Passion and perseverance

What makes people successful? Here's an answer.

Folks we’re going to be on low power mode for another couple of days … actually I might switch on and off as I get resettled and logged into 2023 both physically and metaphorically speaking. Thanks for your continued support and readership!

What makes people successful? It's not a rhetorical question.

Is it some kind of inherent advantage? Is it privilege? Is it talent? Hard work? Having a good idea to begin with?

A study of 11,258 cadets at West Point, conducted over 10 years, says it's something else: "grit."

Led by professors Amy Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania and Michael Matthews of West Point itself, the study tried to determine the degree to which measures of three attributes could predict whether a cadet would succeed or fail at the famously challenging academy. The attributes in question?

1. cognitive ability (smarts), 

2. physical ability (brawn), and 

3. grit (defined in the study as "passion and perseverance for long-term goals of personal significance").

The researchers found that grit was the most important attribute to predict whether cadets would make it through the initial six-week West Point basic training known as Beast Barracks.

They also found that high levels of both grit and physical ability were associated with whether the cadets went on to graduate from the academy four years later. 

Perhaps most surprisingly, they found that while cognitive ability predicted higher academic and military grades, it was not as associated with achieving the ultimate goal: graduating from the academy.

The study was published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Alexandra Pattillo wrote about it for Inverse.)

I know a little bit about West Point. I didn't attend the academy, but I wrote a book about it. It's a challenging, competitive place, and it's full of high-achieving people.

The numbers on the academy's website suggest an admissions rate of about 10 percent.

That number might actually be overinflated because, unlike other colleges, nobody is simply adding West Point at the last minute to their Common App application.

Moreover, you have to really want it to attend and graduate. The prize for getting your diploma--besides the fact that the education is paid for by the U.S. government--is a five-year active duty commitment in the U.S. Army.

For some graduates, that's a dream. For others, it's a price to pay. 

It's worth noting of course that this isn't the first research on this subject. In fact, Duckworth is probably best known for her TED Talk, "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance."

When I wrote about the video of her talk back in 2016, it had 8 million views; now, it's up to 18.5 million.

And she's studied and written about "grit" before. In fact, in 2007, she was the lead author of another report on grit, which studied a smaller number of West Point cadets, along with Ivy League students and National Spelling Bee finalists.

It might not surprise you to learn that study also found that "grit" was most important. It's all interesting, although I think there are two important caveats:

First, the definition of grit is a bit too circular for my taste: People who are most likely to succeed are the ones who are most likely to persevere?

I feel like I would have gotten a C+ if I'd used that kind of reasoning in an essay when I was in college. 

Second, I worry that the study of grit skips a key step in achieving success: being sure that the goal is actually worthwhile. 

Graduating from West Point and serving in the U.S. Army? Objectively, it's a worthy thing to aim for.

But it's truly not for everyone. Even Duckworth meandered a bit in terms of her professional goals, going from consulting to teaching to psychology.

Still, if you want to tell me that the key to success is to truly want something and be willing to work as hard as possible to achieve it, I can believe that. 

It’s a good thing to keep in mind as we start a new year.

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Thanks for reading. Photo by Sarah Cervantes on Unsplash. Have a happy new year!