such thing as societal inopportunity or factors or luck. I think those things are real. And in fact, I would just ask the gentle reader to come along 1 step farther in the logic, which is to say that, you know, I don't think of the individual and their situation as a tug of war, where, you know, if you say the individual matters, then you're saying the situation doesn't. Or if you're saying that the situation matters, you're saying that the individual doesn't.
Speaker 5
21:10
I think we need a different metaphor and the best 1 I've been able to come up with, it's like a dance. You know, I think I have an effect on my situation. Also, I think my situation has an effect on me. We dance with each other.
Speaker 5
21:22
And if there is a critique that says, hey, don't forget about the situation, that's legitimate. And if I need to say more loudly that I believe that that's important than I should.
Speaker 4
21:53
If you said that the key to grit is to, you know, to pursue over the longterm, the things that you really care about, does that imply that you need to know now what is worth caring about for the longterm? Because I think a lot of people, and I would include myself in some aspects of this, don't know really what the longterm should look like for them. So many of us have been brought up, especially in recent years, say since the 60s or whatever, to believe that passion is all that, you know, you are a special person, you have unique passions, you can be whoever you want to be, find those passions and pursue them and the world is your oyster.
Speaker 4
22:37
And that is wonderful in some ways because passion is actually, I heard you say, a key part of great, you need that passion to sort of pull you through. But if you don't know passion for what, you are lost.
Speaker 5
22:49
It's terrifying. I actually got a journal from a student who was graduating. It was a gift and on the cover was the famous quote by Joseph Campbell, follow your bliss.
Speaker 5
22:59
And I think it's terrifying because if you don't know what your passion is, then now you're really screwed, right? Like, Oh my God, like I, I would follow it, but now like, what do I do? And, and how do I even begin to quote unquote, find it? I think my thinking about this has really shifted or evolves.
Speaker 5
23:19
I don't know what the right way to describe it is, but when you look at somebody in the full maturity of their career, it looks like maybe there was a blueprint that was written. I think that is actually what I used to think maybe happened, you know, that at some point you write down all your goals, you draw lines between them so that your 1 year goals connect to your 5 year goals and your 5 year goals connect to your 10 year goals. And then you just execute. But I've since thought about this more.
Speaker 5
23:48
And I think the farthest anybody could really see into the myths of the future is probably like 2 or 3 years. And, um, what I think instead is that you have a kind of North star or a compass, you know, something directionally where you're like kids, psychological science, right? That's for me, you know, like, okay, if I'm navigating my professional life by some kind of compass, that constellation in the sky has to include kids and psychological science. And maybe it'll include writing.
Speaker 5
24:18
Cause I really love words. But I don't know the exact map. I don't know where I will be 9 years from now on this journey. But I can look maybe 2 or 3 years into this future.
Speaker 5
24:29
And I want to make sure that the 2 or 3 years that I've mapped out, the projects I've committed to, the grants that I've written, that these 2 to 3 year commitments are directionally aligned with those far off values and interests. So I think maybe I probably should find a better metaphor and maybe being on a journey with a constellation in the sky and just knowing that you have to plan out the next couple of years of your journey, maybe, right? Just so you can make some progress and not have no plan is better than what I used to say, which is like a pyramid of goals, right? And that sounds like you could write them all down.
Speaker 4
25:06
Yeah, so if you don't have a picture of what that long-term vision is and what your long-term passion might be or whatever, what are some other short-term things you can see that will help you take a step in the right direction, will help you know that I should work at taking this particular step right now rather than having another milkshake?
Speaker 5
25:34
I have 3 things to say. I guess you could call them, I have 3 recommendations. So 1 is conversation.
Speaker 5
25:40
Brian Grazer, the Hollywood producer, who I'm sure you know, I don't know, I think he must have set a world record for the number of Emmy and Oscar awards he's been nominated for. But he has this little trick that he's been using since he was a young man, a kind of like, you know, a nobody in Hollywood who's just trying to get in. And that is to have a curiosity conversation. And that is a conversation with somebody you don't know and whose work you're curious to learn more about.
