14 ms·

Where’s the evidence that grit predicts success?

136 points by dnetesn 6y ago

FabiansMustDie 6y ago
Angela Duckworth is but one evangelist, among many others. It's its own phenomenon: academicans (see: people whose self-worth is predicated on the popularity of their ideas) preaching their new gospel -- itself just a spin-off of some old, not-that-enlightening observations. But! If you sell it with enough passion and vigor and conviction, it sure does rile the masses into believing. > “My lab has found that this measure beats the pants off I.Q., SAT scores, physical fitness and a bazillion other measures to help us know in advance which individuals will be successful in some situations,” Need more be said? Science is itself a self-perpetuating industry. Statistics and findings can be massaged into whatever you want to see -- that's simply abusing our propensity to recognize patterns, to its utmost extreme. More new, novel, monkey-go-ape patterns to fuss about. More books to sell. More speeches to give. More money to make. Here's a hot-take, that won't drive unneeded publicity and revenue towards another idea salesman: the more you persevere -- i.e the more grit you have -- the more chances you get to succeed. Please please, there's no need to write a PhD dissertation a la "A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature."[0] Absolutely absurd. [0] Credé, M., Tynan, M.C., & Harms, P.D. Much ado about grit: A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113, 492-511 (2017).
- doggodaddo78 6y ago
  Until there's data, there's no evidence the TV remote turns on the TV. Until there's data, there's no evidence that hot grills burn my hand if I place it on one. This is the sort of crap that tries to apply the scientific method like a hammer and seeing nothing but nails. The absence of data for a plausible relationship doesn't make it impossible, it makes it currently unknown either way. This nuance in the explanations of the limits of current knowledge is often lost on black&white thinking, overly-rational individuals who give the impression something is impossible or unlikely because it is currently unknown.
  - snovv_crash 6y ago
    Now seems to be a good point to mention the lack of double-blind testing that has been performed on parachutes. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14684649/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14684649/
  - ourmandave 6y ago
    The absence of data for a plausible relationship doesn't make it impossible, it makes it currently unknown either way. But life is so much easier when you don't have to do IS NULL checks.
    - doggodaddo78 6y ago
      I hypothesize that this statement is false (or null). I guess we better use an exact equality operator.
doggodaddo78 6y ago
Here we go again: looking for "success" cargo-cult signals, now with more "science!" to demand "evidence" from every unscientific/ambiguous/difficult-to-measure area and facet of life and reality, rather than improving fundamentals for increasing chances in something that has a good deal of probability involved. Felix Dennis wrote about this for a good chapter or so in his book with the ironic name: "How to Get Rich." I would consider the words of a billionaire to carry slightly-more weight than those of self-help gurus or thin, soundbite blog posts. Effort / "working-hard" has no value unless it is effectively directed at something.
- Viker 6y ago
  That is like listening to advice from Elon Musk, good advice but he always forgets that all the advice is worthless, if your father doesn't have a precious gem mine in Africa .... Bottom line will always be: "Being born rich, is the only guarantee to succes. Everything else is pure luck." You are either born rich, or lucky enough to hit the lottery.
  - doggodaddo78 6y ago
    Absolutely conflating apples and oranges. Elon seems to have been luckier by being part of the PayPal Mafia, similar, in a sense, to the w00w00 group. He may have absolutely no idea how or why he got where he did by the choices, beliefs, and circumstances he encountered. Felix Dennis OTOH was a wise, old hippie who had an appreciation for honest introspection.
    - Viker 6y ago
      Compeletley agree. Elon was lucky to be born in a rich family. Made his first 100k before 18. Felix was lucky to be born in time to ride that hippie wave. Just like some people were lucky to throw money on bitcoin in 2010~2015. Still more should be a credited to chanse and luck.
      - zimpenfish 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Jack000 6y ago
School is an "ideal" learning environment - in that to do well all you need to do is digest the information as presented. This requires some baseline cognitive ability and the conciensiousness to actually absorb all the information required of you. In this context you probably don't need a lot of perseverance. On the other hand most challenging fields are adverse learning environments - where the objective may be open-ended, feedback is few and misleading, and information on the state of the world is mostly inferred. To succeed in this type of environment you probably need a lot more intrinsic drive and tolerance for failure.
- derriz 6y ago
  School is also an adverse learning environment. Your definition of succeeding at school is too narrow - digesting information isn’t enough to be a success at school. For example, you need to balance social/peer success with academic success which can be tricky. Teachers’ behaviors and expectations differ greatly so you need to quickly develop models of their motivations. You also need to optimize/direct your efforts - there is only a finite number of hours in the day and attempting to “win” at school by simply digesting facts can only work for a tiny minority. In fact, when I think of my peers in school who I would considered to have “succeeded” the most in that environment, none did do solely by being able to digest facts - most were only slightly better than average academically but succeeded in other ways.
slver 6y ago
Most variables of life have a peak usefulness in some amount and then it falls off on both sides. This means applying more "grit" is useful in life, until some point where more grit becomes less useful. To make things more complicated, the amount of grit also depends on and interacts with all other variables of life. So not only the optimal amount of grit varies constantly, but you also get a fractal of local maxima and minima along the way. Basically your "how much grit I need for optimal performance" graph looks like the outline of a mountain. So given that situation, discussing whether "grit predicts success" is kind of silly, isn't it. If life was this simple, we wouldn't evolve these big brains to account for everything at once and constantly balance and rebalance the equation in attempt to find equilibrium. EDIT: Maybe we need to run a survey and find out the mean grit we have as a society, and then mandate, say 1% more grit and measure global outcomes. So please draw on this line how much grit you have between 0 and 100. The graph is log, because actual grit varies between 0 and +Infinity.
