Passion and Perseverance: Angela Duckworth on Grit

Angela Duckworth’s research on grit has become one of the most talked-about ideas in the psychology of achievement, and her widely viewed 2013 talk brought it to a huge audience. Duckworth, a psychologist who left a career in management consulting to study why some people succeed and others do not, asked a deceptively simple question: when she looked at high achievers across very different fields, military cadets, spelling-bee champions, struggling teachers, successful professionals, what set the successful apart? It was not, she found, raw talent or IQ. The best predictor was a quality she named “grit”: a combination of passion and sustained perseverance toward long-term goals. It is a hopeful and, to me, a deeply intuitive idea, and one worth examining carefully.

Here is what Duckworth’s work on grit taught me about why talent is overrated, about passion plus perseverance, and about the long game of achievement.

Key takeaways

• Grit predicts success better than talent or IQ across many fields.
• Grit is passion plus perseverance sustained over the long term.
• We overvalue talent and undervalue sustained effort.
• Effort counts twice: it builds skill, and then turns skill into achievement.
• Grit can be cultivated, through interest, practice, purpose, and hope.

Why talent is overrated

One of Duckworth’s most striking claims is that we systematically overvalue talent. We love the idea of the “natural,” the prodigy who succeeds effortlessly, and we tend to assume that achievement flows mainly from inborn ability. Her research challenges this. Studying achievers across many domains, she found that talent was a surprisingly weak predictor of who ultimately succeeded. Some of the most naturally gifted people fell away, while others of more modest natural ability achieved extraordinary things. What distinguished the high achievers was not how much talent they started with, but their grit, their sustained passion and perseverance over years. Duckworth even suggests, drawing on others’ work, that our worship of talent can be a way of letting ourselves off the hook: if success is just innate gift, then we need not feel responsible for the effort we did not make. The grit research returns the focus to something we can actually control.

Passion plus perseverance

Grit, as Duckworth defines it, has two components, and both matter. The first is perseverance: the capacity to keep working hard, to push through difficulty, boredom, and failure, to finish what you begin rather than abandoning each project when it gets hard or a shinier one appears. The second, and the one people often overlook, is passion: not fleeting enthusiasm, but a deep, enduring, consistent interest in and commitment to a particular goal, sustained over years. Grit is not just grinding away at anything; it is grinding away at something you care about deeply and stick with, the long, faithful pursuit of a goal that gives your effort direction. This combination, sustained passion plus sustained perseverance, is what Duckworth found in high achievers. It is the marathon, not the sprint; the steady commitment of years, not the burst of intensity that fades.

The long game

What I find most useful in Duckworth’s work is its emphasis on the long game of achievement, and her account of how effort actually produces success. Effort, she argues, counts twice. First, effort builds skill: talent times effort equals skill. Then, effort makes skill productive: skill times effort equals achievement. So effort enters the equation twice, once in developing our abilities and again in applying them. This is why sustained effort matters so much more than initial talent. And encouragingly, Duckworth’s research suggests grit is not simply fixed; it can be cultivated, by deepening our interests, by committing to deliberate practice, by connecting our work to a larger purpose beyond ourselves, and by maintaining hope, the belief that our efforts can improve our future. I should note, in fairness, that the grit research has been debated and refined by other psychologists, and grit is surely not the whole story of success. But its central message, that sustained passion and perseverance matter more than we credit, rings deeply true to me.

What I’m taking with me

Duckworth’s work on grit gave me a hopeful and practical framework for thinking about achievement. What I am taking from it is the liberating finding that talent is overrated and sustained effort underrated; the definition of grit as passion plus perseverance, the long, faithful pursuit of a goal you care about; the insight that effort counts twice, building skill and then turning skill into achievement; and the encouraging possibility that grit can be cultivated. The deepest lesson is one I want to live by: that what matters most is not how gifted I am at the start, but whether I can commit deeply to something worthwhile and keep faithfully at it, year after year, through all the difficulty in between.

Frequently asked questions

What is “grit” in Angela Duckworth’s research?

Grit is the combination of passion and sustained perseverance toward long-term goals. Duckworth’s research found it predicts success across many fields better than talent or IQ.

Why does Duckworth say talent is overrated?

Because her research found that natural talent is a weak predictor of who ultimately succeeds; sustained effort and commitment (grit) matter more. She suggests our worship of talent lets us avoid responsibility for effort.

Can grit be developed?

Duckworth argues yes, by deepening one’s interests, committing to deliberate practice, connecting work to a larger purpose, and maintaining hope. Grit is not simply fixed, though the research continues to be debated and refined.

References & further reading

1. Duckworth, Angela L., et al. “Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2007.
2. Duckworth, Angela L. “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance” (TED Talk, 2013).
3. Ericsson, K. Anders, et al. “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.” Psychological Review, 1993.