Speaker 5
26:07
And he started doing this when he was in his twenties and he still does them today. It's kind of how I met him. He was like, do you want to have a curiosity conversation? And I said, well, I'm curious to know what a curiosity conversation is.
Speaker 5
26:18
Um, and I think if you're really struggling to figure out like what your constellation is and what direction to set off and you're paralyzed, just standing in 1 place, like a potted plant. Then I think a curiosity conversation of 15 or 20 minutes with somebody who you think, gosh, that sounds interesting. I wonder what it is like to be a product designer or a, you know, a midwife or a food writing editor, you know, just having those conversations I think can give you like a mental model of what that path would look like. And that can be helpful.
Speaker 5
26:50
The second thing I would recommend is a bit of reflection, right? Like now that you know that human beings can be motivated by many things, but I think the most enduring of our motives are tied to our interests and our values, then maybe you could write down in your journal or just take a walk and think about, you know, what are the things that interest you? And if you're having trouble thinking about that, then think about the things that are boring to you. Right.
Speaker 5
27:14
To me, it was like, Oh, I definitely do not want to become, uh, you know, anything to do with finance like that. I mean, I don't even know how much money I make. That's probably not a good idea. Um, what, what subjects did I hate in high school?
Speaker 5
27:26
Well, I didn't like history. Then that will probably lead you to like, by contrast, I really liked my class in neurobiology or math or whatever. So reflection is a second recommendation. But the third recommendation I think is the most important and that is to do anything.
Speaker 5
27:43
Yesterday I was on the phone with Luis Vaughn on, he's the founder of duo lingo, the language app and also MacArthur fellow and also the chair of my board for my nonprofit. And we were having a conversation about, you know, something that we had to do in this nonprofit that had to do with like setting a price. And he said, here's the most important thing. And I was like, what?
Speaker 5
28:02
And I literally had a pen in my hand. I was like, what? $18, like 40, like what? And he was like, just do something.
Speaker 5
28:09
You know, don't make the critical error of dithering for a year or 2 or 3 while you try to figure out the perfect next move, because whatever you do is probably deeply wrong. And you're going to learn a lifetime of knowledge when you make that wrong step, and then you'll correct it in the second step, and then you'll correct it again. So these 3 recommendations are conversation, reflection, and action. But I think the last 1 is so important, and I see very, very bright, wonderful people in their paralysis of not knowing what the quote-unquote right or best next step is like just doing nothing.
Speaker 5
28:47
And I think that's the critical error.
Speaker 4
28:49
I mean, perhaps you could even extend that and say just do anything that will build knowledge or give you some kind of tool or skill.
Speaker 5
28:59
Anything will build knowledge, right? The reason I think sometimes young people hesitate is they're like, well, I want to do the thing that's like I can learn a lot from,
Speaker 4
29:08
or
Speaker 5
29:08
the most from. I just want them to know that not making the phone call, not trying to do a summer internship, like that's a decision too, and then you learn nothing.
Speaker 4
29:17
Right, okay, so the bigger point I was gonna make was that the knowledge that all knowledge is connected, I think is not obvious. Some people think if I don't know what direction I'm going, I'm going to learn something that's going to be completely irrelevant. But it turns out some of the most surprising insights come from way outside the field that you think you're in.
Speaker 5
29:37
Like, I had a really boring summer once where I worked for my mom. She had a needlepoint store and I had to like take off these little stickers that said made in Taiwan off of these canvases. I hope that was legal.
Speaker 5
29:48
But anyway, that's all I did for an entire summer, hours and hours and hours of it. And I hated it. And I remember thinking at the time, like, what a waste, right? This is a waste.
Speaker 5
29:58
That wasn't a waste. I mean, first of all, I learned what I didn't want to do, right? And I, you know, started to like learn things about myself. Like, what do I do when I'm bored?
Speaker 5
30:06
Where does my mind go? So I think that knowledge is connected, Chris, and I think that's something that we have to remember. Nothing is wasted if you don't waste it.
