[not_a_terrorist]

Grit and perseverence, however you call them, are important aspects to success, but not THE secret to success.

If you look at the subset of people who enjoy "success" in life, a large number of them will display those qualitites, no doubt. But some of them could have attained it by sheer luck, filial connections, or others.

Now, if you look at the complementary subset (people who do not enjoy "success" in life), I guarantee you will find plenty of gritee people in there, in addition to people who display personal qualities not conducive to success (which by no mean excludes them from enjoying success in live, given the proper circumstances - see previous paragraph).

That's the aspect I do not enjoy about those "secret to success stories: no one ever considers the people who did everthing rigth, but did not succeed. It happen much more often than we think. No one cares for the losers, whatever the cause, alas. This is the 'survivorship paradox' described by Cicero... Taleb called it the Silent cemetary evidence.

One more aspect, if I may: when can one determine someone else is a "success", or a "failure"? People certainly are entitled to more than one shot at success, and negative results are certainly a valid way to pinpoint your path towards success.

So, grit is not THE secret path to success, but if your goal is to be successful, then internalising a gritee spirit certainly demultiply the possibilities to enjoy success.

[ryandrake]

Survivorship bias is the major flaw in every business book and in all biographies of successful people. "Look at the attributes that success stories have in common, and IGNORE them when present in unsuccessful stories." This leads to people and companies cargo-culting the behaviors of well-known rich people and businesses, expecting success. Go read _Good To Great_. Business schools across the world are enamored with this book, but it's basically 300 pages of survivorship bias.

For every person you point to and say grit and perseverance made them successful, I'll point to ten who failed despite grit and perseverance.

[mwfunk]

Very true. It's a lot easier to look at failures and understand why they failed than look at successes and understand why they succeeded. I would read the hell out of a book full of accurate postmortems of failed businesses, products, movements, governments, etc.

It's the whole "success hides failure" problem. It's really tempting to assume that everything a successful person or company does contributes to their success, but the truth is closer to, they did 10 things right and 9 things wrong. But it's difficult or impossible to determine which is which, hence the cargo-culting.

Even more frustrating is working for a successful company, because anybody who advocates change can be shot down with the argument that everything is going well therefore that's empirical proof that the thing you want to change is clearly just fine and dandy.

Ultimately the best we can do as individuals is to cultivate an innate sense of skepticism in all things, avoid reductivism, never drink our own Kool-Aid, and never fall into the trap of thinking that we've figured it all out and don't need to think and grow anymore.

[stdbrouw]

> Very true. It's a lot easier to look at failures and understand why they failed than look at successes and understand why they succeeded. I would read the hell out of a book full of accurate postmortems of failed businesses, products, movements, governments, etc.

Survivorship bias actually works both ways: by studying only the failures you are quite likely to misunderstand what made them fail and you might zero in on characteristics that are actually shared by many successful businesses.

[FLUX-YOU]

>This leads to people and companies cargo-culting the behaviors of well-known rich people and businesses, expecting success.

I'm betting those business dudes are networking with people who share similar views more often than not. So if you get a large portion buying into what the books are selling, that will probably predict who they choose to network and work with [citation needed]. The network can then cushion your failures and amplify your successes.

Bonus points if you bring your Ivy League papers to the table, of course.

[thomaskcr]

It would be survivorship bias if the conclusion drawn was "if you have grit and perseverance, you'll succeed". That's not what I've gotten out of any book ever, it was always "these traits allowed me to take advantage of this opportunity that presented itself".

It's about developing skills and traits that would make you more likely to succeed should an opportunity present itself, or to help you realize an opportunity has presented itself.

There is no magic formula. There is no trait or skill that will guarantee success, but for every success story there is something that allowed them to take advantage of the cards they were dealt that without they would have been unable to.

[manyxcxi]

Funny, I just happened to listen to the Freakonomics podcast with Angela Duckworth on it this morning... It also goes into a better definition of grit, why they measure what they measure, etc.

Grit basically boils down to (me paraphrasing the author paraphrasing her work) interest in the subject, finding meaning in it that can help you get through troughs of despair, a positive outlook that you can get better with effort, and an ability to find nuance in the activity so that instead of jumping to the next new subject you can focus on a specific subset of the thing you're trying to get better at, leveling up if you will.

What I took from what she said is that anyone can be gritty at anything if they want to be, but you have to ACTUALLY want it, not just say you do. Grit, the way she describes it just seems to be a roll up of a lot of values we (at least I) intuitively have always felt were important for being able to get better at something.

I always knew I was better at certain things because I liked doing them more than other and not the other way around because I was naturally very good at some things that I just didn't like and never got any better (golf). There were some things I liked and got very good at that initially I was horrible at (archery).

I think the thing that people who don't feel gritty (I have always been described as someone who is, which I think has made me grittier all around, just to reaffirm it) can get from this is that grit isn't necessarily something you are born with and it doesn't necessarily apply to all of life. it's also something you can foster and work on- but you have to be honest about how you're applying it.

[Joof]

So what happens when you have grit for things that you don't have access to, but not the things that you do have access to? Blocked by a lack of opportunity in the things that you love.

[manyxcxi]

Well, maybe that's part of why some people seem to always move from thing to thing and never seem to succeed or finish.

Maybe you find something that is mentally/emotionally close enough.

Maybe if you're 'naturally' grittier you make do with what you do have an opportunity for without even knowing you're making due.

I personally, have been pretty good in my life about seeing things through to the end (or a certain level of competency) and trying my hardest at it.

My dad, when I was young said something along the lines of "the things you like doing the least you should make sure you do the best so you don't have to do it again" and I've always kind of run with it. I also have a lot of very different interests sports, electronics, music, science- so maybe because of my wife array of baseline interest I can get over the initial humps that would have people quitting earlier? No clue, maybe I'm just lucky to be kinda/sorta okay at things enough to get initial positive feedback to make me want to do more.

What I gained from what the author found was that anyone who really wants to, and takes a practical approach to learning/gaining competency in something can and there are some general steps that can be followed along the way to keep the positive feedback loop going. You won't necessarily ever become Mozart or Lebron James, but you can entertain the family on the piano or be a helluva free throw shooter if you actually want.

[mindcrime]

but not THE secret to success.

That's probably because there is no such thing as "THE secret to success". In the real world, people succeed or fail based on a complicated mixture of many different parameters. I doubt there is any one "thing" that we can actually prove is both necessary and sufficient for become "successful" (depending on how one defines "successful").

[thewarrior]

Do you have any examples of such people ?

Either from your peer group or other well known people ?

Just genuinely curious.

[chongli]

The problem with identifying such people is that we can usually point to some tangible cause of failure. I think it's more useful to analyze the traits common to most successful people:

    * Not being born into extreme poverty
    * Having a basic education (not many successful illiterate people)
    * Having access to at least one strong connection
    * Having "true grit", whatever that means
    * Discovering an available niche

[manyxcxi]

I agree with the premise that not being born into extreme poverty and having a strong connection within the activity/field that successful people are in are important. To me it just seems like if you don't have to worry about how you are going to survive at a basic level, it allows one the freedom to to explore higher order activities.

The article doesn't seem to do the author as much of a favor as the Freakonomics podcast she was just on, she seems to be describing that there is not necessarily true grit, that it has a lot to do with a person's relationship to the activity on many levels.