211. grit (I took angela duckworth's class at upenn)

Feb 6

listen to this episode:

In this week's solo episode, I discuss everything I learned in my Grit Lab course as a psychology major at the University of Pennsylvania. This class is taught by Dr. Angela Duckworth, a Penn professor, researcher, MacArthur fellow, and best-selling author. This episode is your condensed guide on how you can use grit to achieve success and become an expert in your field.

I explain:

+ A viral study on how to determine someone's level of grit

+ Key differences between grit and self-control

+ The most effective way to think about success

+ Why values are so important in influencing our success

+ Setting goal hierarchies & what that looks like

+ A model to help you visualize your goals

+ Four key strategies for actually achieving your goals

+ How to set an achievable goal

+ The four steps toward becoming an expert in something

+ Traits that experts have in common

+ Takeaways from this episode you need to remember

+ so much more!

Mentioned In The Episode…

+ Grit by Angela Duckworth

+ Dr. Duckworth's Ted Talk

+ Character Lab

+ Article on self-control

+ She Persisted goals episode

SHOP GUEST RECOMMENDATIONS: https://amzn.to/3A69GOC

About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)

After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.

a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!

Welcome to She Persisted. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton, a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She Persisted is the teen mental health podcast made for teenagers by a teen. In each episode, I'll bring you authentic, accessible, and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental

wellness.

You can expect evidence based, teen approved resources, coping skills, including lots of DBT, insights, and education in each piece of content you consume. She Persisted offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle, while encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.

So let's dive in. This week on She Persisted.

So you might have heard that it takes 10, 000 hours to become an expert at something, this is actually based on research and that is like the objective benchmark that they look at when they see people that are really successful, really high achievers that have objectively become really, really good at a certain skill or talent or whatever it is.

But, the specific thing that is happening within those 10,000 hours is actually what allows people to get better. We could listen to music for 10, 000 hours, but that doesn't mean that we're a musician. We could watch TV for 10, 000 hours.

Doesn't mean that I'm a television producer What does allow people to become an expert within those 10, 000 hours is this finding

Hello, hello, you guys, and welcome back to She Persisted. If this is your first episode, I'm so excited you're here. It is a good one. I have been Looking forward to this episode all semester and actually been really excited about this class and this topic for over five years now.

If you are not aware, I am a senior at the University of Pennsylvania. I'm about to start my final semester this week, which is absolutely wild. And when I was applying to colleges, I was two years into doing the podcast. So I was really sure that I wanted to do psychology and mental health.

And that was the area that I wanted to focus on in my undergraduate education. And I looked at a ton of different schools and when it came time for early decision, the one that I landed on was patent. And if you want to know like the specific reasons and everything and how I narrowed that down, let me know, DM me, send me an email.

But when I was writing my why pen essay for my early decision application, I went back to one of my favorite books that I read in high school that really changed my life and had such a strong impact on me both personally, but also academically and how I looked at how psychology research can impact our lives.

And that was grit by Angela Duckworth. This was something I read in high school. My sister read it in high school. My parents have read it. They love it. If you guys are not familiar with Angela Duckworth's work, she is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She's advised the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams and Fortune 500 CEOs.

She's the founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help kids thrive. She completed her bachelor's in neurobiology at Harvard, her Master's in Science and neuroscience At. Oxford and her PhD in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance is our first book and an instant New York Times bestseller. . And so when I wrote my Why Penn essay, I talked about her class and wanting to work with her and learn about grit from her.

And I talked about a couple of other labs I wanted to work in. And I've recently written a book. Reread that YPEN essay and I'd been able to interface with everyone that I'd mentioned and I worked in the labs that I had talked about in that essay. And so it's been a really cool full circle moment. And one of those times we were like, I did that.

I set those goals and I followed through and this came really full circle. And so this was absolutely one of my biggest goals coming into Penn and one of The things that got me so excited about the school was the groundbreaking research that was happening the incredible minds that were on staff at Penn and one of those people is Angela Duckworth.

And so I took her classes last semester her class is called Grit Lab Fostering Passion and Perseverance in Ourselves and Others. I had been trying to get into this class for a few semesters and I finally was able to get it into my schedule and every single class period this semester was so thought out and so intentional and you never left a class not feeling like you had some really tangible ways to make a positive change in your life.

And Just the way this class was structured, it was absolutely my favorite class that I've taken at Penn. It was so intentional and innovative. It felt like a seminar, even though there were a hundred people in the class. You were really engaging super thoroughly with the assignments and the readings and the research, which you guys know I love.

And so from day one of this class, I was like, I'm going to do a podcast episode. It talks about everything I've learned from this course.