Speaker 4
30:15
Yeah, and if you apply that to really painful experiences as well, it sort of gives some kind of healing, potentially, even eventually. Simon Sinek, in his podcast episode in this series, he answered a question, actually not from me, from someone in the audience who's recorded live, who asked a similar question. How do I find out my mission and my why?
Speaker 4
30:37
He said, go to a friend, a good friend, not a family member who's too close, but a friend, and just ask them, why are we friends? And don't stop until they give you a really thoughtful answer. Keep pushing them. What you will discover is what is special about you.
Speaker 4
30:54
I thought it was really interesting. I've never actually heard that exercise before.
Speaker 5
30:58
I haven't heard of it either, But there is something that is maybe related in spirit. Basically, you get people who know you. I think this also includes, you know, you can have your mother do it.
Speaker 5
31:09
But yeah, you want to like a broad, you know, circle of people just write about you. It's like your reflected best self. It by the way is a guaranteed tearjerker, right? But I think the idea is that we all need a mirror, right?
Speaker 5
31:22
You actually can't see yourself without a mirror, but then you can use your friends and your loved ones as that mirror. And then when you see your reflection in their gaze, you say, oh, I didn't know I was funny. Are you sure? Am I actually funny?
Speaker 5
31:35
Like, oh, I didn't know that you thought of me as an empathic person. And yeah, I think that's a it's a wonderful exercise to do.
Speaker 4
31:41
So connecting some of the dots here, I think what I'm hearing you say is that, you know, essential to grit is the notion of a sustained, a long-term series of actions in your life in pursuit of goals that you care about, but you do not have to know what the end goals are at the start of that journey.
Speaker 5
31:59
I think that's right. I think, I just wanna say 2 things, Chris. 1 is that young people can't know.
Speaker 5
32:04
Most of the people that I interview would say of their careers in the current position there that they didn't even know what that job title was. You know, like what is somebody who does logistics for hospital equipment, you know, in major, like, you know, you don't know that when you're 18 or 22 or, or so. So that's 1 thing I just want to say. And the second thing is just, I don't want to say that grid is the only thing that you need to be successful at the highest level, But I will stand by my claim that when people do great things, those great things take a very long time to do.
Speaker 5
32:37
And they're very, very hard. And you don't get there by being a dilettante. And you don't get there without that steadfast and unsung sometimes effort that you're investing daily without end.
Speaker 4
32:53
So actually, you asked me, you know, how I got to, you know, running Ted after presumably years and years and years of dreaming about how to share ideas
Speaker 5
33:06
more effectively around the world.
Speaker 4
33:08
Well there weren't years and years of dreaming how to share ideas effectively around the world. That is the whole thing. I had no idea I was gonna end up in anything like Ted.
Speaker 4
33:18
You know, I grew up as a child of missionaries, Christian missionaries, who certainly, you know, their whole conviction in life was that our purpose here was to work for something bigger than we are. And I lost belief in that world in my twenties or in that worldview. And I spent most of my twenties and thirties in terms of the really deep long-term goals, not knowing. Like I didn't-
Speaker 5
33:47
What were you doing? Like- So I was an entrepreneur. You know, I
Speaker 4
33:50
got really excited about computers and about the fact that it was possible to produce magazines cheaply. And I started my own computer magazine company. And actually there's a story here that goes to grit because I still have this riddle of where grit comes from.
Speaker 4
34:07
So let me connect a few of these dots and I want to come back to 1 particular story. So I spent 15 years just building a successful media company. It was in course of that, that I bumped into TED, went to it, it was a conference at the time, and I just fell in love with it. I sort of couldn't imagine how a four-day experience could be so moving and so inspiring.
Speaker 4
34:27
And I started to think about how all knowledge is connected and that this was bringing knowledge from lots of different fields and they were connecting together. And then I had a chance as an entrepreneur to buy it. And then like technology came along and made it possible to share it with the world. That suddenly seemed like the right things to do.
Speaker 4
34:42
So the different pieces of the journey kind of came along as surprises. I suppose there was an underpinning long-term desire to want to find the thing I could do that was bigger than I was. It goes back to you don't have to know. You don't have to know what the long-term thing is.
