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Grit is Overrated
On Angela Duckworth’s new book Situated
From Grit to Situated
For the longest time, our culture celebrates grit. We rely on our willpower, resilience, motivation, passion in things and perseverance in achieving a goal. We consider grit as a noble quality. We think only through hard work, we can achieve success.
Ten years ago, Angela Duckworth published a book called Grit which talks about exactly that. She argues that long-term success come from a combination of passion and perseverance rather than raw talent. It is the stubborn loyalty to a long-term goal and the daily resilience to push past failure. And yes, many people achieved success because of this. But it sounds way too hard.
After ten years of further research, instead of focusing on the internal driver to success, Duckworth looked into how changing our external circumstances could lead us to success with less effort.
In her new book Situated, Duckworth argues that individual grit and hard work are not enough on their own, and that our surrounding environments, people and places ultimately shape our success.