And the other great thing about this class, which Dr. Duckworth talked to us about at the end of the semester, is that every single piece of information she gave us is available. It's on YouTube, it's online, it's on her website, It's in the research, like all of this could be found on your own, but the way that she put it together, the way she structured the class, the group work that she was really intentional about, that's what made it a really impactful experience.

And so I'm hoping that I can kind of bring that to you guys as well, that I can frame this and distill it into one podcast episode that you guys are seeking out and choosing to listen to, , which hopefully means you're interested and motivated to implement some of these things and make this information accessible to you guys.

And then you can leave and go. And take these pieces of information, not having to gather them all yourself and implement them in your own lives, because this has absolutely shifted the way I think about my life, the way I'm pursuing my goals, and I hope that the same is true for you.

So what we're doing on this episode is we're going through all of my notes that I took this semester. During this class, we're going to go through all these big takeaways, all these learnings, and share what I think you guys can implement in your own lives.

And summarize this and make it as accessible as possible. So instead of like three months, you guys are getting it in an hour.

So we're going to start with the anecdote that the book grit opens with. And we've read this book throughout the semester. It was tied to what we were learning in lectures and the readings we were doing. But we're going to begin with a study that you guys might have heard before if you're familiar with grid.

It's very popular and has gone viral many a time recently in her TED talk that she did.

But what Dr Duckworth did in some of the early days of her research is she went to West Point and there's this really competitive and excruciating process to get into West Point. You need extremely high SAT scores. You need a high GPA. You need a recommendation from a senator. They're really highly selective in who they're accepting into West Point.

And then once you get there, you're put through this extraordinarily grueling training process.

And they call this training session the Beast Barracks and it's really intense. It's 5 a. m. to 10 p. m. It's mentally exhausting. It's physically exhausting. And despite the fact that they have selected for these really high achievers, these really qualified individuals, he's extremely smart and talented and all these things, there's a 20 percent dropout rate.

And this is after they've selected for all these things that they think predict hard workers and people that will persevere and stick around and make it through training. And so what Dr Duckworth did as she looked at what was predicting the people That persevered through the Beast Barracks training process at West Point.

And one thing that they look at when they're admitting students is this thing called the whole candidate store. And so what I talked about, which is SAT scores, ACT scores, high school rank, , their leadership potential, their physical fitness. And you'd think like logically, okay, this is what would predict who would make it through basic training, who would get to the next step, who's going to persevere in this environment.

And this is a great predictor with regard to admissions, but it's not a predictor with regard to dropout rates and who's going to stick around and make it through this really challenging and grueling process. And dropping out was not correlated with talent, which is what the whole candidate score was solving for.

It's correlated with attitude. And so after interviewing all of these individuals And then looking at which ones dropped out, which ones stayed the course, she created the GRIT score. And the GRIT score distilled this attitude of passion and perseverance, which in turn created the GRIT scale. And the GRIT scale was a really, really, really reliable predictor of who was going to persevere through this extremely challenging process.

And again, these candidates were already selected for extreme, fitness and intelligence and talent and leadership potential, but the grit score better predicted who would stick it out in the beast barracks. And what was really interesting is that there was no correlation between that whole candidate score, those numbers that distilled the ACT score, the SAT score, the class rank, leadership potential, fitness.

There was no correlation between those two numbers. And she tested this in a number of different environments and found that it held fast. So Timeshare salesman, people that are constantly shut down and rejected, and people aren't wanting to buy these timeshares. And there again and again and again trying to make these sales.

Grit scores predicted who would stick it out and stay committed.

And no personality trait predicted who would quit being a timeshare salesman, but grit did. Same thing with Chicago public schools.

Grit scores an adult predicts MBAs, PhD, MDs, and JD graduate school degrees.

Spelling bee finalists, all of these things can be predicted by grit scores. And again, grit is distilling passion and perseverance.

So, , The distillation of this finding is that our potential is one thing, that whole candidate score, our intelligence, our talent, our physical fitness. That's one thing. What we do with it is another. And that's really what I took away from this chapter, this beginning, this intro to grit, what it is, how this scale came to be.

So that quote was one of my favorites, which is our potential is one thing, what we do with it is another. So the TLDR on like the grit overview, the foundation is that passion and perseverance equals grit. And grit is the greatest predictor of success and retention and these really challenging, enduring situations.

So then the other piece of this concept that's probably coming to mind now is like, well, that sounds like self control. Like people are putting forth a lot of willpower. They're forcing themselves to stay in this situation.

There are time and time again showing up like why isn't that self control? And this is where people get confused. Just that grit and self control are really separate constructs and they can be somewhat related and they predict different things, but they're completely separate constructs.