Speaker 4
35:02
You have to have some kind of desire to find, I don't know, to find a life of what? A value, of meaning, of interest, of passion at some point and be willing to work in whatever way you can to get there, is that fair?
Speaker 5
35:18
I think that is fair. I think the idea of passion, when I think of grit, isn't that you figured it all out, that you have all the answers, that you have a blueprint or a roadmap, but you do have a desire, you have a craving. And when I went to graduate school, when I was 32, I said to my husband, don't let me quit for 10 years.
Speaker 5
35:38
I literally said that to him aloud. Why did I say that? Why did I say that aloud to my husband plaintively, you know, please don't let me quit. I had a craving, I had a desire to be deeply into something.
Speaker 5
35:53
I hoped it was going to be psychology because I was like, well, I'm 32, I'm not gonna live forever. I don't get that many chances, you know, to take a long run at something. But I think that more important than having it all figured out, knowing where you're at, is having a desire to maybe in your case, in your words, you know, to do something and be part of something larger than yourself. For me, it was like I had a craving after 10 years of doing lots of different things.
Speaker 5
36:19
I had a craving for depth and I wanted to become excellent and useful in a deeper way than I had in anything I had done before.
Speaker 4
36:32
So let me tell you the 1 story that happened in my own entrepreneurial journey because it goes to a question I've asked myself many, many times. So about 3 years into the magazine publishing business I was starting, We gambled a lot. Pretty much bet the company on a big launch for these new computers that were coming out.
Speaker 4
36:52
They suddenly had much higher resolution graphics and much better games. And to give it a chance, I had to go out personally and meet with all the key advertisers in that market to beg their support. We were using new desktop publishing technology for the first time. And the first issue came back from the printer and I just, it broke my heart.
Speaker 4
37:13
It was a disaster. It was, it was, it was awful. It just looked awful. We had tried to design on screens, turned out to be much harder than we had realized.
Speaker 4
37:25
And I can't describe to you how sick I felt. I thought we'd completely blown it. I definitely wept. Our chief designer saw me slam my head against the desk.
Speaker 4
37:32
I was just so upset and angry about it. And it felt like psychologically, it felt like I was breaking at that moment. And the difference between kind of giving up at that point and fighting it was really fragile. It was like on a hair, a little bit of different biochemistry or a little bit of something and we were done and the company would probably never happen and you and I wouldn't be talking today because none of the rest of this would have happened.
Speaker 4
38:00
But somehow I started getting really angry and determined. I decided for the next 3 weeks, I was gonna cycle to work. It was like a 12 mile cycle up and down hills. And I sort of had to call every 1 of these advertisers and tell them, I'm so sorry, we screwed up.
Speaker 4
38:16
It's not great. I promise you, we are going to make it great. And it was really hard, but it amazingly, eventually with the whole team pulling together, whatever, it worked, in the end became the key economic driver that allowed the company to thrive and paved the way for a lot of other things. So the point is there was a moment where determination or not determination determined huge things in my own future.
Speaker 4
38:41
Where did that come from? Like this probably sounds like a terribly boasty story. Honestly, genuinely, it's not meant to be. Like somehow, like was this something that was in my genes?
Speaker 4
38:54
Was this something I had learned from my parents seeing them work themselves to the bone? Were there previous examples in my childhood where I'd seen that if you showed persistence, it would work, that gave me confidence and just enough self-belief to try. I don't know. What I do know is that since that event, that every other tough challenge in the company since then faded into insignificance relative to that, because I knew what empty felt like.
Speaker 5
39:22
And you knew that it didn't defeat you.
Speaker 4
39:24
Yeah, but I mean, look, this goes to the fundamental riddle about your work, because I think if it's true, and It seems like you've presented such compelling evidence that grit is even more important than IQ and many other sort of psychological traits that people have used to try and correlate with long-term success. All the more reason to ask the next huge question, okay, how do we build grit? Let's recognize, let's fully accept that this is a deeply unfair playing field in 1 sense.
Speaker 4
39:55
Everyone's coming to it from a different point. What are the different things that cause grit and can build grit.
