12 ms·

Is grit the true secret of success?

84 points by sgift 10y ago

paublyrne 10y ago
Of course. Being born in a country with economic and educational advantages helps though. Being born into a family whose socio economic circumstances means you grow up expecting to be successful helps even more.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Havoc 10y ago
  > Being born in a country with economic and educational advantages helps though. Helps, but not necessary. Hell I've got a decent number of Zimbabweans on my team at work.
  - SEJeff 10y ago
    And let me guess, each of them demonstrates "grit" and is extremely hard working/driven?
    - Havoc 10y ago
      >And let me guess, each of them demonstrates "grit" and is extremely hard working/driven? Not particularly so. Seems to me that there is a threshold of grit needed - that opens a lot of doors (incl 3rd world > 1st world moves) but beyond that its got diminishing returns. My point is that the lottery of birthplace does matter but its not an automatic show-stopper.
Madmallard 10y ago
The most successful are generally the most resilient genetically. Nothing unreasonable about that. They also generally are the most intelligent or at least capable of problem solving and have symmetrical faces. Nothing really wrong with this except we're all lied to saying when someone is pretty they're usually crazy and things like that. It's all bullshit!
- KhalilK 10y ago
  Although you're not the first to offer a (not-so-eloquent) genetic explanation of economic success, you are definitely the first person I came across being told "when someone is pretty they're usually crazy" which makes it a moot point.
not_a_terrorist 10y ago
Grit and perseverence, however you call them, are important aspects to success, but not THE secret to success. If you look at the subset of people who enjoy "success" in life, a large number of them will display those qualitites, no doubt. But some of them could have attained it by sheer luck, filial connections, or others. Now, if you look at the complementary subset (people who do not enjoy "success" in life), I guarantee you will find plenty of gritee people in there, in addition to people who display personal qualities not conducive to success (which by no mean excludes them from enjoying success in live, given the proper circumstances - see previous paragraph). That's the aspect I do not enjoy about those "secret to success stories: no one ever considers the people who did everthing rigth, but did not succeed. It happen much more often than we think. No one cares for the losers, whatever the cause, alas. This is the 'survivorship paradox' described by Cicero... Taleb called it the Silent cemetary evidence. One more aspect, if I may: when can one determine someone else is a "success", or a "failure"? People certainly are entitled to more than one shot at success, and negative results are certainly a valid way to pinpoint your path towards success. So, grit is not THE secret path to success, but if your goal is to be successful, then internalising a gritee spirit certainly demultiply the possibilities to enjoy success.
- thewarrior 10y ago
  Do you have any examples of such people ? Either from your peer group or other well known people ? Just genuinely curious.
  - chongli 10y ago
    The problem with identifying such people is that we can usually point to some tangible cause of failure. I think it's more useful to analyze the traits common to most successful people: * Not being born into extreme poverty * Having a basic education (not many successful illiterate people) * Having access to at least one strong connection * Having "true grit", whatever that means * Discovering an available niche
    - manyxcxi 10y ago
marincounty 10y ago
As I age, my definition of success is changing. So much--I have a hard time reading these articles. I've learned this, if you succeeded in life, look into your ethics/morality folder. I bet those files needs some gritty work. Or, maybe not? I don't want to argue. My shingles are killing my torso, and the emergency room doctor didn't offer any pain killers. Why--he just didn't give a dam, or erroneously thought I fit the definition of a drug seeking individual?
ThomPete 10y ago
No. Luck and network is. It's the only defining factor that can't be trained. Lucky beats smart. And if you take most of the really big successes like Facebook, Google etc. they where successful were a bunch of other people with equal grit and talent werent. Many many people have grit and perseverence. Many people have talent, business understanding, good timing, excellent understanding of product and so on. And of course the more you play the game the better chance of success (statistically) But when all is said and done unless we are talking about crony capitalism where you use political control to ensure success. Luck and network are the single most defining factors of why some are successful and others are not IMO.
- MarkMc 10y ago
  You say "luck and network", I say "grit". I'm curious to know if there is some experiment we could perform that we both agree could settle the matter? For example, imagine we assign 'grit' ratings to students who finish high school. Later we find that students with high grit scores tend to complete a university degree much more often than those with low grit scores. Would that change your mind about the importance of grit?
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    If you read the biographies of famous British people, you soon get used to reading that X or Y did okay/miserably at Oxford or Cambridge, but one day as they happened to bump into A or B who knew them from Oxford or Cambridge who said "I'm looking for someone to do something. Do you want to have a go?" In the US, we already know from numerous surveys that after the first graduate intake, most software hires are made by personal recommendation - which is obviously going to exclude anyone who isn't part of a network. So those are two examples of the value of networks. As for "grit" - what does the word even mean? If someone gambles everything in startups and loses everything three times in a row before giving up, do they have grit or not?
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    Many people have grit, not all of them are successful. Some people don't have grit yet are still successful. So obviously grit isn't the unifying thing that leads to success. High Schools and Universities are by no metrics a measurement for success. And if you want to make them that you can start with the luck of whether you are born with rich parents or poor parents. Of course grit is good to have, but it's not what define success.
