Angela Duckworth
Angela Duckworth is a successful author, researcher, and businesswoman who has had a significant impact on the understanding of grit and perseverance. She has written two books, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance and The Grit Factor: Build Your Resilience and Reach Your Goals, which both explored the importance of maintaining one’s resilience and commitment to achieving goals. Duckworth is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a MacArthur Fellow.
Duckworth’s passion for researching and writing about the importance of passion and perseverance was shaped by her own life experiences. Growing up, Duckworth was a straight-A student who excelled in many areas but appeared to be lacking in certain foundational strategies for success. She realized that though esteem, natural talent, and intelligence were important, they weren’t a reliable singular indicator of success when she realized her peers who were getting better grades were struggling to keep up the same level of consistency. After researching the concept of ‘grit’, she found that the common thread tying high achievers together was a deep sense of commitment, perseverance, and ambition—all of which can be cultivated, no matter the individual’s starting point.
In Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Duckworth delves into a careful exploration of grit’s power, as well as provides readers with advice on how to cultivate this important trait in themselves. In The Grit Factor, Duckworth examines the power of resilience and its influence on success, as well as how to develop the core skills needed to become a high achiever. She utilizes a comprehensive approach comprised of both science and stories to explore the concept of grit and why and how it matters. Her findings are groundbreaking, as they can help people from all walks of life achieve success.
Throughout her work, Duckworth challenges popular concepts about success, such as the idea that success can only be attained provided you are naturally smart or talented. She dives into the discussion about how passion and perseverance are equally as influential in achieving goals and reaching the finish line—which sets her work apart from other research in the same field. Additionally, Duckworth rejects the idea that success is a solitary pursuit; instead, she emphasizes the importance of community, values, and culture and how they are essential to helping activator one’s grit.
In addition to her books, Duckworth has also written numerous essays and articles on grit, which have been published in Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and The Wall Street Journal. Through her writing, she hopes to reach a large audience and instill in readers a sense of grit and the knowledge that success is not something that only a few individuals can achieve—it’s something that anyone can cultivate, regardless of starting point.
Overall, Angela Duckworth has had a monumental impact on research regarding grit and perseverance. Through her books, articles, and essays, she has made it abundantly clear that success is attainable regardless of how one began their journey and has provided readers the belief and the process they need to realize their full potential.