Speaker 5
40:04
So 1 thing is I think it's important to recognize that for certain outcomes, right? Like getting through the highest attrition periods of West Point, that grit is more important than your measured IQ, at least as a proxy, we have standardized tests or your measured physical ability. Yes, in certain circumstances where the challenges are really high and the domain is really meaningful, I do think that passion and perseverance for long-term goals can be a more important predictor than measures of ability.
Speaker 5
40:39
But for others, it is not more important and I don't want to paint with too broad a brushstroke. So apologies for going backwards for that.
Speaker 4
40:46
No, no,
Speaker 5
40:46
this is great.
Speaker 4
40:47
By the way, this is 1 reason why we introduced the TED interview.
Speaker 5
40:50
This format allows you to do that, right? It allows us a little more,
Speaker 4
40:53
you know, an hour is longer than 18 minutes or 12 minutes.
Speaker 5
40:57
Yes, apparently.
Speaker 4
40:58
We can go into a little more nuance, which is great. And so I guess in that regard, a key question I'd ask you is this, is grit more like height or like weight? Height, most of us can't do anything about.
Speaker 4
41:14
I guess Some people can be stunted if they're really starved, but basically you can't do much about your height. Weight, many of us have a battle with. We can do something about it, but some people are dealt a crueler hand than others, shall we say. It's more like weight than height.
Speaker 5
41:33
Connecting back to your story of a low, a real low, and the publication of this magazine that looked like hell, on which you bet the whole house. There are so many ways in which you would want to understand why it is that on that knife edge, your anguish turned to anger and that doesn't happen for everyone, right? For other people, the anguish could lead to giving up, right?
Speaker 5
42:01
And I think this does tie in, all knowledge is connected, to your question about height and weight and circumstance and individual agency, in that if I want to understand why you curled your hands into fists and said, you know, I'll show you in so many words. I think that's the most frequent thing that I hear in my interviews with high achievers is that when they tell a story like this, they had an anger response that was, you know, some mix of defiance and you're not even necessarily angry at the world, you're kind of angry at yourself, but you have a kind of like, I'll prove you wrong, like, just give me a chance, like here, I'm gonna rectify things. So if I have that right, then I want to understand why it is. And this gets to, um, you know, situations and individuals.
Speaker 5
42:54
My guess is that in your life partly, or even largely without your doing, you had a series of experiences that gave you confidence that you could really do something. And that, if anything, should just amplify our sense of urgency in like giving all kids the kind of life experiences and life opportunities to give them the message that like, you know what? You can be down, but you're not out and you could have screwed up and it's not the end of the story. So I know I haven't quite answered your height versus weight, um, multiple choice question, but I did want to get in my opinion on some of the things that you said.
Speaker 4
43:32
So go ahead and answer the height. But like if you had to pick 1, is it more like height or weight?
Speaker 5
43:41
It was more like height or weight. And you wanna say that height is something you can't change very much and weight is something you can.
Speaker 4
43:50
I hope I'm not
Speaker 5
43:50
offending anyone
Speaker 4
43:51
by that.
Speaker 5
43:52
It's more like weight. It feels like that's true.
Speaker 4
43:54
Well, I mean,
Speaker 5
43:54
you know, in my head I'm thinking about the fact that like, you know, I'm thinking about nature versus nurture and height is not entirely, people sometimes think of height as being like all in your genes, right? Like, what are you going to do? Like, how can you will yourself to get taller?
Speaker 5
44:09
So first of all, let me just answer your question. Weight. I choose weight, right? But I just want to say that both height and weight are products of your genes and your environment.
Speaker 5
44:18
And the reason why people are taller today than they were a hundred years ago across all countries is not because our genes have changed. It's because we have better nutrition and other features like medicine. So it's complicated. That's why you're not in the middle of a eight-minute Ted Talk.
Speaker 5
44:34
You're in the middle of a one-hour conversation. But I chose weight because, Chris, height, it is true that it's a product of environment and genes. However, you can't change your height after a certain age. And I have long wanted to be taller than 5'1", but that's not a realistic goal for me at age 50.