yason 10y ago
The secret of success could very well be first defining success.
- visarga 10y ago
  How many pop psychology article authors are millionaires? If the writer of the article actually had the "secret to success" they would have been doing that instead of writing pop-psychology articles. There are even those who write articles titled "How to become rich like Mark Zuckeberg" or "How to raise the next M Z" (http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-raise-the-next-mark-zuckerberg-1462155391 http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-raise-the-next-mark-zucke...)
DenisM 10y ago
This has completely closed the question for me: http://dilbert.com/strip/2012-11-20 http://dilbert.com/strip/2012-11-20
- 77pt77 10y ago
  It's almost as if all these articles boil down to: "They key to success is being successful but in other words."
davekinkead 10y ago
What ever happened to the 7 habits? http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/7-habits-of-highly-successful-people http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/7-habits-of-highly-succes...
- awinter-py 10y ago
  7 plus or minus 2? That would be easier to remember.
- visarga 10y ago
  That's wrong. Anyone knows that internet lists have to be 10 items long. Three qualities are missing.
votr 10y ago
My anecdata across about a dozen points suggests it's network.
parenthephobia 10y ago
A paper by the author in "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology": https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/Grit%20JPSP.pdf https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/Grit%20JPSP.pdf There is some misinterpretation of what Duckworth is claiming. Her paper doesn't examine whether success is due to intrinsic or extrinsic aspects - whether luck is more important than grit - nor does it really examine the causes of success. Her conclusion is "successful people have grit". Not that unsuccessful people don't have grit. Not that all people with grit are successful. Not that grit is the sole determining factor in success. Just that of the intrinsic attributes of successful people she examined, grit was common to all of them. i.e. Some successful people are intelligent, but many aren't. Some successful people have an innate talent for the thing they are doing (however we define that), but many don't. All of them have grit. Grit, here, is defined as "perseverance and passion for long-term goals". It borders on the obvious that people who are successful have perseverance and passion. But it also borders on the obvious that merely having perseverance and passion isn't enough to guarantee success.
awinter-py 10y ago
the hole in this argument is that you need to know what to work hard on. the psych studies about 'praise kids for their work not their brains' seem legit as a way to improve test performance but school is scripted. In the real world success is based on how you navigate without a script, and persistence matters there but correct choices also matter. Given an oracle that gives perfect advice of course hard work is the largest factor. That's the experiment being done in the test performance psych studies. The 'deliberate practice' papers capture this best. The 'practice' half is hard work, but the 'deliberate' half is the ability to plan and analyze your training to advance your skills. With music or sports a coach can help you. With product, business or war (fields requiring strategy because the rules are ever-changing) not so much.
- awinter-py 10y ago
  My favorite research on this topic is the 'fewer rules' study. I think it claims that families average 6 rules for children (bedtime etc) and having 2 or less is predictive for the children doing creative work as adults. Cited here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/opinion/sunday/how-to-raise-a-creative-child-step-one-back-off.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/opinion/sunday/how-to-rais... Paywalled article here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2162-6057.1989.tb00700.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2162-6057.1989....
  - visarga 10y ago
    That's interesting. I have a daughter like that, she practically raises herself. On the other hand, I have another daughter who is extremely problematic and not even 1000 rules will suffice for her to behave.
- visarga 10y ago
  > 'praise kids for their work not their brains' This can also be a veiled tendency of manipulation. "You worked hard!" means "I am pleased you worked hard!" or "I will not be pleased if you don't work as hard in the future!" and this can have negative consequences as the kid realizes they are captive to your criteria.
iofj 10y ago
Success imho is the art of not fucking up any single aspect of what you're doing, plus doing some aspect really well. You can have a "lifestyle" (meaning you do pretty well, but not exceptional) job/business/... by simply not fucking up any of it. Grit is like this : fuck it up and you're dead in the water, but you'll be fine at "normal" grit if you excel somewhere else. Exceptional grit is useless, counterproductive even, when for example market fit is not there at all. Or when the required knowledge simply isn't there. The one exception I've seen in practice is that on rare occasions a particular combination of skills was a necessity to achieve exceptional success. But it sort of looks like equivalent to winning the lottery. It's never an obvious combination of skills that works like this, it's something stupid that you wouldn't normally combine, and that's exactly why it works. But there are a huge number of possible combinations, most are not worth anything exceptional.
pcmaffey 10y ago
TLDR; Our ability to not give up is the key to not giving up.
mwfunk 10y ago
I've always thought of it more like, there are some qualities that are conducive to success (like not giving up when things don't go your way), and there are qualities that make success less likely (illiteracy, poverty, geography, etc.), and of course there's an element of luck (the effect of which can be minimized with perseverance and continuous personal growth, but never fully eliminated). But in general, the only people who claim to have a secret to success are those selling books about it. :) In fairness, the preceding paragraph would make a terrible name for a self-help book, so I can't really blame publishers either, which is why it's nice to have places like HN to talk about stuff like this.
- mwfunk 10y ago
