This New York Times bestseller, written by psychologist and former teacher Angela Duckworth, is a unique analysis into the little understood factors of success: passion and perseverance. Duckworth shows several examples and research projects that attempt to identify the predictive attributes of successful people in advance of a challenging project. Commonly held beliefs that characteristics such as intelligence and talent are the main drivers of success are exposed as significantly less important that the simple and singular attribute of GRIT!!
Study after study, ranging from school children to West Point cadets, confirm that talent and skill, while important, are not as important as effort. The most compelling research on the topic of grit was the 1940 treadmill test performed at Harvard University. The test simply involved asking over 100 college sophomores to run on a treadmill for five minutes. The goal was to determine if there was any correlation to those who completed the entire five minutes, versus those that did not, and their future success on a multitude of variables ranging from marriage status, income levels, and basic self-reported satisfaction. The project then tracked the participants every two years for decades.
Want to know the results of the treadmill study??? Read the book. Hint: Wildcatters would have finished the entire five minutes on the treadmill!!