In this episode, we are joined by Angela Duckworth, who is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, which proposes the concept of ‘grit’ as using passion and personal conscientiousness to achieve long-term goals. Angela has also been a winner of the MacArthur Genius Fellowship.
What Was Covered
- How passion and perseverance is at the heart of grit and its contribution to high performance
- The naturalness bias and our preference towards those we perceive as naturally talented compared to those who strive to achieve success
- The mundanity of excellence and how champions learn to love the discipline of working on their craft
- How successful people use hopeful mindset to solve challenges, setbacks, and failures.
Key Takeaways and Learnings
- Focus: why the most successful gritty high performers spend up to 70% of their time developing their passion alone.
- Assets of passion: the four developmental stages we experience in realising our passions in life.
- Top level goals: how to set your most important priorities aside from lesser interests as a path to achieving your top-level goal.
Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode
- Get in touch with Angela Duckworth via Twitter or Facebook
- Angela’s websites: https://angeladuckworth.com/ and https://www.characterlab.org/
- Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, a book by Angela Duckworth
- Angela’s TED talk
- University of Pennsylvania, website
- McKinsey, website
- The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers Daniel F. Chambliss