So self control is your capacity to regulate attention, emotion, and behavior. And grit is your pursuit of a goal despite setbacks. And these are correlated, but they're different. So self control, capacity to regulate your attention, your emotion, and your behavior. And grit is your pursuit of a goal despite setbacks. And both of these require you to align your intentions with your actions. So what are your goals and then how do your actions line up with that?

So another way of looking at this is self control is your everyday functioning. Like, do you wake up in the morning when your alarm immediately goes off? Are you going to the gym? Are you running 10 miles? , are you eating super healthy? Like, what are those everyday choices? That's self control.

And grit is your retention and performance long term. So are you meeting those goals that you set for yourself? Are you moving forward in your career or your academics or these larger goals that you have for yourself in your life?

So self control short term in the moment. Grit is long term, really huge top level goals.

And the other thing to add here is that self control is a skill. It's improved with practice. And there's a really interesting article that Dr. Duckworth put out about how we can increase our self control and how we can hack our environments to improve how much control we have over our actions. I want to do an episode where we break that down and go into a lot of detail.

But. Self control is a skill. It's something that's very malleable. You can improve it. And grit is motivation is volition. So it's motivation that's aligned with your intentions and choices.

So offering a little bit more detail and explanations as far as these concepts of grit and self control and talent, because these are all part of the equation.

So we have this definition that grit is your passion and perseverance towards your long term goals. It's important to note that passion is not your intensity. It's not how passionate you are about something. It's how consistently you're passionate about that goal. So again, we talked about how great is long term perseverance.

How consistent is your passion over five years, 10 years, 20 years, etc.

And that's it. We talked about passion and perseverance. A really interesting part of this equation is that it's a lot easier when our actions align with these larger goals and our interests and what we're innately passionate about.

So grit is easier than self control because you have this innate passion, you have this innate drive, you have this alignment with your actions and where you want to be. And so you're not just like white knuckling, willing yourself to get to this finish line, regardless of how you feel.

You're aligning how you feel and your thought process and your larger goals with those day to day actions.

And so, , Straight from my notes. Grit is not about doing things you don't want to do. That's self control. Grit is aligning that passion with your perseverance towards those longer term goals.

And there's this other equation that comes out of the Grit book, which is really interesting, and it's that effort counts twice. So if we think that talent times effort equals skill, so your talent is how quickly you get better at a skill. So we That like innate ability to master something times the amount of effort you put in equals how quickly you master a skill and then your skill times your effort equals achievement.

So like your ability to do something times the amount of effort you put in, that is what leads to achievement. So effort counts twice there. That effort and that grit is really, really important and a really big determinant and how likely you are to master that long term goal.

So one thing we learned in this class, we're talking about talent and skill and achievement and grit and just like these overarching foundational concepts. We learned about the study where the way that you frame. , goals and journeys impacts how motivated you are and how much persistence you have. So if you haven't yet achieved a goal, if you haven't yet made it to the finish line, thinking about the goal, the end point, that final marker that you're working towards, that's what increases persistence.

But if you've had a history of success, if you've had a history of meeting those goals, getting to those benchmarks, thinking about success as a journey and not the destination, that is what increases persistence. So if you are like very early on in your process of goal setting, if you're endeavoring on a new project, a new activity, you're going to think about that goal.

You're going to think about that end point. That's what you're working towards and that is what will increase your persistence. But if you are like on your 12th year of school or you're months into interviewing for a job or whatever the process is where you've had some success so far, you're going to motivate yourself by thinking about the journey and the learnings and positives associated with that, not just the end goal.

And that's what's going to increase your persistence.

So the learning here, is that the metaphor you pick has psychological force and the way that we frame these goals, the way that we think about them has a really strong impact on our likelihood to achieve them and how motivated we are and how much persistence we show in our pursuit of those goals.

The way we think about them has a lot, lot, lot of power.

So our little summary of this first little foundational part of grit is that grit is sustained passion and perseverance for a long term goal. great influences effort, whereas talent is the rate at which you improve with effort. Both are malleable. Both change throughout your lifetime.

Success is useful to be thought of as a journey and an appreciation for grit should highlight, not obscure the importance of context and opportunity. So again, there are limitations here. The environments you're in, the support you have, the resources you have access to, that's going to impact how great you are, how successful you are in the goals that you're achieving.

So now that we kind of understand what grit is, how passion and perseverance play into this equation, we talked about how effort counts twice in this equation and that our effort and our self control and our grit, these things are malleable.

They can change throughout our life. It's important to talk about our values and our purpose, because this is what's going to influence that passion, which then influences that perseverance. Because again, it's easier to persevere when we're passionate about something and our passion is really fueled by our values and our sense of purpose.

