Why Grit is More Important than Intelligence

Charles Duhigg, in his best-selling book The Power of Habit, defines grit as the tendency to work “strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over the years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.” Angela Duckworth, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, coined the term “grit” in her popular TED talk of April 2013 and her best-selling book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. She is a student of Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology, and was intrigued about what qualities could most accurately predict outstanding achievement. She picked up the research where Walter Mischel of the “marshmallow experiment” had left off. Mischel had ascertained that kids who delayed their gratification in refusing a marshmallow immediately (for a greater reward of another one fifteen minutes later) were shown to achieve more in later years, as compared to those who had less willpower and succumbed to eating the first marshmallow immediately.