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.
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.
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.
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").
It's the only defining factor that can't be trained. Lucky beats smart. And if you take most of the really big successes like Facebook, Google etc. they where successful were a bunch of other people with equal grit and talent werent.
Many many people have grit and perseverence. Many people have talent, business understanding, good timing, excellent understanding of product and so on. And of course the more you play the game the better chance of success (statistically)
But when all is said and done unless we are talking about crony capitalism where you use political control to ensure success. Luck and network are the single most defining factors of why some are successful and others are not IMO.
Luck just means you don't know the cause behind an effect.
Attributing success to "luck" is therefore simply putting the conditions for success outside your locus of control.
Attributing it to "grit" or some other personal quality puts the conditions for success within your locus of control.
For many people (myself included), the latter philosophy is more helpful as it makes success seem more deliberately achievable. Combined with a strong sense of agency, this philosophy can imbue its proponents with more confidence than those waiting for "luck" to happen (or who have given up on it happening).
You say "luck and network", I say "grit". I'm curious to know if there is some experiment we could perform that we both agree could settle the matter?
For example, imagine we assign 'grit' ratings to students who finish high school. Later we find that students with high grit scores tend to complete a university degree much more often than those with low grit scores. Would that change your mind about the importance of grit?
Disagree. No matter how lucky you are. No matter who you or your family knows. If you give up quickly because you lack patience and/or grit, you are very unlikely to still be successful. How many startups succeed or become "unicorns" without at least a single pivot? Precious few. IMO grit is not the only factor of a successful person, but it sure as heck is one of the most common things you'll see in a successful person. A few examples.
Elon Musk, first generation immigrant, didn't come from money, is now a billionaire. An article was released this week interviewing Mr Musk where he plainly states he put his desk at the end of the assembly line in th Hawthorne Tesla factory. He then went on to mention how he has a sleeping bag and often sleeps there.
One of my favorites is to look at how many awful failures Abraham Lincoln went through. It would have broken most people, yet he soldiered on and ended up being one of the most important Presidents in US history: www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/education/failures.htm
Virtually everyone on HN knows how much of an obscene work-a-holic Steve Jobs was. He was also a first generation Syrian immigrant. Luck? He was fired as CEO from Apple before founding Pixar and NeXt. He still refused to give up. Grit doesn't mean being a work-a-holic though, it simply is extreme perseverance.
This inability to fail but sheer willpower is called grit. You're underestimating the power of raw unadulterated willpower if you take things outside of your comfort zone and to the extreme. Those people did, and your great grand children will likely hear their names.
Yet another take on Mark Cuban, Richard Branson, and Larry Ellison. The common thread in every one of these stories is grit, the inability to accept failure at face value and continue on until you succeed.
Meh. "Luck" isn't something you can count on, sustainably, over a period of time. You can be "lucky" (whatever that means) at a point in time, but that only gets you so far. Was billg lucky that IBM hired MS to provide an OS for the PC, and that he was able to acquire QDOS from SCP for dirt cheap? Sure... but can you attribute everything since then to a continued, non-stop string of lucky events?
Now, you might ask, "well, what if the DOS thing didn't happen?" And the thing is, we'll never know, because it did happen. But if you believe that gates, ballmer, allen, etc. were smart, hard-working and talented, it seems likely they would still have ultimately been "successful" in some fashion, even if the story unfolded quite differently.
Luck and network are the single most defining factors of why some are successful
I don't know if we'll ever be able to actually quantify and measure that, but my suspicion is that grit/perserverance/will are at least as important as luck and/or network.
But keep in mind, there are many levels of "success". Life isn't as binary as "wound up homeless and sleeping in a gutter" vs. "wound up a billionaire CEO".
There is some misinterpretation of what Duckworth is claiming. Her paper doesn't examine whether success is due to intrinsic or extrinsic aspects - whether luck is more important than grit - nor does it really examine the causes of success.
Her conclusion is "successful people have grit". Not that unsuccessful people don't have grit. Not that all people with grit are successful. Not that grit is the sole determining factor in success. Just that of the intrinsic attributes of successful people she examined, grit was common to all of them.
i.e. Some successful people are intelligent, but many aren't. Some successful people have an innate talent for the thing they are doing (however we define that), but many don't. All of them have grit.