Speaker 5
44:57
My weight, I do have the ability to move up and down at any age. And I think that personality and character, and grit included, are more like weight than height in that whether you're, you know,
Speaker 1
45:11
14, 24, 54,
Speaker 5
45:13
or 84, there's still the possibility of intentionally actually moving up or down those aspects of your character or personality that you care about.
Speaker 4
45:24
So, weight, obviously, there are famous interventions that include diet, exercise. I would love to explore with you what the equivalent of those are for grit. And perhaps 1 place to start is just to ask you about this term, growth mindset.
Speaker 4
45:42
What is that? Because if I understand it right, it's alleged that the injection of a single belief into a kid's mind actually might make a meaningful difference in to their level of grip.
Speaker 5
45:55
It's an academic concept that Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychologist has been working on really for her whole professional career. And it's the idea that you have beliefs that drive your motivation and your behavior. And of course, we have lots of beliefs, you know, do I believe most people are good?
Speaker 5
46:12
Do I believe most people are bad? Do I believe that human abilities are malleable? That's growth mindset. Or do I believe that they are fixed?
Speaker 5
46:24
That's a fixed mindset. We have lots of beliefs. Why is it that the popular imagination has taken hold of this 1 belief that Carol Dweck has been studying. I think it's because it's a very high leverage belief.
Speaker 5
46:36
I don't want to oversell it. It's not the only thing that matters. The miracles don't happen when you do a growth mindset intervention, but there are measurable changes in motivation and outcomes. For example, David Yeager is a, you know, brilliant developmental psychologist who was a student of Carol Dweck's, led a team of scientists, randomly assigned ninth graders to 2 conditions.
Speaker 5
47:01
There was a condition where these ninth graders all across the country learned that the brain actually is malleable, that neuroscience confirms that the brain can change, and therefore, there's good reason to think that you could get smarter. The alternative condition was not a fixed mindset condition. I think that would have been unethical, but just a placebo control about, you know, the brain, et cetera. So in this study, if you follow these ninth graders over the course of the school year, you find out that there is a small but measurable difference between the grades of the ninth graders who learned about growth mindset and the ninth graders who didn't.
Speaker 5
47:38
And that's experimental evidence suggesting that this belief about human nature has causal impact on motivation and outcomes, you know, academic performance, but there's a big, but right. The effects are not huge. I mean, it's not like, Oh, all the kids need is a, you know, 2 class period growth mindset intervention, and then miracles happen and you know, everything else doesn't matter anymore. So the effects are small and they are really dependent on the school context.
Speaker 5
48:10
So again, getting back to our context, our situation, things outside of ourselves in the schools, where there was a norm of challenge seeking, which I can say more about how that was measured, that's where the influence of the intervention was greatest. And in the schools where that was not the norm, that kids were not typically embracing risk and challenge and trying to do hard things, even if it meant that they were going to make mistakes and maybe not look so smart. Those schools did not see a great benefit of the intervention. So growth mindset is, I think, important.
Speaker 5
48:45
It does have influence on our motivation to do things that are hard. It's reciprocally correlated with grit, meaning that if I measure growth mindset and grit at multiple time periods, I can see a virtuous cycle where young people who have more of a growth mindset later develop more grit, who then later develop more growth mindset and so on and so on. But I don't want to oversell.
Speaker 4
49:09
I mean that possibility of self-reinforcement sounds plausible to me. I mean if you're right that both you and I have benefited from prior experience building our confidence for the really tougher experiences. You could easily see that the right time to measure the impact of growth mindset is not a year later, but it might, it might be 7 years later after someone's been through several cycles of actually saying, wow, this really does apply to me.
Speaker 5
49:39
So I think that the way to think about growth mindset and grit and this virtuous cycle is that under certain circumstances, you can absolutely see how, you know, that little bit of confidence is going to get you to try a little bit harder, raise your hand, ask a question, try 5 minutes longer on that problem that makes you feel stupid. You know, you'll see the fruits of that labor, which will incline you to be just a little more confident the next time and so on, but you don't exist in a vacuum. And when your teacher says to you, you know what, I'm really excited that you struggled a little longer today in class.