- mattmanser 6y ago
  Where's the evidence that most variables of life have a peak usefulness in some amount and then it falls off on both sides?
  - mellosouls 6y ago
    Evolution I would imagine. If a variable is useless it will mostly disappear; dominate for a time if particularly beneficial. Others ("most") would then follow a statistical distribution of some type. It seems a reasonable claim for a believable rule of thumb.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      Its a reasonable rule, but we are still evolving and have a vestigal tail, we have genetic diseases, we have psycopaths, etc.
      - slver 6y ago
        Maybe we need psychopaths :P ?
domano 6y ago
Hmm, shying away from hard problems sometimes hurts you, sometimes it saves you. It all depends on context. I have had great success being really lazy and selective where to actually invest my time and had better results than people who would just work their ass off always.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  Working smart trumps working hard at the wrong things.
jka 6y ago
This could be inspected in two directions: - Does grit predict success? (forwards) - Do successful people project grit? (backwards) Although it's always somewhat context-sensitive, with both figures you could learn how much signal to derive from the latter. If we learned that grit wasn't necessarily an indicator of success, then it'd arguably be a bit callous of successful people to project grit, given that plenty of other people go through hard times without being able to achieve similar outcomes.
- xondono 6y ago
  The problem is that forwards takes a lot of time (which is bad if you intend to make your career on it) and backwards suffers from survivor bias.
sudhirj 6y ago
Think I realised a while ago that nothing predicts success. That's not to say that success is only luck, it has requirements, but not predictors. Hard work, grit, skill, luck, privilege etc are all required in combinations that result in a baseline sum, but nothing will predict success. Success is almost by definition a hindsight measure. You can only work backwards from it, but never guarantee a forward path into it.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  > I realised a while ago that nothing predicts success ... never guarantee a forward path into it Guarantee, no. Anyone could be hit by a bus tomorrow. But it is clear that one can greatly increase their odds of success. For example, learning a job skill. Learning how to manage money. Living below your means. Associate with successful people instead of losers. Ditching the victim mentality. One can also greatly decrease odds of success by, say, dropping out, playing video games all day, hittin' the crack pipe, etc., and adopting the victim mentality.
  - jka 6y ago
    I think what you're saying is that you and your peers have a shared definition of success, and within that, there are well-known ways to improve the likelihood of reaching that goal. Certainly having goals (particularly ones that retain a healthy, well-rounded lifestyle) can help people avoid negative outcomes.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      Anyone can use their own definition of success. Then develop a plan to get there, and execute the plan.
    - hurril 6y ago
      I think you're being a little bit weasly here. They do have a shared definition of success and you are part of that, as am I. The definition does not have to be identical to be useful.
ed405 6y ago
Finally someone has written a really excellent article about this. Many scientists already know that ‘grit’ is over-hyped and over-sold. Now there’s a really well-articulated piece explaining it. Stay away from one size-fits all ‘solutions’ to very complex problems. Same goes for ‘growth’ vs. ‘fixed mindset’ btw.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > Finally someone has written a really excellent article about this. No, it's not an excellent article. The author is promoting his book, and also suggesting government social programs are somehow a replacement for personal responsbility - ie. coddling snowflakes.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  Are you aware of similar critiques of growth/fixed mindset? It’s very popular in my kid’s school, but I’ve heard other parents say that the pedagogical strategies that are ostensibly based on it (not stratifying kids based on ability level) are bunk. I’m interested in knowing more about the pros/cons.
  - rawgabbit 6y ago
    I would argue that Carol Dweck argues that if you believe and are motivated, you can achieve. The criticism is that while motivation and belief i.e. grit is important -- it is only half the story. Countless studies have proven what really drives academic success -- financially well off parents who emphasize education and provide time/money/resources to help their children succeed. "What the team found was there is a correlation between someone having more of a growth mindset and doing well academically. However, the correlation is small and the findings do not support claims that growth mindset interventions have profound effects on academic achievement." [1] "The attempted replication of Dweck’s work that is about to be published concerned the 1998 study on praise and part of the 2007 study. Bates and his student Yue Li conducted a series of studies in a group of more than 600 Chinese students. Their results were mixed but mostly found no effect." [2] [1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/growth-mindset-education-psychological-theory-children-mirage https://www.wired.co.uk/article/growth-mindset-education-psy... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debate-arises-over-teaching-growth-mindsets-to-motivate-students https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debate-arises-ove...
systemvoltage 6y ago
Both, grit and success are illdefined.
throwawaysea 6y ago
Grit is hard to measure in quantifiable terms so I have my doubts about the methodology of the studies referenced here that are making claims about it. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good differentiator for relative success. That is, it may not be a perfect predictor of success in itself, but it is a contributor. And relative to someone with all other factors held equal, the person with more grit will be more successful. That’s not really controversial or in need of “evidence”, as it is self-evident.
papito 6y ago
As the Chinese say: "Luck is a combination of opportunity and hard work". You can work hard, yes, but you also need to walk into an opportunity to exploit your hard work, for ultimate success. Developing skills to see a better opportunity matters. Some people just grind away at it without thinking, and some pause and re-evaluate. Think more, work less. Don't be a dumb work ant. In programming, I found that when I was younger, I did that a lot. I kept coding and rewriting. Now that I am older, I think for days before I start something, and it usually results in less starting from scratch. I try to play things out, visualize, etc. The code does not just work the first time because I am "lucky".