Grit, here, is defined as "perseverance and passion for long-term goals". It borders on the obvious that people who are successful have perseverance and passion. But it also borders on the obvious that merely having perseverance and passion isn't enough to guarantee success.
the hole in this argument is that you need to know what to work hard on. the psych studies about 'praise kids for their work not their brains' seem legit as a way to improve test performance but school is scripted. In the real world success is based on how you navigate without a script, and persistence matters there but correct choices also matter.
Given an oracle that gives perfect advice of course hard work is the largest factor. That's the experiment being done in the test performance psych studies.
The 'deliberate practice' papers capture this best. The 'practice' half is hard work, but the 'deliberate' half is the ability to plan and analyze your training to advance your skills. With music or sports a coach can help you. With product, business or war (fields requiring strategy because the rules are ever-changing) not so much.
My favorite research on this topic is the 'fewer rules' study. I think it claims that families average 6 rules for children (bedtime etc) and having 2 or less is predictive for the children doing creative work as adults.
This can also be a veiled tendency of manipulation. "You worked hard!" means "I am pleased you worked hard!" or "I will not be pleased if you don't work as hard in the future!" and this can have negative consequences as the kid realizes they are captive to your criteria.
The much touted ‘character hypothesis’ (which has become a staple of a lot of modern intellectual discourse around success, often heard from writers like Malcolm Gladwell and Paul Tough) is very useful, and speaks to an understanding of the greatly changed nature of success in the post-Industrial era. However, I think the qualities associated with that hypothesis should only be considered necessary, but not sufficient. To review, here is a list of qualities generally associated with it:
persistence
determination
self-control / the ability to delay gratification
abstention from substance use
curiosity
conscientiousness
self-confidence
(occasionally) emotional intelligence
good communication skills and a willingness to listen
grit
I’d personally add to the list ‘the willingness to always learn’ (i.e., be a dedicated autodidact for life.)
Based on what we’ve seen over the past ten years, especially with things like ‘the gig economy’ and our ‘free agent nation’, this hypothesis (perhaps model) holds up well. So what else is necessary? One or more of the following:
a strong personal safety net (savings and/or relatives and friends to fall back on)
good credentials
a strong personal / professional network
These last three are exactly the ones that are generally not available to those who need them most, even if they have all the qualities of the first list (you could also substitute ‘incredible luck’ for these three.) The idea that “men of enterprise are practically assured of success” is the kind of beautiful, romantic notion that periodically gets revived in America; the reality is different. We should remind ourselves that character alone may not be enough for success in today’s world for the even the most determined, confident, and gritty of people.
The rule of headlines aside, a lot of commenters are talking about survivorship bias with this. I think the best example of luck and grit is the Hass Avocado: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hass_avocado#History
Hass was incredibly lucky to get that cultivar. From the seed growing at all, to being told to leave it be, to his children liking the taste, etc. Many many other growers at the Model Grocery Store were just as gritty and saw no real success in the Depression. He played his cards pretty well, all things considered, yet still died of a heart attack in 1952, the year his patent on the tree ran out. He was very very lucky, was pretty gritty, and still was a postman his whole life mostly by his own choice. He wanted a simple life and got one. I doubt he would have been so fortunate if lady luck had not smiled upon him.
Of course. Being born in a country with economic and educational advantages helps though. Being born into a family whose socio economic circumstances means you grow up expecting to be successful helps even more.
Traits such as grit, hard work, determination, and luck are not the secret. They are the obvious ingredients.
But grit, hard work, and determination are also redundant for someone who possesses immense passion. Passion will make you gritty, hard working, and determined. It will keep you focused, and keep your mind on topic.
Luck is also redundant because it is unscientific and untraceable (it is metaphysical). In hindsight we love to say the stars aligned or that miracles happened, but from the perspective of the do-er, none of it really matters because you never count on luck. As an entrepreneur, you pay to roll the dice, and you simply continue to roll it until you get what you need, praying you'll get enough tries. An outsider may say you were determined and that you got lucky, but no. You were passionate, and just kept trying because you had no other choice. If anything, to not have a choice is the secret to success. Determined as in determinism, not emotion. Successful people were bound to be successful.