  ...and it goes without saying that the word "success" is being used here as shorthand for "making lots of money", which is only one form of success and not the most important one in the grand scheme of things.
- visarga 10y ago
  Success in work is just half the problem. There is also success in relationships, and that also depends on personality and standards of selection.
Balgair 10y ago
The rule of headlines aside, a lot of commenters are talking about survivorship bias with this. I think the best example of luck and grit is the Hass Avocado: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hass_avocado#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hass_avocado#History Hass was incredibly lucky to get that cultivar. From the seed growing at all, to being told to leave it be, to his children liking the taste, etc. Many many other growers at the Model Grocery Store were just as gritty and saw no real success in the Depression. He played his cards pretty well, all things considered, yet still died of a heart attack in 1952, the year his patent on the tree ran out. He was very very lucky, was pretty gritty, and still was a postman his whole life mostly by his own choice. He wanted a simple life and got one. I doubt he would have been so fortunate if lady luck had not smiled upon him.
visarga 10y ago
Grit + Smarts + Luck
unabst 10y ago
Traits such as grit, hard work, determination, and luck are not the secret. They are the obvious ingredients. But grit, hard work, and determination are also redundant for someone who possesses immense passion. Passion will make you gritty, hard working, and determined. It will keep you focused, and keep your mind on topic. Luck is also redundant because it is unscientific and untraceable (it is metaphysical). In hindsight we love to say the stars aligned or that miracles happened, but from the perspective of the do-er, none of it really matters because you never count on luck. As an entrepreneur, you pay to roll the dice, and you simply continue to roll it until you get what you need, praying you'll get enough tries. An outsider may say you were determined and that you got lucky, but no. You were passionate, and just kept trying because you had no other choice. If anything, to not have a choice is the secret to success. Determined as in determinism, not emotion. Successful people were bound to be successful. My father used to administer for a school which he was no longer proud to be a part of. He had a proposal for a new school and sent it to some people. Miraculously, he finds a sponsor, and his dream comes true. He tells me how lucky he was and how that event saved his life. But to that I say, "Well, who else was able to build a school from scratch, let alone an international school in Tokyo?" He may have been lucky, but he was also probably the only person standing on Earth that could have done what he could. He is passionate about education. Needless to say, he succeeded. http://newis.ed.jp/ http://newis.ed.jp/ My father is not an entrepreneur. But he had what it took to make things happen. And that's the secret to success. It's the ability to make things happen.
jrbapna 10y ago
Grit is just one quality of a good executer. Grit with poor execution doesn't yield results. Grit is not the secret to success, execution is.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  And even ability to execute won't help you without the right social network. It is extremely rare to see an actual individual being really successful. Most of the time, they are or were part of a company. This is because a person can only devote so much time and skill into anything. And making the right connection is a matter of place (Ivy League anyone?), time (gold rush is good, recession is bad), interpersonal skills and finally luck.
  - jrbapna 10y ago
    Good executors do whatever it takes to get them where they need to go. If the right social network is important to their success they make it happen. There are many exceptions to this rule that make this difficult (born into poverty or third world country, etc) but the great majority of people who complain, at least in the US, spend their evenings at happy hours and their weekends at the football game. You can't do that and then blame it on luck or bad circumstance. I work with hundreds of "entreprneurs" that spend weeks and months obsessing over logo design and color and UX, when they have zero customers at their door. Execution is a skill, it can be learned, and 99% of people just don't have it.
damptowel 10y ago
Most of my 'succesful' peers seem to take the path of least resistance. I never feel fulfilled unless I'm doing things the hard way, to the point of self-sabotage.
mrmondo 10y ago
Interesting write up, to me clearly 'grit' is not 'the' answer but it certainly is either a component or proponent for at least some people.
Futurebot 10y ago
The much touted ‘character hypothesis’ (which has become a staple of a lot of modern intellectual discourse around success, often heard from writers like Malcolm Gladwell and Paul Tough) is very useful, and speaks to an understanding of the greatly changed nature of success in the post-Industrial era. However, I think the qualities associated with that hypothesis should only be considered necessary, but not sufficient. To review, here is a list of qualities generally associated with it: persistence determination self-control / the ability to delay gratification abstention from substance use curiosity conscientiousness self-confidence (occasionally) emotional intelligence good communication skills and a willingness to listen grit I’d personally add to the list ‘the willingness to always learn’ (i.e., be a dedicated autodidact for life.) Based on what we’ve seen over the past ten years, especially with things like ‘the gig economy’ and our ‘free agent nation’, this hypothesis (perhaps model) holds up well. So what else is necessary? One or more of the following: a strong personal safety net (savings and/or relatives and friends to fall back on) good credentials a strong personal / professional network These last three are exactly the ones that are generally not available to those who need them most, even if they have all the qualities of the first list (you could also substitute ‘incredible luck’ for these three.) The idea that “men of enterprise are practically assured of success” is the kind of beautiful, romantic notion that periodically gets revived in America; the reality is different. We should remind ourselves that character alone may not be enough for success in today’s world for the even the most determined, confident, and gritty of people.

