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Is Success Luck or Hard Work?

2020-07-14 · Book summary (Book Club) · Ali · recording, 8:29 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Mindset, motivation and happiness · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Lesson from a book, Evidence-based framing, Sponsor segment present

In a Book Club episode on Angela Duckworth's Grit, Ali presents the book's case that effort counts twice as much as talent (achievement = talent × effort²) and its four components of grit: interest, deliberate practice, purpose and hope.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Talent or traits anyone can develop? Book Club episode on Grit by Angela Duckworth

  • ★★ This Book Club episode, in Ali's series distilling highlights from his favourite books, is on Grit by Angela Duckworth. — 00:00:00 · Book Club
  • ★★ Angela Duckworth (quoted): In Grit, Angela Duckworth argues that people place too much emphasis on talent and not enough on passion and perseverance, the key components of grit. — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — The talent bias, effort counts twice, and what grit is

  • ★★ Friedrich Nietzsche (quoted): On the natural talent bias, Grit quotes Nietzsche: our vanity promotes the cult of the genius, because if genius is magical we need not compare ourselves and find ourselves lacking. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Ali says people mythologise talent because explaining away someone's success as just talent gives them an excuse not to do the hard work and put in the effort themselves. — 00:00:58

  • ★★★ Angela Duckworth (quoted): Angela Duckworth's two equations: talent times effort equals skill, and skill times effort equals achievement; so achievement is talent times effort squared, and effort counts twice. — 00:01:27

    “talent is important, but actually effort counts twice”

  • ★ Ali jokes that effort probably counts more than twice in Duckworth's equation, because squared effort is compounded, before dropping the point. (playful, hedged) — 00:01:27

  • ★★★ Angela Duckworth (quoted): From her research across many fields, Angela Duckworth finds the most successful people share two things: they are unusually resilient and hardworking, and they know deeply what they want. — 00:02:00

00:02:29 — Four components of grit: interest and finding your passion

  • ★★★ Angela Duckworth (quoted): Angela Duckworth calls grit the combination of perseverance and passion that leads to sustained long-term effort. — 00:02:29
  • ★★ Angela Duckworth (quoted): In Grit, Angela Duckworth says grit is not a fixed quality: there are four components of grit that anyone can work on. — 00:02:29
  • ★★ Angela Duckworth (quoted): The first component of grit is interest: to develop a passion we first need to be interested in and enjoy what we do. — 00:02:29
  • ★★ Jeff Bezos (quoted): Jeff Bezos, quoted in Grit: if you are not passionate about what you are working on, you won't be able to stick with it. — 00:02:58
  • ★★ Ali says Duckworth's point on interest is basically the same idea as his fun factor, part of his productivity equation. — 00:02:58

  • ★★★ Angela Duckworth (quoted): A line from Grit that Ali often comes back to: passion for your work is a little discovery, followed by a lot of development and then a lifetime of deepening. — 00:02:58 · also in: How to Make Money from your Passion

    “a little bit of discovery followed by a lot of development and then a lifetime of deepening”

  • ★★★ To people who say their passion is staying home playing PlayStation, Ali says you won't find your passion sitting at home: you find it by trying new things and stepping outside your comfort zone. — 00:03:27

  • ★★ Angela Duckworth (quoted): The second component of grit is practice, specifically daily deliberate practice, which builds perseverance; every gritty person Duckworth interviewed had kaizen, continuous improvement. — 00:03:27

00:03:57 — Deliberate practice and kaizen, purpose and the three bricklayers, hope and the growth mindset

  • ★★★ Anders Ericsson (quoted): Anders Ericsson's research, drawn on in Grit, finds peak performers use deliberate practice: a clearly defined stretch goal, full concentration and effort, immediate informative feedback, and repetition with reflection and refinement. — 00:03:57
  • ★★ Telling the parable of three bricklayers (laying bricks, building a church, building the house of God), Ali says the one with a higher purpose will have the most grit when the going gets tough. — 00:04:40
  • ★★★ Angela Duckworth (quoted): Angela Duckworth's team surveyed 16,000 American adults: at every level of grit people had about the same pleasure in what they did, but the grittier ones had more purpose. — 00:04:40
  • ★★ Angela Duckworth (quoted): Duckworth's three ways to find purpose in work: reflect on how it contributes to society, change it in small meaningful ways to connect it with your core values, and find a purposeful role model. — 00:05:17
  • ★ Ali jokes that only once he is no longer driven by a "pathological desire for fame and fortune" will he decide his YouTube videos need a higher purpose, which would be to help people. (playful) — 00:05:46
  • ★★★ Angela Duckworth (quoted): The fourth component, hope, underlies the others: grit rests on expecting our efforts to improve us, so we must drop the idea of fixed abilities for Carol Dweck's growth mindset. — 00:05:46
  • ★★ Angela Duckworth (quoted): Angela Duckworth says a fixed mindset leads to pessimistic explanations of adversity, while a growth mindset leads to perseverance and seeking out new challenges. — 00:06:16
  • ★★★ Ali says absolutely everything is a skill that can be learned and anyone can improve at whatever they want; he has tried to build that attitude for two decades and it has served him well. — 00:06:16

00:06:45 — Sponsor read for Blinkist

00:07:43 — Pointer to his Atomic Habits summary and sign-off

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Angela Duckworth · Grit (book) · grit (concept)

Also: People: Anders Ericsson · Carol Dweck · Friedrich Nietzsche · James Clear · Jeff Bezos

Works: Atomic Habits

Concepts: deliberate practice · growth mindset · kaizen · productivity equation

Only in the description or credits: Book Club

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