zhdc1 6y ago
There are several meta analyses you can find on Google Scholar that show a weak to moderate relationship between grit and educational success. The issue appears to be that there are conflicts over what grit actually represents in this context and whether Duckworth's scale is a good measure (and if she's overselling her findings). These are very relevant questions, but they're very different from grit != success, or that grit doesn't matter.
beforeolives 6y ago
I think some people here might be reacting to a title that confirms their preconceptions and are missing one of the main points of the article - that conscientiousness is probably a stronger, more well-defined and more reliable predictor of success than grit.
bumbada 6y ago
There is a nominalization here, very typical of US people: Talking about success like it is one thing, and the same thing for everybody. The fact is that there are as many different definitions of success as different people in the world. For some people success is being free to travel the world without constraints or having lots of friends or having sex with lots of people. For others is raising a healthy family and spending lots of time with them. For other people is having power over others, other people want to have a second or third house. Other people want to have more money that they could spend. Or being famous. Other people want to get something significant that merits a Nobel Price. There is this delusion that you could have it all, you could make yourself rich without working or risking anything, have all the time on the world, travel and be famous. There is no such a thing. I have met elite sport people that are the best in the world, rich and famous, but they really hate being famous. They have very little time or freedom, and if they want to travel anywhere, specially in South America, Asia or Africa everybody knows they are rich and they can be kidnapped or blackmailed at any time. They can not trust the people around them, unless is family or old friends(or people as rich as them). I have met very rich business people that don't have free time at all. The money they earn, the wife or children waste. Children getting addictions like drugs or alcohol because their parents send them to internship and demand from them only work and more hard work. I have met travelers that have traveled dozens of countries, but were incapable of raising a family and always short of money because they stop working as soon as they have enough for discovering a new place. For me personally success is learning, traveling the world and having free time. I sacrificed money in order to get what I wanted. I got what I wanted, but had to sacrifice other things for it. Over time I got back most of the things I sacrificed, like money, probably thanks to the people I met along the way, but I did lose it first. If success is only "economical success", most people from the US are way richer than 90% of the people in the world. They have non economic wealth like rule of law and legal security that in countries like China, most of Africa or in some countries in South America does not exist.
- zhdc1 6y ago
  The article is largely talking about academic success (with one or two exceptions) which imo is much easier to normalize across countries. The context to this article is that "grit" is used as one of the characteristics that charter schools and other educational programs in the US try to maximize in low performing areas. If "grit" can't be measured, or if it's just another way of describing another attribute (e.g., contentiousness, which is the article uses - or persistence, which is what you find in many academic articles), then there isn't much of a point of trying to maximize it in academic contexts. All of this assumes that school performance is something that educators want to increase. This may not necessarily be true in every country and in every context, but it should be true in most of them (and certainly in the US, where a lot of local governments are funding programs using these concepts).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
microtherion 6y ago
Grit may not predict success, but insufficient grit might still sometimes play a role in career challenges. There seems to be a whole subgenre of HN posts along the lines of "I decided college was a waste of time for someone as uniquely gifted as me, so I self studied and have never had a problem getting hired for my next contract. Now I want to work at a FAANG, but they ask me to code a breadth first search. Why is the hiring process so broken?"
arcanon 6y ago
It is necessary, but not sufficient.
asimjalis 6y ago
Can we turn the question around and ask the opposite? Does lack of grit predict failure?
- bckr 6y ago
  That depends on your definition of failure, and is confused by factors like inheriting wealth... I know at least one world leader who doesn't have any grit at all...
  - Karrot_Kream 6y ago
    In theory you should be able to condition on inherited wealth as well to remove that as a confounding factor (yeah this is a bit causally inspired), so I'd be curious if that's been done here.
fighterpilot 6y ago
Grit sounds like conscientiousness repackaged and branded in pop science fashion. There's a big psychometrics literature on conscientiousness. Start there.
- e12e 6y ago
  I had to look that up - I think the psycolical term differs quite a lot from the dictionary definition - but I certainly see some similarity between "grit" and something like: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/conscientiousness https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/conscientiousness
- jariel 6y ago
  'Conscientiousness' and 'Grit' I think are different attributes. Conscientious people are like your 'nice Grandparents': they are consistent, orderly, pay their bills, are pleasant, predictable, file their taxes, recycle, don't steal. Gritty people are those who mount the psychological effort necessary to take on a challenging problem, and have the wherewithal to keep going when things get rough. To me the bit of confusion might arise between: 'Grit' and 'stubbornness' i.e. continue down an actually bad path and 'Grit' and 'Lack of Self Awareness' i.e. people utterly underestimating their ability, or the complexity of a domain. 'Fake it tell you make it' is actually a helpful characteristic in some areas, but in others it's not. I do believe that 'grit' and 'conscientiousness' are both positive attributes in people who start companies, but that 'conscientiousness' is probably a more important attributes in most of the employees. From the article: "Conscientiousness was twice as useful at predicting success as grit was." I have no doubt it's a better predictor for general life outcomes and especially academic outcomes. Doing a degree is mostly a grind.
  - fighterpilot 6y ago
    Grit sounds like a strict subset of conscientiousness. I find it indistinguishable to the industriousness aspect of conscientiousness (and unrelated to the orderliness aspect). I wonder if they can point to any concrete differences between grit and conscientiousness-industriousness in terms of definition?