84 points by sgift 10y ago

Of course. Being born in a country with economic and educational advantages helps though. Being born into a family whose socio economic circumstances means you grow up expecting to be successful helps even more.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Havoc 10y ago
> Being born in a country with economic and educational advantages helps though. Helps, but not necessary. Hell I've got a decent number of Zimbabweans on my team at work.
- SEJeff 10y ago
  And let me guess, each of them demonstrates "grit" and is extremely hard working/driven?
  - Havoc 10y ago
    >And let me guess, each of them demonstrates "grit" and is extremely hard working/driven? Not particularly so. Seems to me that there is a threshold of grit needed - that opens a lot of doors (incl 3rd world > 1st world moves) but beyond that its got diminishing returns. My point is that the lottery of birthplace does matter but its not an automatic show-stopper.

Madmallard 10y ago

The most successful are generally the most resilient genetically. Nothing unreasonable about that. They also generally are the most intelligent or at least capable of problem solving and have symmetrical faces. Nothing really wrong with this except we're all lied to saying when someone is pretty they're usually crazy and things like that. It's all bullshit!

KhalilK 10y ago
Although you're not the first to offer a (not-so-eloquent) genetic explanation of economic success, you are definitely the first person I came across being told "when someone is pretty they're usually crazy" which makes it a moot point.

not_a_terrorist 10y ago

Grit and perseverence, however you call them, are important aspects to success, but not THE secret to success. If you look at the subset of people who enjoy "success" in life, a large number of them will display those qualitites, no doubt. But some of them could have attained it by sheer luck, filial connections, or others. Now, if you look at the complementary subset (people who do not enjoy "success" in life), I guarantee you will find plenty of gritee people in there, in addition to people who display personal qualities not conducive to success (which by no mean excludes them from enjoying success in live, given the proper circumstances - see previous paragraph). That's the aspect I do not enjoy about those "secret to success stories: no one ever considers the people who did everthing rigth, but did not succeed. It happen much more often than we think. No one cares for the losers, whatever the cause, alas. This is the 'survivorship paradox' described by Cicero... Taleb called it the Silent cemetary evidence. One more aspect, if I may: when can one determine someone else is a "success", or a "failure"? People certainly are entitled to more than one shot at success, and negative results are certainly a valid way to pinpoint your path towards success. So, grit is not THE secret path to success, but if your goal is to be successful, then internalising a gritee spirit certainly demultiply the possibilities to enjoy success.