My father used to administer for a school which he was no longer proud to be a part of. He had a proposal for a new school and sent it to some people. Miraculously, he finds a sponsor, and his dream comes true. He tells me how lucky he was and how that event saved his life. But to that I say, "Well, who else was able to build a school from scratch, let alone an international school in Tokyo?" He may have been lucky, but he was also probably the only person standing on Earth that could have done what he could. He is passionate about education. Needless to say, he succeeded. http://newis.ed.jp/
My father is not an entrepreneur. But he had what it took to make things happen. And that's the secret to success. It's the ability to make things happen.
Success imho is the art of not fucking up any single aspect of what you're doing, plus doing some aspect really well. You can have a "lifestyle" (meaning you do pretty well, but not exceptional) job/business/... by simply not fucking up any of it.
Grit is like this : fuck it up and you're dead in the water, but you'll be fine at "normal" grit if you excel somewhere else. Exceptional grit is useless, counterproductive even, when for example market fit is not there at all. Or when the required knowledge simply isn't there.
The one exception I've seen in practice is that on rare occasions a particular combination of skills was a necessity to achieve exceptional success. But it sort of looks like equivalent to winning the lottery. It's never an obvious combination of skills that works like this, it's something stupid that you wouldn't normally combine, and that's exactly why it works. But there are a huge number of possible combinations, most are not worth anything exceptional.
I've always thought of it more like, there are some qualities that are conducive to success (like not giving up when things don't go your way), and there are qualities that make success less likely (illiteracy, poverty, geography, etc.), and of course there's an element of luck (the effect of which can be minimized with perseverance and continuous personal growth, but never fully eliminated). But in general, the only people who claim to have a secret to success are those selling books about it. :)
In fairness, the preceding paragraph would make a terrible name for a self-help book, so I can't really blame publishers either, which is why it's nice to have places like HN to talk about stuff like this.
...and it goes without saying that the word "success" is being used here as shorthand for "making lots of money", which is only one form of success and not the most important one in the grand scheme of things.
How many pop psychology article authors are millionaires?
If the writer of the article actually had the "secret to success" they would have been doing that instead of writing pop-psychology articles. There are even those who write articles titled "How to become rich like Mark Zuckeberg" or "How to raise the next M Z" (http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-raise-the-next-mark-zucke...)
Most of my 'succesful' peers seem to take the path of least resistance. I never feel fulfilled unless I'm doing things the hard way, to the point of self-sabotage.
And even ability to execute won't help you without the right social network.
It is extremely rare to see an actual individual being really successful. Most of the time, they are or were part of a company. This is because a person can only devote so much time and skill into anything.
And making the right connection is a matter of place (Ivy League anyone?), time (gold rush is good, recession is bad), interpersonal skills and finally luck.
[+] [-] not_a_terrorist|10 years ago|reply
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|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] manyxcxi|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mindcrime|10 years ago|reply
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").
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] thewarrior|10 years ago|reply
Either from your peer group or other well known people ?
Just genuinely curious.
[+] [-] ThomPete|10 years ago|reply
It's the only defining factor that can't be trained. Lucky beats smart. And if you take most of the really big successes like Facebook, Google etc. they where successful were a bunch of other people with equal grit and talent werent.
Many many people have grit and perseverence. Many people have talent, business understanding, good timing, excellent understanding of product and so on. And of course the more you play the game the better chance of success (statistically)
But when all is said and done unless we are talking about crony capitalism where you use political control to ensure success. Luck and network are the single most defining factors of why some are successful and others are not IMO.
[+] [-] notduncansmith|10 years ago|reply
Attributing success to "luck" is therefore simply putting the conditions for success outside your locus of control.
Attributing it to "grit" or some other personal quality puts the conditions for success within your locus of control.
For many people (myself included), the latter philosophy is more helpful as it makes success seem more deliberately achievable. Combined with a strong sense of agency, this philosophy can imbue its proponents with more confidence than those waiting for "luck" to happen (or who have given up on it happening).
[+] [-] MarkMc|10 years ago|reply
For example, imagine we assign 'grit' ratings to students who finish high school. Later we find that students with high grit scores tend to complete a university degree much more often than those with low grit scores. Would that change your mind about the importance of grit?