gumby 6y ago
This article lays out the evidence: identifying something people can (in theory) change about themselves will be popular. If the thesis were “people with violet eyes are more successful”, well, not much you can do about that without (likely dangerous) medical intervention. But if you have enough grit you can work on your grit. On the other hand something like “grit” is inspirational to people who like that kind of thing (“I’m going to improve my grit”), scammers (“Take my course on improving your grit”), and the comfortably well off who can use it as an excuse not to worry about the less fortunate (“Not my problem if they lack grit. I worked on mine and look at the result!”). PS: as with so many cases, the US ignores international ISO standards when grading sandpaper grit.
kingsuper20 6y ago
That's the kind of article that makes me: 1) Set up my own pile of anecdotes (and the importance of luck, grit, natural ability, etc. in people I know) 2) Attempt to build a model. 3) Think about Stanislav Andreski's book 'Social Sciences as Sorcery'. 4) Go back to my coffee and think about something useful.
m3kw9 6y ago
Problem is that you can’t just look at one out of 10s-100s of combination of things you need to get to success.
sdenton4 6y ago
Most of the 'how to succeed' advice is a mix of survivorship bias with 'necessary but not sufficient' traits. (You can apply a lot of grit at a fast food restaurant and never become a thousandaire.) Turns out that having both grit and a large family nest egg too reduce the consequences of failure go a long way together. But maybe they're rare to have together: the safety net reduces the need for grit.
- zippy5 6y ago
  I somewhat agree that a gritty person shouldn’t keep a fast food job, but some of the Uber drivers I meet are incredibly gritty. They work incredibly long hours and grind on multiple apps. They have well thought out strategies for how to make as much as they can per hour and have plans for how they will invest their money. I admire the heck out of em but I can see most people don’t want that life. I have no doubt that kind of work ethic could be wasted in the wrong environment but a successful person should have both grit and the ability to find an environment where they can use it to get ahead. I’d even argue that corporate America as whole rarely rewards grit with a couple exceptions.
  - Balgair 6y ago
    > and the ability to find an environment where they can use it to get ahead Reminds me of this quote: "Free enterprise needs elbow room" -Poul Anderson
  - sdenton4 6y ago
    "some of the Uber drivers I meet are incredibly gritty." That's exactly the point. There's a huge number of people bringing a hell of a lot of hustle to just keeping their head above water. There was a brilliant blog post a couple years ago pointing out that perfect competition - from the perspective of the gig worker on the ground - is fundamentally dystopian. When you're providing a commoditized service (like driving a car) in perfect competition, you've got nowhere to go but working harder or smarter. Which quickly means that everyone in the market is working just as hard and smart, bringing maximum hustle (or, if you prefer, grit) just to hang on.
- 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lawrenceyan 6y ago
Maximize working in smarter and more scalable ways. Hard work and grit is important, but by itself is not enough.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Grit is just the statistics of trying over and over. It’s a truism that can’t be refuted: trying something multiple times increases the likelihood by some amount that one will succeed (when compared to fewer attempts).
fblp 6y ago
I think you can improve grit or conciensiousness practicing "not-doing". I have no research to support this, but if i think of something i find meditating or slowing down can help when I'm facing adversity.
- alea_iacta_est 6y ago
  > I have no research to support this There's a religion built around that concept, it's called buddhism and it's been around for 2,500 years.
  - fblp 6y ago
    I know, but i don't know the (academic research on it)
m0llusk 6y ago
It seems like the attempt to gather compelling evidence ends up skipping over foundational elements. After all, if someone quits consistently then progress is likely to be difficult. The idea of grit potentially also connects with two other potentially interesting related ideas: First there is Victor Frankl's observation that those who were expected to survive in the concentration camps were the people who were young adults, healthy, well fed, smart, and quick. However, these people often reacted very badly to sudden change, chaos, and the lack of obvious opportunities and would end up dead in a week or two as much from hopelessness as privation. Meanwhile people who were skinny, weak, sick, and wounded often survived one trauma after another because they had something they were determined to live for--often family, sometimes cherished places or work. Something they longed to return to could keep them going. Second there is the actually rather robustly documented phenomenon of John Henryism in which people suffering from discrimination or lack of opportunity find success by expending tremendous effort only to fall victim to illness early in life as the tolls from their exertions accumulate. This is a good example of how the grit to success story could have a serious downside that should be considered even if the success side might actually be realistically and meaningfully obtainable.
alfiedotwtf 6y ago
It’s amazing how at 140 comments right now, the word “luck” is more than half way down the comments page :shrug:
Arete314159 6y ago
I'm so tired of stories about "grit." Take it from someone who got into Harvard after the death of one parent and the mental breakdown of another: everyone's got a breaking point. I happened to experience my breaking point after I got into an Ivy League school, but all those traumas were cumulative. What we are experiencing in this country is a strip-mining of infrastructure, support, and education. Then instead of stories about reinvestment in our next generation, we're fed pablum about 'grit.' "Oh, I set your house on fire? Here's this awesome story about someone who got a PhD even after her house burned down." We're looking at the wrong problem.
achillesheels 6y ago
I’m enjoying the top comments! They seem to fail in perceiving “success” is about building something know one knows they needed before it becomes necessary. It’s called “skating to where the puck will be”. Building requires endurance (which is “grit-in-itself”) in overcoming the status quo, which, in this context, seems to be people who think massive fortunes are caused by predestined massive affordances, and not by any free determination from the character of the individual. It’s as if the presence of uncertainty in determining where their life will be in the future is obviated.

