Is grit the true secret of 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/7-habits-of-highly-succes...

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.

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.

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.