So what are values according to psychology? Our values are enduring beliefs and goals about what is important to us. So these are things that last throughout our life. They do change. Our values change throughout childhood a lot, as well as adulthood. But our values are generally enduring and consistent throughout long periods of time, which allows us to persevere towards those long term goals.

They guide how we think about people and what we choose to do. So the actions we engage with, the goals we set, the people that we are attracted to and want to keep in our lives.

And they have a really big impact on not only our day to day, but our long term choices and the goals we're pursuing and what our lives look like. We also added a fun little interesting caveat, which I thought you guys might like to hear. We talked about self determination theory, And so as it relates to values, the three primary drives that all of us have as humans is competence, belonging, and autonomies. We want to feel good at things. We want that sense of mastery. We want that sense of success. We want that sense of belonging.

We want to feel needed and heard and understood and validated. That's really, really, really important to us as humans and drives a lot of our choices. And then lastly, we want a sense of autonomy that we don't want to feel forced or put in a position that we have no control over. We want that sense of choice over our lives.

And so that's something that's important to remember as you're thinking about what your values and your purpose are. Those tend to be three underlying factors that drive all humans and influence all goals and behaviors and decisions. One thing we learned about in class is a goal hierarchy, and so this is how our day to day actions align with our biggest goals in life, and then also our values and our interests, which we just talked about.

So if our day to day choices, if we work out, if we see a friend for coffee, if we go to class, if we do our homework, those are our actions, right? And those are connected to goals. Maybe it's make new friends, get an A in that class, , meet someone new. Meet a certain fitness goal, like whatever those low level goals are that are happening over a couple of weeks, a couple of months.

And then those are connected to higher goals, which is maybe I want to be connected. I want to have that sense of belonging. I want to be successful academically. I want to, you know, achieve this career goal. And then we have top level goals, which is like our internal guiding goal that influences our entire lives.

And so, Dr. Duckworth shared with us her number one top level goal that guides everything she does is to help kids thrive using psychological science.

My top level goal at this point in my life, it will probably change and evolve, but to help teens struggling with their mental health in an evidence based, accessible, and relatable way.

and then our top level goal is influenced by our values and our interests, so the values there are achievement and benevolence. And the interest there is psychological science, mental health relationships, all of these things that kind of are integrated and related to this concept of teen mental health.

So if we think about the school hierarchy, we have our day to day actions, the choices we make, self control impacts those day to day actions, and those are fueled by our low level goals. like I mentioned, things like getting a grade on an assignment, , doing a new hobby, making a new friend, etc.

We have our mid level goals, going to school. Working in a certain career field, getting to a certain spot with your mental health. And then we have our top level goal, which is that one leading determining goal that influences our career paths, our relationships, the projects we engage in over 10, 15 years, decades of our lives.

And the caveat here, which is that if you're a young adult listening and you're tuning in, you probably don't know what your top level goal is yet. You probably have an idea of what your values and your interests are, and you're still figuring out what those mid level and top level goals are. And so

this is a really big disclaimer to add here, which is that you don't need to know what your top level, what your final goal is yet. You don't need to have that completely distilled and nailed down and established at this point, but it's something that's fun and helpful to keep in mind, which is that you probably do have a top level goal.

You're still figuring out what it is, but that's going to impact your mid level goals, your low level goals and your day to day actions. And we were a lot, lot, lot better at exercising self control and achieving that top level goal. When we connect those two things. So when we say I need to study for this test today because it connects to my mid level goal of getting a good grade in this class, which connects to my higher level goal of helping these people with these things or working in this field, So again, the way that we frame things, the way we think about them has psychological force. It impacts our actions and our ability to follow through and how much self control we have. So. Remembering to connect those values and that top level goal with those day to day actions will help you be more successful and effective in achieving them.

One thing to add is we're talking about goal hierarchies is that what allows us to succeed in these larger goals and to be in alignment with our values and our interests is flexibility at the bottom.

So we're not rigid with our day to day actions. We're not rigid with our mid level goals. I must get a certain grade on this test, I Must do this certain hobby. I must go to this certain thing. I must get into this school or this program. We're more flexible with that because we're rigid with our top level goal.

And there are lots of different ways to get there and there are a lot of things that are outside of our control. But it's important to remember that what allows us to persevere over a long period of time is flexibility on those lower goals and rigidity. For that top high level goal that's guiding our choices.

So you can think about those lower goals, the subordinate goals, as a means to an end. We have more flexibility with those because there's stepping stones along the way, but they're not absolutely required. They're not like a rung of a ladder. We can take multiple paths to get to that end goal.

And then I mentioned this, but that idea of connecting your day to day actions. To the larger level goal, that's called goal fusion and goal fusion is when you say to yourself your higher level goal when you're completing tedious things. So for me, my goal is to become a clinical psychologist to help teens that are struggling with their mental health and an evidence based accessible way.