136 points by dnetesn 6y ago

Angela Duckworth is but one evangelist, among many others. It's its own phenomenon: academicans (see: people whose self-worth is predicated on the popularity of their ideas) preaching their new gospel -- itself just a spin-off of some old, not-that-enlightening observations. But! If you sell it with enough passion and vigor and conviction, it sure does rile the masses into believing. > “My lab has found that this measure beats the pants off I.Q., SAT scores, physical fitness and a bazillion other measures to help us know in advance which individuals will be successful in some situations,” Need more be said? Science is itself a self-perpetuating industry. Statistics and findings can be massaged into whatever you want to see -- that's simply abusing our propensity to recognize patterns, to its utmost extreme. More new, novel, monkey-go-ape patterns to fuss about. More books to sell. More speeches to give. More money to make. Here's a hot-take, that won't drive unneeded publicity and revenue towards another idea salesman: the more you persevere -- i.e the more grit you have -- the more chances you get to succeed. Please please, there's no need to write a PhD dissertation a la "A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature."[0] Absolutely absurd. [0] Credé, M., Tynan, M.C., & Harms, P.D. Much ado about grit: A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113, 492-511 (2017).

doggodaddo78 6y ago
Until there's data, there's no evidence the TV remote turns on the TV. Until there's data, there's no evidence that hot grills burn my hand if I place it on one. This is the sort of crap that tries to apply the scientific method like a hammer and seeing nothing but nails. The absence of data for a plausible relationship doesn't make it impossible, it makes it currently unknown either way. This nuance in the explanations of the limits of current knowledge is often lost on black&white thinking, overly-rational individuals who give the impression something is impossible or unlikely because it is currently unknown.
- snovv_crash 6y ago
  Now seems to be a good point to mention the lack of double-blind testing that has been performed on parachutes. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14684649/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14684649/
- ourmandave 6y ago
  The absence of data for a plausible relationship doesn't make it impossible, it makes it currently unknown either way. But life is so much easier when you don't have to do IS NULL checks.
  - doggodaddo78 6y ago
    I hypothesize that this statement is false (or null). I guess we better use an exact equality operator.

doggodaddo78 6y ago

Here we go again: looking for "success" cargo-cult signals, now with more "science!" to demand "evidence" from every unscientific/ambiguous/difficult-to-measure area and facet of life and reality, rather than improving fundamentals for increasing chances in something that has a good deal of probability involved. Felix Dennis wrote about this for a good chapter or so in his book with the ironic name: "How to Get Rich." I would consider the words of a billionaire to carry slightly-more weight than those of self-help gurus or thin, soundbite blog posts. Effort / "working-hard" has no value unless it is effectively directed at something.

Viker 6y ago
That is like listening to advice from Elon Musk, good advice but he always forgets that all the advice is worthless, if your father doesn't have a precious gem mine in Africa .... Bottom line will always be: "Being born rich, is the only guarantee to succes. Everything else is pure luck." You are either born rich, or lucky enough to hit the lottery.
- doggodaddo78 6y ago
  Absolutely conflating apples and oranges. Elon seems to have been luckier by being part of the PayPal Mafia, similar, in a sense, to the w00w00 group. He may have absolutely no idea how or why he got where he did by the choices, beliefs, and circumstances he encountered. Felix Dennis OTOH was a wise, old hippie who had an appreciation for honest introspection.
  - Viker 6y ago
    Compeletley agree. Elon was lucky to be born in a rich family. Made his first 100k before 18. Felix was lucky to be born in time to ride that hippie wave. Just like some people were lucky to throw money on bitcoin in 2010~2015. Still more should be a credited to chanse and luck.
    - zimpenfish 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Jack000 6y ago

School is an "ideal" learning environment - in that to do well all you need to do is digest the information as presented. This requires some baseline cognitive ability and the conciensiousness to actually absorb all the information required of you. In this context you probably don't need a lot of perseverance. On the other hand most challenging fields are adverse learning environments - where the objective may be open-ended, feedback is few and misleading, and information on the state of the world is mostly inferred. To succeed in this type of environment you probably need a lot more intrinsic drive and tolerance for failure.

derriz 6y ago
School is also an adverse learning environment. Your definition of succeeding at school is too narrow - digesting information isn’t enough to be a success at school. For example, you need to balance social/peer success with academic success which can be tricky. Teachers’ behaviors and expectations differ greatly so you need to quickly develop models of their motivations. You also need to optimize/direct your efforts - there is only a finite number of hours in the day and attempting to “win” at school by simply digesting facts can only work for a tiny minority. In fact, when I think of my peers in school who I would considered to have “succeeded” the most in that environment, none did do solely by being able to digest facts - most were only slightly better than average academically but succeeded in other ways.

slver 6y ago

Most variables of life have a peak usefulness in some amount and then it falls off on both sides. This means applying more "grit" is useful in life, until some point where more grit becomes less useful. To make things more complicated, the amount of grit also depends on and interacts with all other variables of life. So not only the optimal amount of grit varies constantly, but you also get a fractal of local maxima and minima along the way. Basically your "how much grit I need for optimal performance" graph looks like the outline of a mountain. So given that situation, discussing whether "grit predicts success" is kind of silly, isn't it. If life was this simple, we wouldn't evolve these big brains to account for everything at once and constantly balance and rebalance the equation in attempt to find equilibrium. EDIT: Maybe we need to run a survey and find out the mean grit we have as a society, and then mandate, say 1% more grit and measure global outcomes. So please draw on this line how much grit you have between 0 and 100. The graph is log, because actual grit varies between 0 and +Infinity.