[+] [-] SEJeff|10 years ago|reply
Elon Musk, first generation immigrant, didn't come from money, is now a billionaire. An article was released this week interviewing Mr Musk where he plainly states he put his desk at the end of the assembly line in th Hawthorne Tesla factory. He then went on to mention how he has a sleeping bag and often sleeps there.
One of my favorites is to look at how many awful failures Abraham Lincoln went through. It would have broken most people, yet he soldiered on and ended up being one of the most important Presidents in US history: www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/education/failures.htm
Virtually everyone on HN knows how much of an obscene work-a-holic Steve Jobs was. He was also a first generation Syrian immigrant. Luck? He was fired as CEO from Apple before founding Pixar and NeXt. He still refused to give up. Grit doesn't mean being a work-a-holic though, it simply is extreme perseverance.
This inability to fail but sheer willpower is called grit. You're underestimating the power of raw unadulterated willpower if you take things outside of your comfort zone and to the extreme. Those people did, and your great grand children will likely hear their names.
Yet another take on Mark Cuban, Richard Branson, and Larry Ellison. The common thread in every one of these stories is grit, the inability to accept failure at face value and continue on until you succeed.
www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/how-mark-cuban-richard-branson-and-larry-ellison-failed-spectacularly-before-bec.html
[+] [-] rjdevereux|10 years ago|reply
I’m a Great Believer in Luck. The Harder I Work, the More Luck I Have
[+] [-] mindcrime|10 years ago|reply
Now, you might ask, "well, what if the DOS thing didn't happen?" And the thing is, we'll never know, because it did happen. But if you believe that gates, ballmer, allen, etc. were smart, hard-working and talented, it seems likely they would still have ultimately been "successful" in some fashion, even if the story unfolded quite differently.
Luck and network are the single most defining factors of why some are successful
I don't know if we'll ever be able to actually quantify and measure that, but my suspicion is that grit/perserverance/will are at least as important as luck and/or network.
But keep in mind, there are many levels of "success". Life isn't as binary as "wound up homeless and sleeping in a gutter" vs. "wound up a billionaire CEO".
[+] [-] parenthephobia|10 years ago|reply
There is some misinterpretation of what Duckworth is claiming. Her paper doesn't examine whether success is due to intrinsic or extrinsic aspects - whether luck is more important than grit - nor does it really examine the causes of success.
Her conclusion is "successful people have grit". Not that unsuccessful people don't have grit. Not that all people with grit are successful. Not that grit is the sole determining factor in success. Just that of the intrinsic attributes of successful people she examined, grit was common to all of them.
i.e. Some successful people are intelligent, but many aren't. Some successful people have an innate talent for the thing they are doing (however we define that), but many don't. All of them have grit.
Grit, here, is defined as "perseverance and passion for long-term goals". It borders on the obvious that people who are successful have perseverance and passion. But it also borders on the obvious that merely having perseverance and passion isn't enough to guarantee success.
[+] [-] awinter-py|10 years ago|reply
Given an oracle that gives perfect advice of course hard work is the largest factor. That's the experiment being done in the test performance psych studies.
The 'deliberate practice' papers capture this best. The 'practice' half is hard work, but the 'deliberate' half is the ability to plan and analyze your training to advance your skills. With music or sports a coach can help you. With product, business or war (fields requiring strategy because the rules are ever-changing) not so much.
[+] [-] awinter-py|10 years ago|reply
Cited here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/opinion/sunday/how-to-rais...
Paywalled article here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2162-6057.1989....
[+] [-] visarga|10 years ago|reply
This can also be a veiled tendency of manipulation. "You worked hard!" means "I am pleased you worked hard!" or "I will not be pleased if you don't work as hard in the future!" and this can have negative consequences as the kid realizes they are captive to your criteria.
[+] [-] Futurebot|10 years ago|reply
persistence determination self-control / the ability to delay gratification abstention from substance use curiosity conscientiousness self-confidence (occasionally) emotional intelligence good communication skills and a willingness to listen grit
I’d personally add to the list ‘the willingness to always learn’ (i.e., be a dedicated autodidact for life.)