And so when I'm studying for, uh,, A neuroscience test that I don't like and that I don't enjoy because I like the psychology, like social, positive, abnormal. I like that kind of stuff. I like talking to you guys. I like sharing these things in digestible ways. I don't love learning about neurons and memorizing every single part of the brain.

I tell myself. My goal is to be a clinical psychologist and to help people and a step in achieving that goal is doing well in this class so that I can apply to grad school and have a certain GPA and be able to achieve that goal and jump through these hoops in an academic setting so that I can have the qualifications and training to help people in the most qualified way possible.

And so I become more motivated and research shows this, you become more persistent and more motivated when you do that goal fusion. So the next time you're struggling with one of those tedious things, tie it to your larger value, tie it to the larger goal. What are you trying to achieve? And remember, how does this day to day action, how does this habit, how does this behavior connect to that larger principle?

And then the last thing that I'm going to mention here about Goal hierarchies and the way that we structure and think about our goals is that they allow us to be focused and directed at this one thing when we have our like five different mid level goals. Like for me, it's being a student at Penn, , building my skills with regard to media and communication, becoming a clinical psychologist, Sharing on TikTok, like all of these different things that get me to this larger goal of helping teens with their mental health and evidence of a successful way, but there's like six different ways to get me there.

I can't focus on all those at once, but I can focus on that higher goal and I can be more flexible with these bottom level goals. Because I understand what my larger goal is, so our goal hierarchy helps us not be in conflict with these lower level goals, not have ourselves really spread thin and overwhelmed, but allow us to be more persistent over a long period of time because we're in alignment and we understand what that goal is and we can allocate our energy accordingly

So now just to recap us to where we're at so far, we know what grit is. We know it's this predictor of success and achievement and persistence and grit is a result of passion and perseverance and our passion is guided by our interest in our values and the way that we persevere is by having a goal hierarchy and understanding what our leading goal is and then being flexible with our day to day, our month to month, our year to year so that we're In general, persevering towards that long term goal and exercising grit to get us there.

So we understand the psychological principle that's showing up here. That's grit. We understand how we kind of start to understand what our passions are that we're being persistent towards. And we understand that we have this framework that will get us to this long term goal. But how do we set the goals?

How do we be intentional there? How do we know how to do that in an effective way?

So we learned this thing called the Rubicon model, which is basically crossing over a river, which is when you go from like thinking about something to actually doing it. So you go from deliberating, thinking about what the goal is, you then set your goal. And that's when you're crossing the river and getting to the point of actually trying to achieve this thing.

And then after you've crossed the river and decided, I'm going to do this, I'm going to commit. That's when we plan, we act, and then we evaluate. And this is the cycle with which we frame and understand goal setting and goal achieving.

And there was a really interesting study that was done in 1975 that we learned about, which was done on lumberjacks. And they did a study in goal setting, and they gave them two different goals that they could set. One was to do your best, and the other one was a specific relating to lumberjacking. I'm not a lumberjack, so I don't know exactly what these looked like, but generally imagine.

This is so bad. Like cut down a certain number of trees reach a certain square footage. I don't know exactly what this would look like, but just pretend we'll imagine and they found that when they framed it as doing your best, 60 percent of them met a certain performance marker. Like a set marker that everyone was evaluated on. But when they set a specific goal, a specific hard goal, 95 percent of the people met that external marker.

So being specific, giving ourselves measurable things that we can say, yes, I did that. No, I didn't. And making it hard. That is what allows us to actually, quote unquote, do our best and achieve those things, not just giving ourselves these abstract concepts. Like, I will try my hardest. I will do my best. Set yourself those specific, measurable, hard goals.

And then I want to give you guys a couple of other things that are really helpful in setting goals and things that you should be aware of when it comes to how we succeed and thrive and learn things as humans. So we learned about another really interesting study where people use chat2BT to write their cover letters.

And The hypothesis was that if you use chat GPT, you won't improve as much with your ability to write a cover letter and put together this final product. You think, okay, you're like half assing it. You're using a crotch, you're using AI. It's not actually going to get you to this final goal. That was not the case.

They got substantially better. better when they use ChildHPD in conjunction with their own work, versus when they just independently worked at trying to improve this cover letter. So the key here is that we learn by example. That's what allows us to accelerate our growth and our outputs and our improvement.

So this is that idea of , you watch one, do one, teach one. We hear this in medical school. If you watch Grey's Anatomy, I watch Grey's Anatomy. There's this framework where you watch one, you do one, you teach one. And so this idea of watching one and learning from others and using an example, using a framework to then replicate and implement in your own life is really, really powerful and really, really effective in getting us to those final goals.