mattmanser 6y ago
Where's the evidence that most variables of life have a peak usefulness in some amount and then it falls off on both sides?
- mellosouls 6y ago
  Evolution I would imagine. If a variable is useless it will mostly disappear; dominate for a time if particularly beneficial. Others ("most") would then follow a statistical distribution of some type. It seems a reasonable claim for a believable rule of thumb.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    Its a reasonable rule, but we are still evolving and have a vestigal tail, we have genetic diseases, we have psycopaths, etc.
    - slver 6y ago
      Maybe we need psychopaths :P ?

domano 6y ago

Hmm, shying away from hard problems sometimes hurts you, sometimes it saves you. It all depends on context. I have had great success being really lazy and selective where to actually invest my time and had better results than people who would just work their ass off always.

WalterBright 6y ago
Working smart trumps working hard at the wrong things.

jka 6y ago

This could be inspected in two directions: - Does grit predict success? (forwards) - Do successful people project grit? (backwards) Although it's always somewhat context-sensitive, with both figures you could learn how much signal to derive from the latter. If we learned that grit wasn't necessarily an indicator of success, then it'd arguably be a bit callous of successful people to project grit, given that plenty of other people go through hard times without being able to achieve similar outcomes.

xondono 6y ago
The problem is that forwards takes a lot of time (which is bad if you intend to make your career on it) and backwards suffers from survivor bias.

sudhirj 6y ago

Think I realised a while ago that nothing predicts success. That's not to say that success is only luck, it has requirements, but not predictors. Hard work, grit, skill, luck, privilege etc are all required in combinations that result in a baseline sum, but nothing will predict success. Success is almost by definition a hindsight measure. You can only work backwards from it, but never guarantee a forward path into it.

WalterBright 6y ago
> I realised a while ago that nothing predicts success ... never guarantee a forward path into it Guarantee, no. Anyone could be hit by a bus tomorrow. But it is clear that one can greatly increase their odds of success. For example, learning a job skill. Learning how to manage money. Living below your means. Associate with successful people instead of losers. Ditching the victim mentality. One can also greatly decrease odds of success by, say, dropping out, playing video games all day, hittin' the crack pipe, etc., and adopting the victim mentality.
- jka 6y ago
  I think what you're saying is that you and your peers have a shared definition of success, and within that, there are well-known ways to improve the likelihood of reaching that goal. Certainly having goals (particularly ones that retain a healthy, well-rounded lifestyle) can help people avoid negative outcomes.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Anyone can use their own definition of success. Then develop a plan to get there, and execute the plan.
  - hurril 6y ago
    I think you're being a little bit weasly here. They do have a shared definition of success and you are part of that, as am I. The definition does not have to be identical to be useful.

ed405 6y ago

Finally someone has written a really excellent article about this. Many scientists already know that ‘grit’ is over-hyped and over-sold. Now there’s a really well-articulated piece explaining it. Stay away from one size-fits all ‘solutions’ to very complex problems. Same goes for ‘growth’ vs. ‘fixed mindset’ btw.

redis_mlc 6y ago
> Finally someone has written a really excellent article about this. No, it's not an excellent article. The author is promoting his book, and also suggesting government social programs are somehow a replacement for personal responsbility - ie. coddling snowflakes.
gnicholas 6y ago
Are you aware of similar critiques of growth/fixed mindset? It’s very popular in my kid’s school, but I’ve heard other parents say that the pedagogical strategies that are ostensibly based on it (not stratifying kids based on ability level) are bunk. I’m interested in knowing more about the pros/cons.
- rawgabbit 6y ago
  I would argue that Carol Dweck argues that if you believe and are motivated, you can achieve. The criticism is that while motivation and belief i.e. grit is important -- it is only half the story. Countless studies have proven what really drives academic success -- financially well off parents who emphasize education and provide time/money/resources to help their children succeed. "What the team found was there is a correlation between someone having more of a growth mindset and doing well academically. However, the correlation is small and the findings do not support claims that growth mindset interventions have profound effects on academic achievement." [1] "The attempted replication of Dweck’s work that is about to be published concerned the 1998 study on praise and part of the 2007 study. Bates and his student Yue Li conducted a series of studies in a group of more than 600 Chinese students. Their results were mixed but mostly found no effect." [2] [1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/growth-mindset-education-psychological-theory-children-mirage https://www.wired.co.uk/article/growth-mindset-education-psy... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debate-arises-over-teaching-growth-mindsets-to-motivate-students https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debate-arises-ove...

systemvoltage 6y ago

Both, grit and success are illdefined.

throwawaysea 6y ago

Grit is hard to measure in quantifiable terms so I have my doubts about the methodology of the studies referenced here that are making claims about it. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good differentiator for relative success. That is, it may not be a perfect predictor of success in itself, but it is a contributor. And relative to someone with all other factors held equal, the person with more grit will be more successful. That’s not really controversial or in need of “evidence”, as it is self-evident.

papito 6y ago

As the Chinese say: "Luck is a combination of opportunity and hard work". You can work hard, yes, but you also need to walk into an opportunity to exploit your hard work, for ultimate success. Developing skills to see a better opportunity matters. Some people just grind away at it without thinking, and some pause and re-evaluate. Think more, work less. Don't be a dumb work ant. In programming, I found that when I was younger, I did that a lot. I kept coding and rewriting. Now that I am older, I think for days before I start something, and it usually results in less starting from scratch. I try to play things out, visualize, etc. The code does not just work the first time because I am "lucky".

