GRIT - The Power of Passion and Perseverance

I've recently decided to start sharing my notes from the books I read at LinkedIn. Last year I started preparing such short summaries by condensing key?points, insights and quotes?into easy-to-read formats to benefit from them in future, whenever I encounter a problem at similar topics or looking for inspiration.

We have recently started a training journey with the team at BSH Home Appliances Middle East with the purpose of increasing our resilience, individually but also as a team. Since GRIT by Angela Duckworth has been given as a reference guide at the topic, I wanted to share a small part of my personal notes here. But Spoiler Alert for all the colleagues from the team: Please resist the temptation to rely on these notes; the book is highly recommendable and an easy-read, so please make sure, you read the book. :-)

GRIT is about working on something you care about so much that you’re willing to stay loyal to it. It’s not about falling in love; it’s about staying in love.

Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them.

       Talent x Effort = Skill     Skill x Effort = Achievement        

GRIT has two components: Passion and Perseverance

Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare. It’s about consistency over time!

Psychological assets that mature paragons of grit have in common:

1. ?First comes INTEREST. Passion begins with intrinsically enjoying what you do.
2. ?Next comes the capacity to PRACTICE. One form of perseverance is the daily discipline of trying to do things better than we did yesterday. So, after you’ve discovered and developed interest in a particular area, you must devote yourself to the sort of focused, full-hearted, challenge-exceeding-skill (deliberative) practice that leads to mastery.
3. Third is PURPOSE. What ripens passion is the conviction that your work matters. For most people, interest without purpose is nearly impossible to sustain for a lifetime. It is therefore imperative that you identify your work as both personally interesting and, at the same time, integrally connected to the well-being of others.
4. Finally, HOPE. Hope is a rising-to-the-occasion kind of perseverance. In this book, I discuss it after interest, practice, and purpose — but hope does not define the last stage of grit. It defines every stage. Grit rests on the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future.