155 Quotes by Angela Duckworth

A vivid - if somewhat melodramatic - firsthand description of what deliberate practice can feel like comes from dancer Martha Graham: 'Dancing appears glamorous, easy, delightful. But the path to the paradise of that achievement is not easier than any other. There is fatigue so great that the body cries even in its sleep. There are times of complete frustration. There are daily small deaths.

...it isn't suffering that leads to hopelessness. It's suffering you think you can't control.

The focus on talent distracts us from something that is at least as important, and that is effort. As much as talent counts, effort counts twice.

There are no shortcuts to excellence

You can't simply will yourself to like things, either. As Jeff Bezos has observed, 'One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves.

Follow your passion was not the message I heard growing up. Instead, I was told that the practical realities of surviving "in the real world" were far more important than any person living a "sheltered life" such as my own could imagine. I was warned that overly idealistic dreams of "finding something I loved" could in fact be a breadcrumb trail into poverty and disappointment.

...interests are not discovered through introspection. Instead, interests are triggered by interactions with the outside world. The process of interest discovery can be messy, serendipitous, and inefficient. This is because you can't really predict with certainty what will capture your attention and what won't...Without experimenting, you can't figure out which interests will stick, and which won't.

Enthusiasm is common,Endurance is rare

...there are no shortcuts to excellence. Developing real expertise, figuring out really hard problems, it all takes time―longer than most people imagine....you've got to apply those skills and produce goods or services that are valuable to people....Grit is about working on something you care about so much that you're willing to stay loyal to it...it's doing what you love, but not just falling in love―staying in love.