Based on what we’ve seen over the past ten years, especially with things like ‘the gig economy’ and our ‘free agent nation’, this hypothesis (perhaps model) holds up well. So what else is necessary? One or more of the following:
a strong personal safety net (savings and/or relatives and friends to fall back on) good credentials a strong personal / professional network
These last three are exactly the ones that are generally not available to those who need them most, even if they have all the qualities of the first list (you could also substitute ‘incredible luck’ for these three.) The idea that “men of enterprise are practically assured of success” is the kind of beautiful, romantic notion that periodically gets revived in America; the reality is different. We should remind ourselves that character alone may not be enough for success in today’s world for the even the most determined, confident, and gritty of people.
[+] [-] Balgair|10 years ago|reply
Hass was incredibly lucky to get that cultivar. From the seed growing at all, to being told to leave it be, to his children liking the taste, etc. Many many other growers at the Model Grocery Store were just as gritty and saw no real success in the Depression. He played his cards pretty well, all things considered, yet still died of a heart attack in 1952, the year his patent on the tree ran out. He was very very lucky, was pretty gritty, and still was a postman his whole life mostly by his own choice. He wanted a simple life and got one. I doubt he would have been so fortunate if lady luck had not smiled upon him.
[+] [-] DenisM|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 77pt77|10 years ago|reply
"They key to success is being successful but in other words."
[+] [-] paublyrne|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Havoc|10 years ago|reply
Helps, but not necessary. Hell I've got a decent number of Zimbabweans on my team at work.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] davekinkead|10 years ago|reply
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/7-habits-of-highly-succes...
[+] [-] visarga|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awinter-py|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unabst|10 years ago|reply
But grit, hard work, and determination are also redundant for someone who possesses immense passion. Passion will make you gritty, hard working, and determined. It will keep you focused, and keep your mind on topic.
Luck is also redundant because it is unscientific and untraceable (it is metaphysical). In hindsight we love to say the stars aligned or that miracles happened, but from the perspective of the do-er, none of it really matters because you never count on luck. As an entrepreneur, you pay to roll the dice, and you simply continue to roll it until you get what you need, praying you'll get enough tries. An outsider may say you were determined and that you got lucky, but no. You were passionate, and just kept trying because you had no other choice. If anything, to not have a choice is the secret to success. Determined as in determinism, not emotion. Successful people were bound to be successful.
My father used to administer for a school which he was no longer proud to be a part of. He had a proposal for a new school and sent it to some people. Miraculously, he finds a sponsor, and his dream comes true. He tells me how lucky he was and how that event saved his life. But to that I say, "Well, who else was able to build a school from scratch, let alone an international school in Tokyo?" He may have been lucky, but he was also probably the only person standing on Earth that could have done what he could. He is passionate about education. Needless to say, he succeeded. http://newis.ed.jp/
My father is not an entrepreneur. But he had what it took to make things happen. And that's the secret to success. It's the ability to make things happen.
[+] [-] iofj|10 years ago|reply
Grit is like this : fuck it up and you're dead in the water, but you'll be fine at "normal" grit if you excel somewhere else. Exceptional grit is useless, counterproductive even, when for example market fit is not there at all. Or when the required knowledge simply isn't there.
The one exception I've seen in practice is that on rare occasions a particular combination of skills was a necessity to achieve exceptional success. But it sort of looks like equivalent to winning the lottery. It's never an obvious combination of skills that works like this, it's something stupid that you wouldn't normally combine, and that's exactly why it works. But there are a huge number of possible combinations, most are not worth anything exceptional.
[+] [-] mwfunk|10 years ago|reply
In fairness, the preceding paragraph would make a terrible name for a self-help book, so I can't really blame publishers either, which is why it's nice to have places like HN to talk about stuff like this.
[+] [-] mwfunk|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] visarga|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yason|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] visarga|10 years ago|reply
If the writer of the article actually had the "secret to success" they would have been doing that instead of writing pop-psychology articles. There are even those who write articles titled "How to become rich like Mark Zuckeberg" or "How to raise the next M Z" (http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-raise-the-next-mark-zucke...)
[+] [-] damptowel|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrbapna|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AstralStorm|10 years ago|reply
It is extremely rare to see an actual individual being really successful. Most of the time, they are or were part of a company. This is because a person can only devote so much time and skill into anything.
And making the right connection is a matter of place (Ivy League anyone?), time (gold rush is good, recession is bad), interpersonal skills and finally luck.
[+] [-] mrmondo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] votr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pcmaffey|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] visarga|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marincounty|10 years ago|reply
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