zhdc1 6y ago

There are several meta analyses you can find on Google Scholar that show a weak to moderate relationship between grit and educational success. The issue appears to be that there are conflicts over what grit actually represents in this context and whether Duckworth's scale is a good measure (and if she's overselling her findings). These are very relevant questions, but they're very different from grit != success, or that grit doesn't matter.

beforeolives 6y ago

I think some people here might be reacting to a title that confirms their preconceptions and are missing one of the main points of the article - that conscientiousness is probably a stronger, more well-defined and more reliable predictor of success than grit.

bumbada 6y ago

There is a nominalization here, very typical of US people: Talking about success like it is one thing, and the same thing for everybody. The fact is that there are as many different definitions of success as different people in the world. For some people success is being free to travel the world without constraints or having lots of friends or having sex with lots of people. For others is raising a healthy family and spending lots of time with them. For other people is having power over others, other people want to have a second or third house. Other people want to have more money that they could spend. Or being famous. Other people want to get something significant that merits a Nobel Price. There is this delusion that you could have it all, you could make yourself rich without working or risking anything, have all the time on the world, travel and be famous. There is no such a thing. I have met elite sport people that are the best in the world, rich and famous, but they really hate being famous. They have very little time or freedom, and if they want to travel anywhere, specially in South America, Asia or Africa everybody knows they are rich and they can be kidnapped or blackmailed at any time. They can not trust the people around them, unless is family or old friends(or people as rich as them). I have met very rich business people that don't have free time at all. The money they earn, the wife or children waste. Children getting addictions like drugs or alcohol because their parents send them to internship and demand from them only work and more hard work. I have met travelers that have traveled dozens of countries, but were incapable of raising a family and always short of money because they stop working as soon as they have enough for discovering a new place. For me personally success is learning, traveling the world and having free time. I sacrificed money in order to get what I wanted. I got what I wanted, but had to sacrifice other things for it. Over time I got back most of the things I sacrificed, like money, probably thanks to the people I met along the way, but I did lose it first. If success is only "economical success", most people from the US are way richer than 90% of the people in the world. They have non economic wealth like rule of law and legal security that in countries like China, most of Africa or in some countries in South America does not exist.

zhdc1 6y ago
The article is largely talking about academic success (with one or two exceptions) which imo is much easier to normalize across countries. The context to this article is that "grit" is used as one of the characteristics that charter schools and other educational programs in the US try to maximize in low performing areas. If "grit" can't be measured, or if it's just another way of describing another attribute (e.g., contentiousness, which is the article uses - or persistence, which is what you find in many academic articles), then there isn't much of a point of trying to maximize it in academic contexts. All of this assumes that school performance is something that educators want to increase. This may not necessarily be true in every country and in every context, but it should be true in most of them (and certainly in the US, where a lot of local governments are funding programs using these concepts).

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

microtherion 6y ago

Grit may not predict success, but insufficient grit might still sometimes play a role in career challenges. There seems to be a whole subgenre of HN posts along the lines of "I decided college was a waste of time for someone as uniquely gifted as me, so I self studied and have never had a problem getting hired for my next contract. Now I want to work at a FAANG, but they ask me to code a breadth first search. Why is the hiring process so broken?"

arcanon 6y ago

It is necessary, but not sufficient.

asimjalis 6y ago

Can we turn the question around and ask the opposite? Does lack of grit predict failure?

bckr 6y ago
That depends on your definition of failure, and is confused by factors like inheriting wealth... I know at least one world leader who doesn't have any grit at all...
- Karrot_Kream 6y ago
  In theory you should be able to condition on inherited wealth as well to remove that as a confounding factor (yeah this is a bit causally inspired), so I'd be curious if that's been done here.

fighterpilot 6y ago

Grit sounds like conscientiousness repackaged and branded in pop science fashion. There's a big psychometrics literature on conscientiousness. Start there.

e12e 6y ago
I had to look that up - I think the psycolical term differs quite a lot from the dictionary definition - but I certainly see some similarity between "grit" and something like: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/conscientiousness https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/conscientiousness
jariel 6y ago
'Conscientiousness' and 'Grit' I think are different attributes. Conscientious people are like your 'nice Grandparents': they are consistent, orderly, pay their bills, are pleasant, predictable, file their taxes, recycle, don't steal. Gritty people are those who mount the psychological effort necessary to take on a challenging problem, and have the wherewithal to keep going when things get rough. To me the bit of confusion might arise between: 'Grit' and 'stubbornness' i.e. continue down an actually bad path and 'Grit' and 'Lack of Self Awareness' i.e. people utterly underestimating their ability, or the complexity of a domain. 'Fake it tell you make it' is actually a helpful characteristic in some areas, but in others it's not. I do believe that 'grit' and 'conscientiousness' are both positive attributes in people who start companies, but that 'conscientiousness' is probably a more important attributes in most of the employees. From the article: "Conscientiousness was twice as useful at predicting success as grit was." I have no doubt it's a better predictor for general life outcomes and especially academic outcomes. Doing a degree is mostly a grind.
- fighterpilot 6y ago
  Grit sounds like a strict subset of conscientiousness. I find it indistinguishable to the industriousness aspect of conscientiousness (and unrelated to the orderliness aspect). I wonder if they can point to any concrete differences between grit and conscientiousness-industriousness in terms of definition?