thewarrior 10y ago
Do you have any examples of such people ? Either from your peer group or other well known people ? Just genuinely curious.
- chongli 10y ago
  The problem with identifying such people is that we can usually point to some tangible cause of failure. I think it's more useful to analyze the traits common to most successful people: * Not being born into extreme poverty * Having a basic education (not many successful illiterate people) * Having access to at least one strong connection * Having "true grit", whatever that means * Discovering an available niche
  - manyxcxi 10y ago

marincounty 10y ago

As I age, my definition of success is changing. So much--I have a hard time reading these articles. I've learned this, if you succeeded in life, look into your ethics/morality folder. I bet those files needs some gritty work. Or, maybe not? I don't want to argue. My shingles are killing my torso, and the emergency room doctor didn't offer any pain killers. Why--he just didn't give a dam, or erroneously thought I fit the definition of a drug seeking individual?

ThomPete 10y ago

No. Luck and network is. It's the only defining factor that can't be trained. Lucky beats smart. And if you take most of the really big successes like Facebook, Google etc. they where successful were a bunch of other people with equal grit and talent werent. Many many people have grit and perseverence. Many people have talent, business understanding, good timing, excellent understanding of product and so on. And of course the more you play the game the better chance of success (statistically) But when all is said and done unless we are talking about crony capitalism where you use political control to ensure success. Luck and network are the single most defining factors of why some are successful and others are not IMO.

MarkMc 10y ago
You say "luck and network", I say "grit". I'm curious to know if there is some experiment we could perform that we both agree could settle the matter? For example, imagine we assign 'grit' ratings to students who finish high school. Later we find that students with high grit scores tend to complete a university degree much more often than those with low grit scores. Would that change your mind about the importance of grit?
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  If you read the biographies of famous British people, you soon get used to reading that X or Y did okay/miserably at Oxford or Cambridge, but one day as they happened to bump into A or B who knew them from Oxford or Cambridge who said "I'm looking for someone to do something. Do you want to have a go?" In the US, we already know from numerous surveys that after the first graduate intake, most software hires are made by personal recommendation - which is obviously going to exclude anyone who isn't part of a network. So those are two examples of the value of networks. As for "grit" - what does the word even mean? If someone gambles everything in startups and loses everything three times in a row before giving up, do they have grit or not?
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Many people have grit, not all of them are successful. Some people don't have grit yet are still successful. So obviously grit isn't the unifying thing that leads to success. High Schools and Universities are by no metrics a measurement for success. And if you want to make them that you can start with the luck of whether you are born with rich parents or poor parents. Of course grit is good to have, but it's not what define success.

yason 10y ago

The secret of success could very well be first defining success.

visarga 10y ago
How many pop psychology article authors are millionaires? If the writer of the article actually had the "secret to success" they would have been doing that instead of writing pop-psychology articles. There are even those who write articles titled "How to become rich like Mark Zuckeberg" or "How to raise the next M Z" (http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-raise-the-next-mark-zuckerberg-1462155391 http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-raise-the-next-mark-zucke...)

DenisM 10y ago

This has completely closed the question for me: http://dilbert.com/strip/2012-11-20 http://dilbert.com/strip/2012-11-20

77pt77 10y ago
It's almost as if all these articles boil down to: "They key to success is being successful but in other words."

davekinkead 10y ago

What ever happened to the 7 habits? http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/7-habits-of-highly-successful-people http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/7-habits-of-highly-succes...

awinter-py 10y ago
7 plus or minus 2? That would be easier to remember.
visarga 10y ago
That's wrong. Anyone knows that internet lists have to be 10 items long. Three qualities are missing.

votr 10y ago

My anecdata across about a dozen points suggests it's network.

