U r s p r a c h e.
Oerspracher.
Everybody knows that effort matters.
What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.
This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedanta.
What is it that makes extraordinary people successful?
Is it talent, genius, luck?
Or, as Angela Duckworth suggests, is it grit?
There is a fluency and an ease with which true mastery and expertise always expresses itself, whether it be in writing, whether it be in a mathematical proof.
But I think the question is, where does that fluency and mastery come from?
Today on hidden brain, we explore this quality that Angela says is responsible for so much excellence and achievement, and then we ask, does grit also have a downside?
Sometimes people with high grit might not do the logical, rational thing because their grit compels them to keep going.
Angela Duckworth is a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
She first became interested in grit while working as a math teacher for middle school and high school students.
Angela told me that when she started teaching, she noticed right away which kids were the quickest learners, the most naturally talented.
You might say these were the kids who, when she explained the concept once, were immediately raising their hands to answer questions.
You know, I immediately thought to myself as a young and, you know, wrong teacher that, okay, those are the kids, by the end of the year, are gonna have progressed the farthest.
Because I had other kids for whom it's like, I put up the first problem, I show it to them.
I put up the second problem, I show them a different way.