Grit for the Non-Gritty
In the sixth season of the reality TV show Alone, ten people are left at different sites near Great Slave Lake in the Arctic with nothing but their wits and a small collection of items to help them survive. In the show, the winner of the season is the person who outlasts everyone else. You can be eliminated by "tapping out" or by being declared at risk by a medical team.
In season six, the first person left because he broke his ankle. The second person was taken out by the medical team because he was in danger of heart damage due to dehydration after a bout of food poisoning from eating a bad muskrat.
The third person to leave was Ray Livingston, a 43-year-old search and rescue worker. He tapped out after 19 days. He wasn't sick or injured, and he wasn't malnourished or dehydrated, but he wasn't having any luck hunting or fishing. He probably could have kept going for another twenty or more days, and be sent home by the medical team for excessive weight loss, like two other contestants were.
But he considered his odds of eventual success (low), his goals for the competition (to have the experience), and his current physical and emotional state (he wasn't having fun and he missed his family), and he decided to go home.
As a person who prefers to bow out of hopeless situations before they become excruciating or life-threatening, I have never related to a reality show competitor more. Or at all, really.
This book report is 8 years late
Psychologist Angela Duckworth's book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance came out in 2016. Pretty much everyone in the coaching / personal growth / education / parenting areas read it right away.
I did not. I avoided the book until two months ago, because I suspected I don't have a whole lot of grit, and I didn't want to read a whole book rubbing my face in it.
There's a quiz near the beginning of the book which lets you calculate how much grit you have, and as it turned out, I was off the chart.
Off the bottom of the chart. The results scale starts at 2.5, and I scored 2.1.
Quitting is my specialty
So, what's new? Quitting is basically my hobby.
An incomplete catalogue of things I have quit:
both flute and clarinet, in rapid succession and after no more than a handful of lessons, in middle school
piano, twice
actuarial science, after about two weeks of university classes (I transfered to computer science)
my four-year bachelor's degree in math (but luckily I had enough credits to get out of there with a three-year degree)
photography as a hobby
painting as a hobby
my first post-university job at a software company, to backpack around Europe
my second job post-university job at a software company, to have babies
a part-time admin job, because it was boring and I didn't like my boss
my copyediting business, and along with it a volunteer gig at Editors Canada
a year-long volunteer gig at a community non-profit
my marriage (and possibly the concept of marriage altogether)
two other relationships (and possibly the concept of relationships altogether)
I've joked, not entirely jokingly, about setting myself up as a Quitting Coach. I honestly think more people should quit more things, more often, and sooner. I believe a great deal of misery is caused by people sticking with things for silly reasons.
But also… there are things in my life that I wish I had stuck with, and I'd like to learn how to stick with things more. As a result of all this quitting, for one thing, I find myself apparently unemployable in the 2024 job market, with no post-graduate education and little workforce experience, just a miscellany of skills derived from self-employment and contract jobs.
So I'm curious about what lead me to quit things in the past, and how I can make better decisions about quitting things in the future. I read the Grit book to learn more. Here’s what I learned.
There are different orders of goals
One of the favourite questions of coach Michael Bungay Stanier is “What do you have to say 'no' to, to say 'yes' to this?” It's a good question because it gets to a basic truth: resources are finite. Time, money, and energy all need to be rationed out among all the things you do.
Therefore, you have to quit things. You can't just keep accreting hobbies and careers and goals like katamari damacy. One of the reasons I love quitting things so much is the whoosh of possibility from all that newly free time, money, and energy.
So how can you be gritty and not give up on things, while still making space for new things?
Duckworth resolves this paradox by dividing goals into three levels: low, mid and high. Low-level goals are the nitty-gritty get-things-done goals, like "send that email" or "research that program". Mid-level goals are bigger projects, like "get a degree" or "build a shed". And top-level goals are lofty, almost visionary, like "improve the lives of children" or "be an Olympic athlete".
The distinction between levels of goal is useful because it helps clarify when to grit and when to quit; it's in the higher-level goals that grit is most useful, and in the lower-level goals that (I would argue) quitting can be the right move.
For example, if your top-level goal is to be an Olympic-calibre swimmer, then you'll probably have to give up your mid-level goal of mastering Elgar's Concerto in E minor on the cello. (Unless you have a lot of energy, and some people do.)
A strong top-level goal can also motivate you to stick with a lower-level goal that might be boring, expensive, or otherwise draining on its own merits. The endless scales on the cello or laps in the pool gain some charm by their contribution to your visions of future glory.