Another piece of psychology research to be aware of when we're setting our goals is that we have really social brains. We learn from others, and that's really When they do research on like what makes the human brain so different, what makes us such a superior species to like apes or chimps or lions or whatever these other mammals are that have similar somewhat structures of brains.

What makes us really powerful is our social brains how we're able to interact with and engage with our peers how we communicate how we work together. That is what has given us the upper hand in evolution and allowed us to thrive. So. Using that social brain to our advantage when we're setting our goals, we know that we learn from each other, and so use more models, use more collaboration, and that will contribute to the rate of learning and expertise acquired.

And then the last piece of psychology research to be aware of, When it comes to goal setting is this idea called the three boxes model. It's also called the process model. Dr. Duckworth worked on this with the Stanford psychologist. It's really, really interesting. I want to do a full episode on this because it's a super interesting framework, but if we think about the three boxes model, it's an adapted version of the process model. The process model is that you're put in a situation. Your attention is directed somewhere. We appraise it. So we interpret it. We respond to it. And then we have an action, which is our response. The three boxes model condenses it a little bit.

It simplifies it. So we have our situation, we have our thoughts about the situation, and then we have how we respond. That's the action, or the behavior. So, We have some control over how we think about a situation, and we've done a lot of podcast episodes about that. The way that we attribute our successes and our losses has a really strong impact on our self esteem.

The way that we think about these things has an impact on our mental health. We can also use our thoughts to change our behaviors. We can use our Behaviors to change our thoughts. There's lots of ways we can adjust that, but the most powerful and biggest determinant and goal setting and our outcomes is the situations we're putting ourselves in because if we're not in that bad situation, if we're not in that situation that causes us to be unproductive, we never have the thoughts and the behaviors that follow.

This is like probably the biggest takeaway I took from this class is what box one am I putting myself in my putting myself in a context where I'm going to succeed? Am I putting myself in a context where I'm going to be held accountable? Am I setting myself up for success? And I think this is an approach that gives you a lot of self compassion and a lot of grace and a lot of understanding and the way that we achieve our goals.

Obviously, there's a lot of accountability that has to take place. And. We have to be doing the work and deliberately practicing these skills so that we can improve with time. But a really big determinant here is the box one that we're putting ourselves in. So if we think about those like psychology things we just learned.

One, which is that we do really well when we see examples of things, when we see models of things. So are you giving yourself examples of essays that were done really well, , projects that got A's, , People that are thriving mentally or physically, whatever it is. Do you have those examples that you can then replicate and follow?

Second, we are social. We learn from others. We learn with others. So how can you collaborate and work with others to be held accountable and expedite that learning process? And third, what is the context you're putting yourself in? Are you allowing yourself to be successful? Are you setting yourself up for success?

And that box one probably involves. examples and social collaboration to allow you to be successful. So going back to the Rubicon model, which is that we deliberate, we then set a goal, we plan, we act and we evaluate and taking into account these other things that can help us be successful, which is giving ourselves examples, making sure we're learning in a social context and that we're putting ourselves in a box one that will allow us to be successful.

So what is an effective goal? We talked about like what influences our goal setting, what allows humans to thrive the framework of goals, but what actually is an effective goal and specific it's challenging, it's declared publicly in person, which is really counterintuitive to what you see on Tik TOK, or at least what I see on Instagram reels, you see all these like moody entrepreneurs and low light.

And they're like, never tell anyone your goal, work in private, celebrate in public, never tell anyone what you want to do. Never show your cards to anyone. Wrong. If you want to be successful in a goal, tell people and tell a lot of people you hold yourself more accountable. They hold you accountable psychologically.

Scientifically speaking, the evidence shows that when you declare goals and you declare them publicly, you're more likely to achieve them. And even just setting the intention, explaining the action. Again, we want it to be specific and challenging. makes you more likely to succeed They did a study on goal setting and they found that only 7 percent of people achieve their goal without setting an intention. I mean like duh, but like only 7 percent will actually get to the outcome they want without being specific and intentional with the goal that's being set.

And then the other thing to mention here, what makes an effective goal without a sub goal related to your performance, you're not going to achieve the goal. So if your goal is to run a 5K, if you don't have sub goals that you're going to run a mile, you're going to run two miles, you're going to run three miles, you're going to do those under a certain time, you're going to run them, not walk them, you're going to do them by a certain date.

If you don't have sub goals related to your performance, you're not going to get to your end goal of running the 5K under a certain time, whatever that goal is. So, again, effective goals are specific. Specific also that they have sub goals related to your performance. They're challenging and they're declared publicly in person.

So tell a friend, tell a family member, DM me, tell someone your goal, post about it online. You'll be more likely to achieve it.

