Willpower Expert: The Secret To Effortless Discipline - Angela Duckworth - #1158

Chris Williamson (0:00)

People of the UK and Ireland, if you want to come and see me live, tickets are very limited for my live tour this October, but they are still available. Dublin is already sold out. However, if you're a fan of Modern Wisdom, if you love psychology, philosophy, human nature, personal development, and you want to hear stories that I definitely can't tell on the internet, then come and see me live this October. ChrisWilliamson.live has got all of the tickets. Dublin is completely gone, but there are limited tickets everywhere else. I'll see you soon. ChrisWilliamson.live. You wrote one of the defining personal development techniques of the decade.

Angela Duckworth (0:31)

I wrote it 10 years ago.

Chris Williamson (0:33)

What's changed in your worldview since then?

Angela Duckworth (0:36)

Well, as a psychologist, I really did spend the first half of my career trying to understand the importance of individual effort to achieving excellence. And I wrote a book about it. And I recently reread that book. And I wanted to know whether I changed my mind. I mean, you know, I continued to do science, other scientists, people keep saying, and you know what? I don't disagree with the word and grit. I really don't, other people can, but I don't. I feel like there is a final common path to becoming great that requires consistency over time. And that's the message of grit.

And you know, the reason I embarked on this in the first place is that I knew that I had achieved what I had achieved through effort and not through natural talent.

So there was a personal dimension and it was my vocation, my calling as a scientist. But as a scientist, I continued to ask the question, like, what else is there? And also, where does this come from, right? So your DNA will incline you to be grittier or less gritty. But we also know that it's not just your DNA. So I also wanted to know, like, why would somebody be passionate and persevering? And this curiosity inevitably leads you outside of the mind of a high achiever and into their situation. It leads you naturally to like, who's around them, what's around them, where are they? And so the second book is about everything that inclines a person to devote individual effort, and also everything that makes individual effort pay off.

Chris Williamson (2:12)

When does grit stop being useful? What are the limits of grit?

Angela Duckworth (2:18)

You know, I think the personal reason why I wrote this second book is that as somebody who has gotten very far in life through her own effort, she has asked the question, you know, when is it not paying off? And I will tell you, when you are trying hard and you're not making the progress you want, well, if you're me at a certain age, you just try harder, right? I mean, wake up earlier, grind harder and then stay later, right?

Chris Williamson (2:49)

That's the assumption, right? If I'm trying hard, if I think I'm trying hard and I'm not getting results, it must be that I think I'm trying hard, but I'm not trying hard enough.

Angela Duckworth (2:57)

And then I can try harder, right? I mean, it's kind of like natural. You're like, oh, then do 20 percent more, right? You're not getting where you are. Like, turn up the volume, right?

Chris Williamson (3:05)

It's like a inverse Parkinson's law, not that work expands to fill the time given for it, but effort expands to make something happen.

Angela Duckworth (3:11)

Right. And sometimes that works, right? Because sometimes you aren't at 100 percent and sometimes like, yeah, you're lifting weights and you just exert a little more effort.

So, I feel like this trick that we learn, you know, try harder, is not wrong, but it's incomplete. And I think the limits, I mean, you asked me like, what are the limits? When you are trying hard and then harder and you're not making progress, you have to do something that was not natural for me, which is to ask whether the situation itself was not the right situation. You know, to me, it felt like, first of all, I don't know if that it would occur to me. Like, you know, I always look inward, right? Like, you know, what can I do? I don't want to look outward. That was reflexive to me. And also I felt kind of, yeah, like, well, I'll use the word cowardly. You can use the word, like, it just felt embarrassing and shameful. It just felt like being a loser to, you know, ask whether...

Chris Williamson (4:04)

What, you're saying that you can't do it on your own? Oh, you need a helping hand. You need this crutch in order to be able to get across the line.