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Angela Duckworth Quotes

Powerful Angela Duckworth for Daily Growth

Striving is exhausting. Sometimes I do say things like, 'I wish I were not quite this driven to be excellent.' It's not a comfortable life. It's not relaxed. I'm not relaxed as a person. I mean, I'm not unhappy. But... it's the opposite of being comfortable.

- Angela Duckworth

Life, Sometimes, Exhausting, Striving

Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.

- Angela Duckworth

Grit, Living, Like, Marathon

I didn't tell my kids, 'You have to play viola, and you have to play piano.' They chose these things on their own, and I don't think we have to give kids every choice, but we do have to give them some choice because that autonomy is crucial for fostering passion.

- Angela Duckworth

Play, Tell, Some, Viola

I know that instructional time is a zero-sum game, but if we want kids to do well academically, it's hard to imagine that happening if they don't have some control over their attention.

- Angela Duckworth

Game, Some, Over, Academically

As our knees and hips and eyesight deteriorate, we become more dependable, less impulsive, kinder, and less moody. Psychologists call this the maturity principle. My own life experience fits this principle to a T.

- Angela Duckworth

Own, Principle, Knees, Eyesight

Many, many individuals will report starting to form their lifelong interests around adolescence. Why that is, researchers don't fully know. But if you can take a trip down memory lane and see what interested you, that's at least a clue as to where your interest may begin to develop.

- Angela Duckworth

Memory, Lifelong, Least, Clue

The focus on just thinking about standardized test scores as being synonymous with achievement for teenagers is ridiculous, right? There are so many things that kids care about, where they excel, where they try hard, where they learn important life lessons, that are not picked up by test scores.

- Angela Duckworth

Achievement, About, Scores, Picked

At various points, in big ways and small, we get knocked down. If we stay down, grit loses. If we get up, grit prevails.

- Angela Duckworth

Small, Grit, Big, Points

During all my undergrad years and in high school, I was involved in tutoring and public service. At Harvard, I spent over 35 hours a week doing service. I was a Big Sister, I worked for the homeless, the elderly; it was the epicenter of my focus.

- Angela Duckworth

Doing, Week, Big, Homeless

Gritty people train at the edge of their comfort zone. They zero in on one narrow aspect of their performance and set a stretch goal to improve it.

- Angela Duckworth

Goal, Set, Gritty, Narrow

I know a lot of CEOs who are looking for three- to four-year varsity athletes - not necessarily because these people are going to be doing pushups or spiking volleyballs in the workplace, but because they're looking for that continuity, that person who was gritty about something.

- Angela Duckworth

Doing, Three, About, Continuity

I worked hard when I was a consultant. I worked hard when I was in graduate school looking at neuroscience. I worked hard as a teacher. But those are completely different career paths. And the lack of direction is why I didn't get far enough in any of those things.

- Angela Duckworth

Career, Why, Worked, Neuroscience

To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it. Every day, parents and teachers ask me, 'How do I build grit in kids? What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic? How do I keep them motivated for the long run?' The honest answer is, I don't know.

- Angela Duckworth

Every Day, Run, About, Ethic

Grit, in a word, is stamina. But it's not just stamina in your effort. It's also stamina in your direction, stamina in your interests. If you are working on different things but all of them very hard, you're not really going to get anywhere. You'll never become an expert.

- Angela Duckworth

Effort, Expert, Very, Stamina

Grittier students are more likely to earn their diplomas; grittier teachers are more effective in the classroom. Grittier soldiers are more likely to complete their training, and grittier salespeople are more likely to keep their jobs. The more challenging the domain, the more grit seems to matter.

- Angela Duckworth

Grit, More, Likely, Diploma

I will say that if my wildest dreams come true, I will, like, wake up one day, and I will be Carol Dweck, right? Because she is like everything I want to be.

- Angela Duckworth

Want, Will, Like, Carol

Childhood is generally far too early to know what we want to be when we grow up. Longitudinal studies following thousands of people across time have shown that most people only begin to gravitate toward certain vocational interests, and away from others, around middle school.

- Angela Duckworth

Away, Around, Gravitate, Studies

There haven't been genetic studies on grit, but we often think that challenge is inherited but grit is learned. That's not what science says. Science says grit comes from both nature and nurture.

- Angela Duckworth

Think, Been, Genetic, Nurture

I think the very idea of character, of developing not just grit, but empathy and curiosity, emotional intelligence - you know, the things that I want my own daughters to develop - the idea that we're going to get there through rewards and punishments seems completely at odds with the idea of character itself.

- Angela Duckworth

Through, I Think, Very, Odds

Being gritty doesn't mean not showing pain or pretending everything is O.K. In fact, when you look at healthy and successful and giving people, they are extraordinarily meta-cognitive. They're able to say things like, 'Dude, I totally lost my temper this morning.' That ability to reflect on yourself is signature to grit.

- Angela Duckworth

Fact, Pretending, Signature, Dude

Some of the things we do are great, but they often have these iterations that are not great. We screw up sometimes. We get rejected.

- Angela Duckworth

Sometimes, Some, Rejected, Screw

If you're never able to tolerate a little bit of pain and discomfort, you'll never get better.

- Angela Duckworth

Pain, Never, Better, Discomfort

You cannot will yourself to be interested in something you're not interested in. But you can actively discover and deepen your interest.

- Angela Duckworth

Discover, Will, Interest, Actively

Is it 'a drag' that passions don't come to us all at once, as epiphanies, without the need to actively develop them? Maybe. But the reality is that our early interests are fragile, vaguely defined, and in need of energetic, years-long cultivation and refinement.

- Angela Duckworth

Without, Maybe, Our, Actively

I do feel it's hard to be modest and humble and egoless when people are telling you you are so great and wanting to give you prizes and energy. I'm trying hard not to be an awful, narcissistic human being.

- Angela Duckworth

Humble, Wanting, Telling, Narcissistic

If the quality and quantity of continuous effort toward goals matters as much as I think it does, we may actually get more productive, not less, as we get older - even if we can't pull all-nighters like we used to.

- Angela Duckworth

Effort, Used, I Think, Goals

People's lives really do turn out differently. And it certainly can't be explained by how intelligent you remember them being when they were sitting next to you in organic chemistry class.

- Angela Duckworth

Chemistry, Next, Certainly, Organic

It's a very good thing to teach kids to finish what they started in the sense of fulfilling their commitments. So when my daughter told me on the second track meet that she was done with it because she discovered she didn't like competing, I made her finish the season.

- Angela Duckworth

Good, Discovered, Very, Season

I think that is just a limitation of any questionnaire - that we apply a frame of reference or standard. It's a well-known finding in psychology that when people are total beginners at a skill, they tend to overrate their skill level. They don't know what they don't know. The more expert you are, the more critical you become.

- Angela Duckworth

Expert, Limitation, Standard, Frame

We have found a direct correlation between grit and positive emotions, but the fact that I have no evidence that grit is bad for you doesn't mean it's not. It's always a possibility that in the future researchers will discover a downside to grit.

- Angela Duckworth

Emotions, Discover, Always, Possibility

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