Why Grit Isn’t Enough | Angela Duckworth

Ryan Holiday (0:00)

If you understand what grit is, you might think that a proponent of grit would tell you that the secret to success in life, the secret to succeeding, is to just try harder, to push beyond your limits, to do more. And I think sometimes people expect that to be my advice too, that it's all about effort, that it's all about sort of reaching within you and pulling out what you need in a given moment. But that's not how life is. That's not how it is in practice. And I think anyone that's done anything or that has any shred of self-awareness knows that this isn't true, right? In some moments, we're exactly what we need to be and in other moments, we fall short. Why is that? What's the cause? I mean, it could be as simple as forgetting to eat breakfast or not getting enough sleep the night before or just having the wrong attitude about something. I guess what I'm saying is that virtue, greatness, success, so often it is situational, which is the concept of Angela Duckworth's new book. If you read Grit, great, it's a great book. I think this new book is just as important and it's really, really interesting. It's called Situated. The subtitle is Find the People and Places that Bring Out Your Best. I'm a huge fan of Angela Duckworth's book. She's been on the podcast once before she came here, right when we opened The Daily Stoic Studio. I was very excited to have her back and we had an amazing conversation. Grit is not a thing you're born with or not born with, that you have or don't have, that is all or nothing. It is so much more complicated than that. I think as a result, so much more interesting than that. Angela Duckworth is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She's the co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change for Good Initiative. She's also a 2013 MacArthur Fellow. Her TED Talk is one of the most viewed of all time. She's entertaining, she's brilliant, and I think her work is really, really important. Funny enough, the day after she was here in the studio, she was giving a talk in San Francisco with Steve Kerr, the coach of the Golden State Warriors, and my sister attended. So we'll call this a little bit of a family affair. You can pick up signed copies of Angela's new book, Situated, Find the People and Places that Bring Out Your Best, as well as signed copies of Grit here at The Painted Porch. Of course, they are also available anywhere books are sold. Let's get into it.

So I was driving to pick up my kids from school the other day and Pete Carroll called me. What? Yeah. I was like, what is happening right now?

Angela Duckworth (2:37)

Are you BFFing with Pete Carroll? No.

Ryan Holiday (2:39)

I was like, how did you get this number? Like in a good way. But I was just like, I'm totally surprised.

Angela Duckworth (2:44)

Yeah. Actually, how did he get there? Has he been on the show?

Ryan Holiday (2:46)

No. I think so. I spoke to the team like many, many years ago.

Angela Duckworth (2:50)

You went to go talk to the Seahawks?

Ryan Holiday (2:52)

Yeah, like in maybe 2015 or something. And so maybe he got it there and just never, we never communicated in any way other than that.

Angela Duckworth (3:01)

Why did he call you?

Ryan Holiday (3:03)

He was working on, he's teaching this class at USC and he was gonna ask me something. But you came up like in the first like five seconds, which I thought was funny because you're here. He was like, I know Angela Duckworth says, you can't teach grit.

Angela Duckworth (3:16)

Did he say that?

Ryan Holiday (3:16)

I was like, I don't know if that's what she said.

Angela Duckworth (3:19)

Wait, is he still saying that? I feel like this is our like, we've got like some like Laurel and Hardee kind of like thing.

He knows I don't. Well, anyway, that's a, it's like, I think it's not a good, it's not a well-phrased question actually. I think the answer is less like complicated than the question.

Ryan Holiday (3:35)

Well, I was going to put it to you. You can, right? I mean, that's one of the ideas in the book is that it's something you can cultivate, right?

Angela Duckworth (3:41)

I think almost every feature of human nature is cultivatable slash malleable, right? And then, which are not the same thing because some things might be malleable, but you have no agency to cultivate it, right? But I do think that you can cultivate it. You can encourage or discourage. I mean, do you agree?