I once worked with a young creative woman (let’s call her Jenny) who dreamt of being an author. She reasoned that romance novels were very popular and if she focused on that genre, she could become an established name.
Never mind that she did not like romance novels. She thought most of them were filled with clichés, predictable, and boring. But in her mind, romance was a path to getting noticed as an author.
So Jenny made a plan. She would write 1,000 words a day. She did that for two years—and hated every minute of it. Eventually, she became resentful of the grind and disparaging of herself.
I asked her what sort of writing she did enjoy. "I’m a science nerd” she responded, suddenly smiling. “I like writing about science, you know, untangling complicated ideas so they become clear. It’s like trying to fit together like some weird puzzle."
With this in mind, I asked her to do an experiment. She was a self-professed "science nerd" so I thought this would appeal to her. “Spend 30 minutes a day writing about some science topic that you find of special interest. Do that for three months and let’s see what happens.”
Jenny looked skeptical but agreed to give it a try.
During our weekly meetings that followed, she talked animatedly about her progress. Ideas for new articles were "gushering up," she excitedly told me, and three months later she published her first article in a popular science magazine.
Grit Gone Wrong: Common Misconceptions About Grit
It’s widely believed that the road to success requires you to just “keep grinding.” In popular culture, this is often referred to as having "grit," a concept brought into popular awareness by Angela Duckworth’s research (Duckworth et al, 2007).
Yet despite its popularity, this idea is not 100% accurate. ‘Grinding through’ the tough slog shows remarkable strength, but it does not necessarily lead to success.
More importantly, it is not an accurate way to understand grit.
Duckworth's findings indicated that people are more likely to succeed when they possess two qualities: They remain deeply interested in a goal, and they continue to persevere despite setbacks and hardships met along the way. Grit is the combination of these two qualities, not just one of them.
Unfortunately, over time, as the idea of grit has gained popularity, Duckworth’s nuanced view has been lost, and persistence has become what many people think of most when discussing grit. The equally important quality of sustained interest, or what researchers call "passion," is often forgotten.
Why Passion Matters for Success
This has practical implications. Without passion, exercising grit can feel like a burden, a soul-sucking, laborious drudgery. What’s worse, it often doesn't improve the chances of success.
But when passion is combined with persistence, significant progress toward one’s goals is frequently seen. Researchers, for example, examined over 400 employees at a tech company and compared the performance ratings of workers who had completed questionnaires measuring their persistence and passion (Jachimowicz and colleagues, 2018).
They found that supervisors gave the highest performance ratings to employees who (unknown to the supervisors) scored highly on perseverance and passion measures they had completed privately.
Similarly, students had higher grades when they rated themselves higher on scales that measure a combination of persistence and passion for their studies.
The point is that tenacity, while important, is not sufficient. A robust interest, or passion, is required to increase one’s chances of success. Passion, caring deeply about what you are working on, is the fuel that keeps you focused when facing setbacks and challenges.
Passion leads you to become immersed in the effort rather than simply going through the motions. Without that sense of immersion, concentration suffers, and consequently progress becomes more difficult.
How to Identify and Align With Your True Goals
The first question to ask yourself is whether the goal you have is really and truly yours—not the goal that your parents desire you to take aim at, nor the one your spouse would choose for you, or the one that looks impressive to others but is of little personal interest.
The goals that are personally meaningful, that are attached to passion, often provoke a sense of grief when you imagine not being able to pursue them. So your response tells you what is at stake, and for that reason, it is a good indicator whether you have a passionate interest in some type of work or goal.
Let’s look again at Jenny. She didn't initially fail because she lacked discipline. She failed because she was taking aim at the wrong target. Romance novels were of no interest to her, but science made her heart beat faster.
When Jenny’s goal finally did align with her interests, persistence stopped being a burden and became almost an obsession (recall her comment about new ideas "gushering up"). She rediscovered her passion and that made all the difference.
Some who read this might think to themselves, “But I have no interests that I am passionate about.”
Research shows that while some people discover their passion, others can intentionally cultivate a passion for a subject or type of work (Hulleman and colleagues, 2010).
This can be done by consciously connecting work to your deepest values, while progressively building greater competency in the skills needed to reach your goals.
An example of this is the high school teacher assigned to teach an art class but with no innate interest in the subject. Over time, however, he begins to see how some teens become more confident after learning to express themselves through painting, photography, and sculpting.
The teacher, with a deep desire to help troubled teens build confidence, experiments with different approaches to teaching art to further motivate his students.
Over time, the teens respond well, many of them becoming animated by the process and very enthusiastic.
In turn, the teacher begins to feel a deep passion for art. It grew out of the values that drove his desire to help struggling teens.
How We Think About Grit Matters
Grit is not white-knuckled tenacity.
It is persistence married to purpose — tenacity aimed at something you actually care about. That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. Persistence alone is just stubbornness, and it often flames out because there's nothing underneath it to refuel the tank.
Passion is the elixir that propels continued effort when you are bone tired and sleep-deprived. It's the difference between pushing yourself through a task and being pulled through it by an attractive force.
So if you're plowing through a dry stretch, feeling more burned out than geared up, the fix isn't "try harder." Instead, try asking yourself an honest question: do I actually care about this?
If not, that's the problem to solve — not your willpower.
References
Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 1087–1101. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.6.1087
Jachimowicz, J. M., Wihler, A., Bailey, E. R., & Galinsky, A. D. (2018). Why grit requires perseverance and passion to positively predict performance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(40), 9980–9985. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1803561115
Hulleman, C. S., Godes, O., Hendricks, B. L., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (2010). Enhancing interest and performance with a utility value intervention. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102(4), 880–895. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019506