parenthephobia 10y ago

A paper by the author in "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology": https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/Grit%20JPSP.pdf https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/Grit%20JPSP.pdf There is some misinterpretation of what Duckworth is claiming. Her paper doesn't examine whether success is due to intrinsic or extrinsic aspects - whether luck is more important than grit - nor does it really examine the causes of success. Her conclusion is "successful people have grit". Not that unsuccessful people don't have grit. Not that all people with grit are successful. Not that grit is the sole determining factor in success. Just that of the intrinsic attributes of successful people she examined, grit was common to all of them. i.e. Some successful people are intelligent, but many aren't. Some successful people have an innate talent for the thing they are doing (however we define that), but many don't. All of them have grit. Grit, here, is defined as "perseverance and passion for long-term goals". It borders on the obvious that people who are successful have perseverance and passion. But it also borders on the obvious that merely having perseverance and passion isn't enough to guarantee success.

awinter-py 10y ago

the hole in this argument is that you need to know what to work hard on. the psych studies about 'praise kids for their work not their brains' seem legit as a way to improve test performance but school is scripted. In the real world success is based on how you navigate without a script, and persistence matters there but correct choices also matter. Given an oracle that gives perfect advice of course hard work is the largest factor. That's the experiment being done in the test performance psych studies. The 'deliberate practice' papers capture this best. The 'practice' half is hard work, but the 'deliberate' half is the ability to plan and analyze your training to advance your skills. With music or sports a coach can help you. With product, business or war (fields requiring strategy because the rules are ever-changing) not so much.

awinter-py 10y ago
My favorite research on this topic is the 'fewer rules' study. I think it claims that families average 6 rules for children (bedtime etc) and having 2 or less is predictive for the children doing creative work as adults. Cited here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/opinion/sunday/how-to-raise-a-creative-child-step-one-back-off.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/opinion/sunday/how-to-rais... Paywalled article here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2162-6057.1989.tb00700.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2162-6057.1989....
- visarga 10y ago
  That's interesting. I have a daughter like that, she practically raises herself. On the other hand, I have another daughter who is extremely problematic and not even 1000 rules will suffice for her to behave.
visarga 10y ago
> 'praise kids for their work not their brains' This can also be a veiled tendency of manipulation. "You worked hard!" means "I am pleased you worked hard!" or "I will not be pleased if you don't work as hard in the future!" and this can have negative consequences as the kid realizes they are captive to your criteria.

iofj 10y ago

Success imho is the art of not fucking up any single aspect of what you're doing, plus doing some aspect really well. You can have a "lifestyle" (meaning you do pretty well, but not exceptional) job/business/... by simply not fucking up any of it. Grit is like this : fuck it up and you're dead in the water, but you'll be fine at "normal" grit if you excel somewhere else. Exceptional grit is useless, counterproductive even, when for example market fit is not there at all. Or when the required knowledge simply isn't there. The one exception I've seen in practice is that on rare occasions a particular combination of skills was a necessity to achieve exceptional success. But it sort of looks like equivalent to winning the lottery. It's never an obvious combination of skills that works like this, it's something stupid that you wouldn't normally combine, and that's exactly why it works. But there are a huge number of possible combinations, most are not worth anything exceptional.

pcmaffey 10y ago

TLDR; Our ability to not give up is the key to not giving up.

mwfunk 10y ago

I've always thought of it more like, there are some qualities that are conducive to success (like not giving up when things don't go your way), and there are qualities that make success less likely (illiteracy, poverty, geography, etc.), and of course there's an element of luck (the effect of which can be minimized with perseverance and continuous personal growth, but never fully eliminated). But in general, the only people who claim to have a secret to success are those selling books about it. :) In fairness, the preceding paragraph would make a terrible name for a self-help book, so I can't really blame publishers either, which is why it's nice to have places like HN to talk about stuff like this.

mwfunk 10y ago
...and it goes without saying that the word "success" is being used here as shorthand for "making lots of money", which is only one form of success and not the most important one in the grand scheme of things.
visarga 10y ago
Success in work is just half the problem. There is also success in relationships, and that also depends on personality and standards of selection.