So we understand what grit is. We have our goal hierarchies so that we can understand the framework that grit works in, so that we can persevere long term.

We understand how we set goals. And now we have to practice. We have to do the thing to get better and show that long term perseverance towards those long term goals.

So you might have heard that it takes 10, 000 hours to become an expert at something, or it takes 10, 000 hours to be really good at something. This is actually based on research and that is like the objective benchmark that they look at when they see people that are really successful, really high achievers that have objectively become really, really good at a certain skill or talent or whatever it is.

But, um,, The specific thing that is happening within those 10,000 hours is something called deliberate practice, and this is actually what allows people to get better. We could listen to music for 10, 000 hours, but that doesn't mean that we're a musician. We could watch TV for 10, 000 hours. I'm definitely on my way there.

Doesn't mean that I'm a television producer or an actor or an expert in storytelling. What does allow people to become an expert within those 10, 000 hours is deliberate practice.

And so the four steps in deliberate practice is to have a stretch goal, something that's outside of your current ability to give your undivided attention and effort to seek feedback on your performance and then repeat the process. So deliberate practice, you set your stretch goal. This is a specific aspect of your performance, and you're trying to improve a weakness.

So if I was rerecording this podcast and I was setting a specific goal related to my performance and a weakness, I would say I would type out and better organize the way that I'm going to go through this episode rather than just looking through my notes from the semester, which Sam, who's editing this has probably realized that this is probably not the most effective and efficient way to record this and that I couldn't probably structure this out before recording.

So what I would do is I would set that goal. I would say, I'm going to. Outline and write out and organize the entire flow of the episode and the examples I want to bring up and how much time I want to allocate to each topic and the arc that this episode is going to follow. That's the weakness that I'm addressing.

It's specific. It's a little bit outside of my skill set of what I've done in previous episodes, but it's something that I can achieve. And then I'm going to give my undivided attention and effort. And strive to reach that goal. So I'm going to lock in. I'm going to sit down. I'm going to go through my notes.

I'm going to type them up. I'm going to write out all the parts of this episode and give my attention and effort towards this specific goal. Then I'm going to seek feedback. So I'll send it to Sam and say, Hey, Sam, like, what do you think about this outline on this episode?

Does this make sense? Is it intuitive? I'll ask you guys. I'll say, I outlined this episode rather than just kind of hopping on the mic and going through my notes. What did you think? Was it more effective? Did you feel like it was easier to follow? Did you feel like you had more takeaways? What were your thoughts?

So get feedback on how it went, compare the two, see if there's an improvement, and then I would repeat. So. I would continue to outline episodes. It would continue to be more intentional with the way I'm presenting information, continue to get feedback, continue to devote my attention and focus. And then you repeat in this framework, the deliberate practice framework, you repeat until conscious incompetence becomes unconscious competence, which I thought is kind of like a fun, interesting way to explain that.

So until the weakness that you're aware of becomes something that you're no longer aware of because you're so good at that. And if you're like, this sounds like not very fun way to approach my goals and a lot of work. It's true. Deliberate practice is more effortful and less enjoyable. It's something that takes a lot of time and attention and mental and physical effort.

But this is how we get better. This is how we actually measurably improve in our goals.

And if you look, Did the grit scale at the beginning of this episode, or, you know, you're a gritty person. A little fun fact is that gritty kids enjoy deliberate practice more. So maybe you will enjoy this.

And the other positive thing, the other side of this is that there are two positive experiences that come from this, and that is getting better and performing at your best and deliberate practice allows us to get to those two positive subjectively enjoyable and experiences.

And then in addition to deliberate practice, there are a couple of other things that influence who becomes an expert. And one of the. Takeaways from this class is that experts are made. They're not born. Talent is innate. How quickly we acquire skills, but the effort we put towards those skills and how we achieve them based on the effort we're applying to those skills is dependent on us.

So experts are made. They're not born with this malleable. We have an ability to engage with that. And so the other things that allow us to achieve and become experts in these areas. It's devoted teachers and family support, having people in your corner, holding you accountable, supporting you. That is another thing that they found in research that is a strong predictor of who becomes an expert, , and becomes highly successful in their fields.

Also, the amount and the quality of practice is correlated with the level of expertise. So again, deliberate practice versus just passively doing something will impact how good you get at something.

Experts also look at how they analyze things wrong. So how are they thinking about things inefficiently? How was their goal not quite right? How are they approaching this test wrong? How are they solving this problem inefficiently? They think about how they're thinking about things, not just did they get the thing right or wrong.

They also improve the skills that they have and extend the reach and range of them. So not just looking to acquire new skills and get better at all the things, but what skills you have and how can you improve those as much as possible? And then also coaches accelerate learning because they provide lots of feedback.

