In this episode, we are joined by Angela Duckworth, who is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, which proposes the concept of ‘grit’ as using passion and personal conscientiousness to achieve long-term goals. Angela has also been a winner of the MacArthur Genius Fellowship.

What Was Covered

• How passion and perseverance is at the heart of grit and its contribution to high performance
• The naturalness bias and our preference towards those we perceive as naturally talented compared to those who strive to achieve success
• The mundanity of excellence and how champions learn to love the discipline of working on their craft
• How successful people use hopeful mindset to solve challenges, setbacks, and failures.

Key Takeaways and Learnings

• Focus: why the most successful gritty high performers spend up to 70% of their time developing their passion alone.
• Assets of passion: the four developmental stages we experience in realising our passions in life.
• Top level goals: how to set your most important priorities aside from lesser interests as a path to achieving your top-level goal.

Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• Get in touch with Angela Duckworth via Twitter or Facebook 
• Angela's websites: https://angeladuckworth.com/ and https://www.characterlab.org/
• Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, a book by Angela Duckworth
• Angela's TED talk
• University of Pennsylvania, website
• McKinsey, website
• The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers Daniel F. Chambliss