So a well-defined top-level goal serves to both motivate you to stick with mid- and low-level goals, and decide when it's time to quit a lower-level goal that doesn't serve a higher goal.
This gets me some way toward figuring out my problem with grit — I don't really understand my top-level goals. For a while I was a member of a group (run by the same Michael Bungay Stainer) that was intended to help members achieve their "worthy goal" — except, I could never come up with a worthy goal. The best I could do was, "I want to... make money and help people?"
I quit that group.
I stopped studying Korean a few months into the pandemic partially because there was nothing at stake: I don't have a mid-level goal to live in Korea, and my vague goal to learn a second language wasn't hooked to any particular top-level goal. I just thought it would be neat.
So I have some thinking to do about my top-level goals. I think defining them and understanding how my mid-level goals serve them will help me stick with things in the future, and even help me quit things more intentionally.
But that's not all I learned from the Grit book.
Four Assets of Successful People
In her research, Duckworthy found that people who are successful in their field have four characteristics which help them to stick with their goals when things get difficult. None of these things make a person gritty, but they all interact with grit in positive feedback loops that lead to high-level goal achievement. The four characteristics are:
Successful people are interested in what they're working on. Interest originates in play, not in discipline: you can't force yourself to be interested in something. A spark of interest or curiosity, fed by early confidence-building wins, gets successful people into their field at first. You can't create that initial spark with grit, but if interest wanes, you can choose to rekindle it by finding a new perspective on your field. Interest serves grit by keeping you coming back without having to use willpower.
Successful people use directed practice to improve in their area. In order to build expertise, it's not enough to just do something a lot. Most people, for example, cook or drive or host meetings a lot without becoming any better than competent. You have to employ directed practice, which is practice which deliberately and methodically addresses areas of weakness, in order to move past plateaus and master skills. Directed practice serves grit by improving skill level, which keeps things interesting and moves you towards your goals.
Successful people have purpose. Successful people feel that what they're working on has some meaning: to help others, for the honour of their craft, for their country or their family name. Purpose serves grit by giving a person something external to focus on when it seems like it would be easier to quit.
Successful people have hope. They believe that their goal is possible, however remotely. Much like purpose, hope serves grit by giving a person a perspective that inspires them to keep going.
These four elements gave me a new lens through which to look at all the things I've quit in the past. For some of them, I can see that I was probably right to quit, and for others, I can see how I could be grittier next time.
For example, I had a reasonably good copyediting business once upon a time; I had satisfied repeat customers, and the work was rewarding. I was interested in the craft of copyediting, I was willing to practice and learn more about it, and I felt my work had purpose because I often edited scientific papers before they were submitted to journals (which I consider to be important work).
However, my goal was to have a career that was sustainable and financially rewarding, and I had no hope that copyediting could be that for me. Copyediting requires sustained focus, and I couldn't keep it up for more than a couple of hours a day. It was fine as a part-time gig when my kids were small, but it wouldn't scale. So I was right to quit.
I'm not so confident in an earlier decision, though. After my kids were born, I quit my career in tech, staying home instead of returning to the workforce.
I quit because, to be honest, at the time everything was missing: I wasn't interested in the work I was doing. I honestly didn't even know about directed practice back then — I'd always either been good at things immediately or not bothered. I had no sense of purpose in my job, and I had no hope that I would ever be happy or successful in that career.
A lot of those problems might have been solved by being more deliberate about my career — that is, by moving to a company that aligned with my values, by looking for mentorship, and by seeking out more challenging work. But I didn't know how to do that. I didn't even know you could do that, and I didn't realize that doing it would make me much happier in my career. I was young and lacked both self-awareness and an understanding of how jobs and careers worked.
If I had known better, I might have figured out how to be happy in the career, and so I might have stuck with it, risen through the ranks, and been happily employed this whole time. So it might have been a mistake to quit tech.
I'm much older now, and hopefully this time around I can be more intentional about building a career that serves me. I'll start with an area that interests me, and I'll be deliberate about how I work, changing jobs if necessary, until I find one that gives me a sense of purpose.
Also, I’ll have hope that my goal of having a career that's fun and rewarding is actually possible.
And finally, the hardest: In order to be successful, I have to commit myself to directed practice to address my weaknesses — which means suffering the agony of being bad at things. I hate being bad at things. But you have to be bad at things before you can be good at them. Gaining skills in my chosen field will keep it interesting and give me more options.
Cost-benefit analysis versus identity
Another interesting idea in Grit is the role of identity in persistence. Drawing from the work of James March, Duckworth says that sometimes we make decisions through a cost-benefit analysis, but sometimes we make them through identity: Who am I, and what would someone like me do in this situation?
