Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsEffort Counts Twice
Reviewed in the United States on July 6, 2018
This book, by Psychologist Angela Duckworth, was very illuminating. I had heard of this book before thanks to having read Carol Dwreck and Heidi Grant Halvorson's books, but I wish I had read this one before them because I feel that it provides the foundational basis for those other two authors delve into with mindsets. Halvorson and Duckworth's books together seem to give a more concise and efficient view on how to pursue goals. Dwreck details the self-conceptions and lists anecdotal examples.
The most striking matter I've found about this book doesn't really relate to the book per se. I've discovered that a lot of the more "official" reviews, such as the New Yorker, are being utterly pretentious and vilifying this book based on arguments that Angela Duckworth never made or even implied. I was shocked to see the radical difference between the contents of the book and the disparaging reviews that were being dishonest in their representation of both her research and her as a person. I was in disbelief until I read her perspective on her TEDTalk in her own book where she mentions, in much nicer words than I'm describing, how the CEO of TED basically asked her to dumb down her information to the public about her findings. The TEDTalk and the arguments against her feel and sound like they're calling her bluff about nonsense the public has heard before, specifically because she was requested to tone down the information. So, it's unfair. It's unfair of us to judge her based on her TEDTalk and those shockingly disingenuous reviews. I wouldn't honestly be saying this had I not done the same prior to reading her book on a whim.
Long story short: this book isn't about education policy and never claimed to be. This book is for individuals and parents who want to learn what encourages people to find a passion, how to learn to work at that passion for a long term, and how we internalize a greater purpose for ourselves and others by following through with commitments that we feel strongly about. Grit was never about making kids better with grades. Nevertheless, this can only apply to grades, if kids care about the classes they take, but this book is more oriented towards extracurricular activities and encouraging them in kids early, it was never about trying to force kids to be passionate or persevere in grades on subjects they don't care about. Duckworth even explains the problems trying to force people to be passionate about subject matter that they don't care about.
In Duckworth's book, her interviews and general research have found that people who are very successful in their careers didn't simply find their passion from one incident. They discovered tidbits or gained encouragement from loved ones multiple time. As Duckworth puts it: Again, and again, and again. People might be happy to know that there isn't a specific parenting style, you just shouldn't devalue or tell your child the interest is bad, if you want to encourage their growth. Moreover, even if a child follows with an activity the parent has misgivings about like joining a music band, evidence shows that sticking to it for more than a year (generally 2 years) is likely to encourage them to stick to future goals when they discover a new passion. In the long term, the "grit" mindset of following through with your intrinsic passion can have long-term benefits. Also, much of the passion and perseverance doesn't come from pushing through adversity, but rather being encouraged to follow your intrinsic motivation. Children need encouraging parents and teachers, we need encouraging friends, and - most of all - we need a sense that what we're doing is meaningful for both ourselves and a greater society. I began realizing that a lot of the passion in the passion and perseverance rubric could apply to the immediate feedback loop that video games give people. Generally, we can immediately ascertain gains and losses and the techniques for how to improve are either instructed in the game itself or can be found from tips online. Having a community of friends to talk to about games like Dragon Quest or Dragon Age is self-reinforcing.
I'm somewhat hesitant to jot down a list of the crucial parts of her research, because I'm often afraid that I'm simply not giving this book and it's author due credit by paraphrasing and potentially taking her out of context. I'm particularly hesitant because of how thoroughly people have insulted caricatures of her work instead of the work itself. When people begin counting terminology and the number of times a word was used, I begin to question whether they had ever even read her book at all. I was really disappointed with so many reviews that conflate Carol Dwreck and Angela Duckworth's research with their personality characteristics. This isn't even isolated to women or even people who exist in the present-day. I just keep spotting this same pattern and when I read someone's work, it's largely incredibly different from what accusers espouse that their work contains. I don't want to contribute to that form of misinformation, even if subconsciously, and I don't like taking someone's words out of context as I see so often done.
Overall, I enjoyed her book thoroughly, but I couldn't personally identify with the parenting chapter and the chapter after it seemed like it was simply filling space with anecdotes. Angela Duckworth seems to write in a journalistic fashion just like Carol Dwreck, they both utilize anecdotes to give people a more impressionable affect and it probably helps the average reader to remember more. I prefer Heidi Grant Halvorson's more personalized writing style where she presents the reader with questionable assumptions about life and then presents the evidence to explain the reasoning behind why the research is valuable and how it can improve lives.