Balgair 10y ago

The rule of headlines aside, a lot of commenters are talking about survivorship bias with this. I think the best example of luck and grit is the Hass Avocado: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hass_avocado#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hass_avocado#History Hass was incredibly lucky to get that cultivar. From the seed growing at all, to being told to leave it be, to his children liking the taste, etc. Many many other growers at the Model Grocery Store were just as gritty and saw no real success in the Depression. He played his cards pretty well, all things considered, yet still died of a heart attack in 1952, the year his patent on the tree ran out. He was very very lucky, was pretty gritty, and still was a postman his whole life mostly by his own choice. He wanted a simple life and got one. I doubt he would have been so fortunate if lady luck had not smiled upon him.

visarga 10y ago

Grit + Smarts + Luck

unabst 10y ago

Traits such as grit, hard work, determination, and luck are not the secret. They are the obvious ingredients. But grit, hard work, and determination are also redundant for someone who possesses immense passion. Passion will make you gritty, hard working, and determined. It will keep you focused, and keep your mind on topic. Luck is also redundant because it is unscientific and untraceable (it is metaphysical). In hindsight we love to say the stars aligned or that miracles happened, but from the perspective of the do-er, none of it really matters because you never count on luck. As an entrepreneur, you pay to roll the dice, and you simply continue to roll it until you get what you need, praying you'll get enough tries. An outsider may say you were determined and that you got lucky, but no. You were passionate, and just kept trying because you had no other choice. If anything, to not have a choice is the secret to success. Determined as in determinism, not emotion. Successful people were bound to be successful. My father used to administer for a school which he was no longer proud to be a part of. He had a proposal for a new school and sent it to some people. Miraculously, he finds a sponsor, and his dream comes true. He tells me how lucky he was and how that event saved his life. But to that I say, "Well, who else was able to build a school from scratch, let alone an international school in Tokyo?" He may have been lucky, but he was also probably the only person standing on Earth that could have done what he could. He is passionate about education. Needless to say, he succeeded. http://newis.ed.jp/ http://newis.ed.jp/ My father is not an entrepreneur. But he had what it took to make things happen. And that's the secret to success. It's the ability to make things happen.

jrbapna 10y ago

Grit is just one quality of a good executer. Grit with poor execution doesn't yield results. Grit is not the secret to success, execution is.

AstralStorm 10y ago
And even ability to execute won't help you without the right social network. It is extremely rare to see an actual individual being really successful. Most of the time, they are or were part of a company. This is because a person can only devote so much time and skill into anything. And making the right connection is a matter of place (Ivy League anyone?), time (gold rush is good, recession is bad), interpersonal skills and finally luck.
- jrbapna 10y ago
  Good executors do whatever it takes to get them where they need to go. If the right social network is important to their success they make it happen. There are many exceptions to this rule that make this difficult (born into poverty or third world country, etc) but the great majority of people who complain, at least in the US, spend their evenings at happy hours and their weekends at the football game. You can't do that and then blame it on luck or bad circumstance. I work with hundreds of "entreprneurs" that spend weeks and months obsessing over logo design and color and UX, when they have zero customers at their door. Execution is a skill, it can be learned, and 99% of people just don't have it.

damptowel 10y ago

Most of my 'succesful' peers seem to take the path of least resistance. I never feel fulfilled unless I'm doing things the hard way, to the point of self-sabotage.

mrmondo 10y ago

Interesting write up, to me clearly 'grit' is not 'the' answer but it certainly is either a component or proponent for at least some people.

Futurebot 10y ago

The much touted ‘character hypothesis’ (which has become a staple of a lot of modern intellectual discourse around success, often heard from writers like Malcolm Gladwell and Paul Tough) is very useful, and speaks to an understanding of the greatly changed nature of success in the post-Industrial era. However, I think the qualities associated with that hypothesis should only be considered necessary, but not sufficient. To review, here is a list of qualities generally associated with it: persistence determination self-control / the ability to delay gratification abstention from substance use curiosity conscientiousness self-confidence (occasionally) emotional intelligence good communication skills and a willingness to listen grit I’d personally add to the list ‘the willingness to always learn’ (i.e., be a dedicated autodidact for life.) Based on what we’ve seen over the past ten years, especially with things like ‘the gig economy’ and our ‘free agent nation’, this hypothesis (perhaps model) holds up well. So what else is necessary? One or more of the following: a strong personal safety net (savings and/or relatives and friends to fall back on) good credentials a strong personal / professional network These last three are exactly the ones that are generally not available to those who need them most, even if they have all the qualities of the first list (you could also substitute ‘incredible luck’ for these three.) The idea that “men of enterprise are practically assured of success” is the kind of beautiful, romantic notion that periodically gets revived in America; the reality is different. We should remind ourselves that character alone may not be enough for success in today’s world for the even the most determined, confident, and gritty of people.