Speaker 5
50:13
I noticed that I'm so glad you asked a question that makes a difference. If the teacher doesn't say that, that makes a difference. So yes to virtuous cycles, but human beings and their circumstances exist in a dance and they are always dancing with each other. So we should keep that in mind and not then come to conclusions like, you know, 2 class periods of intervention are going to, you know, solve all the problems in the world.
Speaker 4
50:38
Angela, you set up this thing called the Character Lab. Tell us what that is.
Speaker 5
50:43
So Character Lab is a non-profit that these 2 educators and I created, we do 2 things. We help scientists like Carol Dweck run experiments and surveys with students in schools all over the country. So we're trying to advance the science of how kids thrive.
Speaker 5
51:00
And the second thing we do is we try to give it away. So if you go to character lab dot org, you can see what scientists have written in their own words as advice for parents and educators who feel like they need a little guidance in in helping kids develop ways of being with each other, ways of thinking, and ways of reaching their goals that aren't things that we all are born knowing, but we need a little guidance in. Can you
Speaker 4
51:26
give us some practical examples of what a teacher or a parent could do to help that, you know, that child obtain greater grit.
Speaker 5
51:39
So every week at Character Lab, there's a tip that is written by scientists. Often that scientist is me, but increasingly, mercifully, it's not me. There's a tip with actionable advice based on a scientific study.
Speaker 5
51:52
And, uh, this week, Julia Leonard wrote a tip. She's, um, a soon to be professor at Yale. And her study was about how when a young child is struggling with a really hard thing, you know, puzzle, they can't put together a homework assignment, maybe as they get older that they, they really can't get it right. Right.
Speaker 5
52:11
Like what do you do when your child struggles in her study? What she finds is that many parents instinctively, reflexively, and immediately intervene, you know, like, Oh, you can't solve that. I'll solve it for you. Like you can't reach that.
Speaker 5
52:25
I'll reach it for you. You know, you can't get it right. I'll get it right for you. And what she finds is that leads to lower perseverance.
Speaker 5
52:34
And so the message to parents is get out of the way, you know, or just hit the pause button, right? Like if you find it hard to watch your beloved daughter or son, have a little bit of frustration, disappointment, uncertainty, then just wait a little longer than you might otherwise be inclined to do because they need to figure out, first of all, that struggling isn't the end of the world. There's nothing bad about it necessarily. And they need to solve some of their own problems, and they need to learn, you know, both from things that are, you know, going well, but also from things that are not going so well.
Speaker 5
53:10
So that is an example of the sort of thing that I think science has to say now to parents, that these parents may not have known, and also that we didn't know as a scientific community until recently.
Speaker 4
53:23
Are there any specific books that a young kid could be encouraged to read that sort of almost sort of show, I don't know, grit and action in an inspiring way or that you've seen to be effective?
Speaker 5
53:38
1 of the books I read recently, and I just loved it, it was by our good friend Adam Grant and his wife, it's called Leaf and the Fall, and it's about a little leaf who learns about persistence. I won't give away the plot line or the punch line, but I highly recommend it.
Speaker 4
53:55
I mean, there are so many cultural references to this. It's as if, at some level, society feels an important urge that this message has to be instilled in kids. I was thinking of Jimmy Cliff's wonderful song, You Can Get It If You Really Want, and you know, there's, but you must try.
Speaker 4
54:13
And try,
Speaker 5
54:14
and try. Can we actually edge in a little bit of luck here because there is a complaint about this grit narrative that says, wait a second, what about luck? What about good luck?
Speaker 5
54:27
And what about bad luck? How many things in our lives, the person that we ended up marrying, you know, Ted, you know, my work, you know, the fact that I have the 2 daughters that I have, and I don't have, I don't know, 2 sons or 0 children, like how much of that is luck, good and bad? And I think that's a very important thing to think about because I don't know what you think about that. I 100% agree.
Speaker 4
54:54
You know, there's this sort of classic, I would say, American narrative that, you know, the American dream is you work hard and you can achieve, you know, whatever you're willing to work yourself to do. And at some level, there may be truth to it, but where does that desire to work come from? It itself is luck.
