Articles for 10/18/2021

The Weak Case for Grit

[…] while grit might be useful in certain very specific domains, it is not, broadly speaking, a particularly helpful concept for predicting who will succeed and who will not—or at least it doesn’t beat the tools we already have at our disposal.

This article directly refutes Duckworth’s claim that grit is a valid and meaningful predictor of success, instead arguing that this concept existed all along in the conscientious part of the OCEAN personality heuristic (openness (to experience), conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism). The article seems to disagree for the sake disagreeing, claiming there has been on reputable studies on grit as an isolated component of success. Anecdotally, grit, or decomposed to perseverance in the face of adversity and consistency of effort, seems like a worthwhile attribute to have and to cultivate. The author even concedes it is possible to develop grit and resilience.