For example, if you think of yourself as a ballet dancer, you're not going to give up dancing because of a single difficult class, or having a nasty teacher for a year, or even an injury. Those setbacks are just bumps in the much longer road of being a ballet dancer, which you were before the setbacks and will be long after they are over.
But if you just see yourself as a person who is taking ballet lessons, it's easy to stop. Now you're just a person who used to take ballet lessons; you haven't really lost anything.
Another example: There's a concept that's core to the Finnish character called sisu. According to Wikipedia, it means "extraordinary determination in the face of extreme adversity". I would imagine that it must be tremendously helpful for Finnish people to identify as having sisu when faced with adversity: "I can't give up; I'm Finnish!"
As Duckworth points out, persistence often doesn't make sense in a cost-benefit way, especially in the short term. It's at those times that identity helps you keep going. In a sense, it puts a thumb on the "cost of quitting" side of the scale, by adding the cost of losing an identity.
Identity and me
When I think about my various identities, it becomes more clear why I give things up so easily.
The English cultural identity doesn't have much to say about being persistent — having a "stiff upper lip" is the closest, and it's more about being emotionally restrained and stoic in the face of adverse events than about not giving up. Canadian cultural identity, such that it is, doesn't say anything about persistence, except in the face of winter weather.
An identity that is meaningful to me, though, is singer. In 2020 I quit the choir I'd been in for over 20 years, but I didn't quit being a choir singer: I joined another choir just this January, and it feels great to embody that identity again.
Another identity that is meaningful to me is writer, but in a perverse way. I have a compulsion to write, but in this area I lack almost all the things that lead to success: I don't practice writing or try to improve, I have no great purpose in my writing (although this blog is the closest I've ever come), I have no hope for writing because I have no goal for it. The only thing I have going for me is interest, but even then I struggle to write — it has taken me weeks to write this simple post.
But when I don't write, it bothers me like a chipped tooth. I've had several blogs since the late '90s, I've quit all of them except this one, and sooner or later I always get the urge to start again. I need to write, even if I don't want to. I don't really understand this identity, and I don't know what to do with it, but it's certainly persistent.
What can I do differently in my next career?
The lesson for my next career is to choose something I want to identify with, and to actively build my identity as a whatever. I know from experience that the best way to do that is through community: joining the professional organization, going to meetings, and nurturing relationships in the field.
I also know from experience that identifying with a career isn't enough to save it when the cost-benefit analysis gets too dire. I still think of myself as a copyeditor, but I quit copyediting for sound financial and logistical reasons. I think I'll always be a coach, but I can't make being a coach work financially. The identities survived, but the careers didn't.
The answer might simply be to choose my next career more wisely in terms of financial prospects.
Grit Isn't The Only Thing
At the end of the book, Duckworth describes a framework of characteristics which goes a long way to explaining why I find myself where I am today. She sorts personality characteristics into three clusters:
Intellectual Skills, or Skills of Mind: things like curiosity and love of learning,
Interpersonal Skills, or Skills of Heart: things like gratitude, social intelligence, and emotional intelligence, and
Intrapersonal Skills, or Skills of Will: things like grit, self-control and self-discipline
If this framework is a three-legged stool, one of my legs is missing: I have ample intellectual and interpersonal skills, but precious little in the way of intrapersonal skills. It's no coincidence that these skills are sometimes called "resume skills".
I didn't take anything actionable away from this section; there's not much I can do about the sad state of my current resume. But at least it's nice to be reminded that I'm strong in two other areas of character.
Grit, like housework, is morally neutral
Duckworth wrote Grit to explain her research about why some people are successful, and I think it's worth examining what "successful" means. Duckworth means influential, famous, or otherwise professionally accomplished.
She discusses, for example, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon. His grit has contributed to the proliferation of shoddy products, environmental damage, and worker injury and death. Duckworth doesn't go into that, but I'm not criticising her; she's very clear that she doesn't believe grit is the only important aspect of character, or even a particularly important aspect of character.
I think that, as with any human characteristic that varies from person to person, there's a place in the world for non-gritty people. Non-gritty people are chill; we prioritize things like relationships and curiosity and rest over achievement and success and sticking with things.
Grit is a tool, like any other, and it's most useful when you understand it, and your relationship to it. Is lack of grit getting in the way of living life the way you want to? Or conversely, is too much grit causing you to hang on to identities and goals which no longer serve you?
I'm glad I finally read this book. It has given me the tools to be more persistent in the future, and to be more discerning about when to give stuff up.