gumby 6y ago

This article lays out the evidence: identifying something people can (in theory) change about themselves will be popular. If the thesis were “people with violet eyes are more successful”, well, not much you can do about that without (likely dangerous) medical intervention. But if you have enough grit you can work on your grit. On the other hand something like “grit” is inspirational to people who like that kind of thing (“I’m going to improve my grit”), scammers (“Take my course on improving your grit”), and the comfortably well off who can use it as an excuse not to worry about the less fortunate (“Not my problem if they lack grit. I worked on mine and look at the result!”). PS: as with so many cases, the US ignores international ISO standards when grading sandpaper grit.

kingsuper20 6y ago

That's the kind of article that makes me: 1) Set up my own pile of anecdotes (and the importance of luck, grit, natural ability, etc. in people I know) 2) Attempt to build a model. 3) Think about Stanislav Andreski's book 'Social Sciences as Sorcery'. 4) Go back to my coffee and think about something useful.

m3kw9 6y ago

Problem is that you can’t just look at one out of 10s-100s of combination of things you need to get to success.

sdenton4 6y ago

Most of the 'how to succeed' advice is a mix of survivorship bias with 'necessary but not sufficient' traits. (You can apply a lot of grit at a fast food restaurant and never become a thousandaire.) Turns out that having both grit and a large family nest egg too reduce the consequences of failure go a long way together. But maybe they're rare to have together: the safety net reduces the need for grit.

zippy5 6y ago
I somewhat agree that a gritty person shouldn’t keep a fast food job, but some of the Uber drivers I meet are incredibly gritty. They work incredibly long hours and grind on multiple apps. They have well thought out strategies for how to make as much as they can per hour and have plans for how they will invest their money. I admire the heck out of em but I can see most people don’t want that life. I have no doubt that kind of work ethic could be wasted in the wrong environment but a successful person should have both grit and the ability to find an environment where they can use it to get ahead. I’d even argue that corporate America as whole rarely rewards grit with a couple exceptions.
- Balgair 6y ago
  > and the ability to find an environment where they can use it to get ahead Reminds me of this quote: "Free enterprise needs elbow room" -Poul Anderson
- sdenton4 6y ago
  "some of the Uber drivers I meet are incredibly gritty." That's exactly the point. There's a huge number of people bringing a hell of a lot of hustle to just keeping their head above water. There was a brilliant blog post a couple years ago pointing out that perfect competition - from the perspective of the gig worker on the ground - is fundamentally dystopian. When you're providing a commoditized service (like driving a car) in perfect competition, you've got nowhere to go but working harder or smarter. Which quickly means that everyone in the market is working just as hard and smart, bringing maximum hustle (or, if you prefer, grit) just to hang on.
6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

lawrenceyan 6y ago

Maximize working in smarter and more scalable ways. Hard work and grit is important, but by itself is not enough.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Grit is just the statistics of trying over and over. It’s a truism that can’t be refuted: trying something multiple times increases the likelihood by some amount that one will succeed (when compared to fewer attempts).

fblp 6y ago

I think you can improve grit or conciensiousness practicing "not-doing". I have no research to support this, but if i think of something i find meditating or slowing down can help when I'm facing adversity.

alea_iacta_est 6y ago
> I have no research to support this There's a religion built around that concept, it's called buddhism and it's been around for 2,500 years.
- fblp 6y ago
  I know, but i don't know the (academic research on it)

m0llusk 6y ago

It seems like the attempt to gather compelling evidence ends up skipping over foundational elements. After all, if someone quits consistently then progress is likely to be difficult. The idea of grit potentially also connects with two other potentially interesting related ideas: First there is Victor Frankl's observation that those who were expected to survive in the concentration camps were the people who were young adults, healthy, well fed, smart, and quick. However, these people often reacted very badly to sudden change, chaos, and the lack of obvious opportunities and would end up dead in a week or two as much from hopelessness as privation. Meanwhile people who were skinny, weak, sick, and wounded often survived one trauma after another because they had something they were determined to live for--often family, sometimes cherished places or work. Something they longed to return to could keep them going. Second there is the actually rather robustly documented phenomenon of John Henryism in which people suffering from discrimination or lack of opportunity find success by expending tremendous effort only to fall victim to illness early in life as the tolls from their exertions accumulate. This is a good example of how the grit to success story could have a serious downside that should be considered even if the success side might actually be realistically and meaningfully obtainable.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago

It’s amazing how at 140 comments right now, the word “luck” is more than half way down the comments page :shrug:

Arete314159 6y ago

I'm so tired of stories about "grit." Take it from someone who got into Harvard after the death of one parent and the mental breakdown of another: everyone's got a breaking point. I happened to experience my breaking point after I got into an Ivy League school, but all those traumas were cumulative. What we are experiencing in this country is a strip-mining of infrastructure, support, and education. Then instead of stories about reinvestment in our next generation, we're fed pablum about 'grit.' "Oh, I set your house on fire? Here's this awesome story about someone who got a PhD even after her house burned down." We're looking at the wrong problem.

achillesheels 6y ago

I’m enjoying the top comments! They seem to fail in perceiving “success” is about building something know one knows they needed before it becomes necessary. It’s called “skating to where the puck will be”. Building requires endurance (which is “grit-in-itself”) in overcoming the status quo, which, in this context, seems to be people who think massive fortunes are caused by predestined massive affordances, and not by any free determination from the character of the individual. It’s as if the presence of uncertainty in determining where their life will be in the future is obviated.