So teachers and coaches have a really strong impact on allowing us to be experts. Again, we talked about how deliberate practice involves feedback. Coaches and teachers provide that feedback, which is a really important part of the learning process. And then the last thing we'll give you here with regard to improving and practicing is that if you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.

We talked about this with mental health. When we're not measuring objectively our goals, like sleeping a certain number of hours every night, seeing our friends a certain amount of time every week, , tracking our mood, tracking our behaviors, tracking the skills that we're using. We have no way to measure and observe objectively our mental health and mental health specifically Transcribed , as a really unique and interesting thing to set goals around because it is so subjective and our emotions can't necessarily be objectively measured super effectively.

it can be really hard to say, have I gotten better? Have I improved? Do I feel like I'm recovering? Am I less depressed? Am I less anxious? Am I more happy? Like these things are really, really hard to measure and describe. And so again, making sure our goals are things that can be measured, otherwise we can't improve that.

So, there's a lot of things that we learned in this semester that I didn't touch on. We also touched on how to find mentors, how to pay it forward, how do we accept feedback, how do we ask for feedback.

How can we create habits so that these things are more streamlined and less day to day decisions? How can we think about failure and stress more effectively so that we continue to persevere and continue on that course towards those larger goals?

I don't want to throw too much at you. I've given you quite a lot of information, but I feel like we've really covered these basics. We talked about what is grit? What does it predict? What is it indicative of? How do we define it?

We talked about how our values and interests impact our larger goals and how we can create a goal hierarchy to understand how we achieve these long term goals and how grit plays into that framework.

We talked about how we set goals psychologically as humans, what makes us more likely to achieve our goals and how we can set ourselves up for success and the context we put ourselves in. We talked about how we actually do the thing, how we do those day to day actions that help us achieve those small goals, which in turn help us achieve those big goals and what deliberate practices and how that can expedite the process of becoming an expert.

And so I'm going to give you guys little summaries that I wrote from these different classes. The bullet point takeaways for you to internalize based on everything that we just talked about. So great is sustained passion and perseverance for a long term goal. Grit influences effort, whereas talent is the rate at which we improve with effort.

Both are malleable and subject to change. Success is useful to be thought as, as a journey. Again, we talked about like how we frame things, it's a psychological force. So success. I'm going it as a journey and appreciation for grit should highlight, not obscure the importance of context and opportunities or context and opportunities have a really big impact on how good we are and how, many of these goals that we set for ourselves do we actually achieve

finding our purpose is a lifelong journey.

Goal hierarchies allow us to have more harmony in our long term pursuits and they decrease conflict between different goals. Goal fusion is one way to make tedious activities less tedious. Self concordant goals reflect our deeper interests and values.

Goals, including sub goals, direct our energy. Plans specify what we're going to do and when we're going to do it.

Being good at something is more than just talent, and the way that we become good at something is deliberate practice.

There is always an easy and enjoyable alternative to deliberate practice. It's a hard choice to make, and we can use Habits, which are more an autopilot response to cues rather than exercising self control every time we're trying to achieve a goal.

So that's our really abbreviated expedited 000 foot view of grit. What it is, how it applies to our life, what I learned this semester, how you can use these principles to be more gritty. Find your passions, persevere more in pursuit of those passions, and achieve your goals.

I want to thank Dr. Angela Duckworth for all that she taught us throughout the semester. All of this comes from her teaching, and her research, and her work, and straight from my notes from this class. It truly was so informative. A lot of this is also in her book, like she mentioned in the class. A lot of this is available online, either in the literature or in pieces of content she's put out.

So if you wanna learn more, you can check out her book. I'll put it in the show notes. You can also watch her TED Talk, go to Character Lab, which is her lab, where she shares this information more generally to the public. So there's a lot more research available.

And I really hope you guys enjoyed this. Definitely let me know. Give me some feedback. Like we talked about in the episode, do you like these style of episodes? Is it fun to kind of hear the distillation of an entire semester worth of coursework?

, learn about the psychological principles and how they can apply to your life. Let me know your thoughts. If you want to hear more, if there's other topics you want me to dive into based on classes I've taken. And then if you guys have. And as always, make sure to share with a friend or family member, post about it on social media, all the things.

I really appreciate it. It really helps with the podcast. Leave a review and I will talk to you guys next week.

Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of She Persisted. If you enjoyed, make sure to share with a friend or family member, it really helps out the podcast. And if you haven't already, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also make sure to follow along at @shepersistedpodcast on both Instagram and TikTok, and check out all the bonus resources, content, and information on my website, shepersistedpodcast.com. Thanks for supporting, keep persisting, and I'll see you next week.

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