Speaker 4
55:15
And so it's not just the individual circumstances that we go through in this life. It's the hand that we're dealt. You know, no 1 chooses their own parents or their own upbringing. It's that there's nonetheless an important distinction.
Speaker 4
55:29
It's the distinction you made between height and weight, Angela, which is nonetheless, what are the things that we can attend to now that will actually give us more grit? So what are some other of those things? Like talk to us as adults. What is something that someone can do to build habits that will help them be more determined, exercise, if you like, the control of their reflective mind over their lizard brain?
Speaker 5
55:56
Nonetheless would be a great book title. You know, nonetheless, right? Like, yes, there's circumstance and there is luck and there are things that you cannot see into the future That will happen to you that are gonna dramatically Influence what happens to your life?
Speaker 5
56:16
Nonetheless, I I think that if you recognize the enormous power of luck, you don't curl up into a little ball and do nothing. I think actually it might make you lean harder into, you know, what you can do because you also recognize that that's not a complete picture. The human mind is not very good at taking in lots of things at once. When you focus on luck, people worry that you won't remember that you can do something.
Speaker 5
56:43
When you talk about that, people can do something. Many other people worry that you're neglecting luck and the situation. I think we should try to step back far enough that we can see the big picture. We can say, yes, there's luck, good and bad.
Speaker 5
56:58
Yes, there are circumstances and structural problems and opportunities. Yes, there's individual agency, but if you see the big picture, I think you are not only gritty as opposed to the opposite, but I think as you say, you are more generous and more humble because you recognize that you don't really know everything that's going on in another person's life or your own. And, and actually I think that perspective may be the most important thing to, you know, really developing character and all of its facets Because when you see the big picture of this, complex tableau, that is the human predicament, right? All of us here trying to do our best and not really knowing what's gonna happen, bumping into each other, living in societal structures that we inherited from our forebears, it makes you, I think, a little more human.
Speaker 5
57:51
And to me, it's not a pessimistic view, and it's certainly not 1 that leads to, like, a nihilistic, well, I'll just go home and do nothing. I think quite the opposite.
Speaker 4
58:01
Angel, I could talk with you about this for hours and hours. Thank you so much for this conversation with us and for the work that you've done. It's so, so interesting and important.
Speaker 4
58:11
ANGELA DUCKWORTH-LONGBOTTOM
Speaker 5
58:11
Chris, I loved the ability to have a conversation of this length with you, and I hope it is not our last 1.
Speaker 4
58:18
Angela Duckworth, thank you so much.
Speaker 2
58:25
Okay, so that was Angela Lee Duckworth. Now obviously there was so much more we could have discussed. And so just to close out on that final question, if you want to learn more about how to cultivate grit, Angela's organization, Character Lab, at characterlab.com is worth a visit.
Speaker 2
58:43
That's characterlab.com. Every week, she and her team post tips and resources about grit and how to teach it to others. If you'd like to cultivate grit in yourself, I'd really encourage you to check out a book by Carol Dweck, who Angela and I discussed earlier. Carol's focus is on the growth mindset, which is such a key element in this quality of grittiness.
Speaker 2
59:06
So that book is called Mindset, the New Psychology of Success. Now look, I always love hearing what you think. If you have any feedback on this show or ideas for future guests, you can write to me directly at tedchris at ted.com. That's T-E-D-C-H-R-I-S at ted.com.
Speaker 2
59:28
I will read every 1 of those emails. I'd also encourage you to submit reviews to Apple Podcasts or wherever else you listen. The TED Interview is part of the TED Audio Collective, a collection of podcasts dedicated to sparking curiosity and sharing ideas that matter. The show is produced by Kim Naderfain-Peterser and edited by Grace Rubinstein and Sheila Orfano.
Speaker 2
59:51
Our mixer is Sam Bear, fact check is by Paul Durbin, and special thanks to Michelle Quint, Colin Helms, Nicole Bode, and Anna Phelan. Thank you for listening. See you next time.
Omnivision Solutions Ltd