Skip to main content

Grit...



Old TED talk, but it is a continuation of my last post in a way...That we should not and must not confuse between grit and rote learning. Putting in the hours, learning something till they get it right is not rote learning - it is perhaps grit. Perhaps we romanticise the fact that 'I cannot learn by rote' or is it our own euphemism for, 'I cannot work hard'. Questions, questions...

But yes, grit is what makes people successful...sounds simple enough, but as she asks, how do we build it in kids? Or ourselves?

Tailpiece: For me, this has shown up in two separate places. For a year I used to turn up at a class - the only thing in my favor was the fact that I was regular. I was not the strongest or the most skillful nor the fastest. But I was regular. And I asked my coach, well, what have I learnt? And what he said will remain in my mind till the end - he said, "Well, you have turned up every single day wanting to learn. That one thing will keep you ahead of those who did not".

And in another instance, we were at rehearsals for a play. Our group - three of us, turned up, day after day, come rain, wind or run, to rehearse. It helped that all of us believed that we were talentless, but we wanted to do well. And so we did. Rehearsed, played, tried, experimented, rounded the rough edges and worked on it till beyond perfection. And in the end, we were rewarded and how. What we lacked in acting 'talent' we made up with sheer practice. And not once, did we flub a dialogue. And on the other side where supposedly talented people who just did not put in the hard work - and it showed in their work.

Yes, grit works.

I don't know what else will work, ever. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Be Civil. Make nice!

Popular posts from this blog

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zero to One

Zero to One by Peter Thiel is a nice read. (Yes - if I sit down to write a book review - the book has to be worth it - and usually good - so most of my book reviews are about good books.You can stop here if that's the information you seek.) Where this book scores is in contrarian thoughts and contrarian questions that make you think. It starts with a four big lessons learned from the 90s dot-com crash that is, Make incremental advances, Stay lean and flexible, Improve on the competition and Focus on product, not sales. Just as you warm up to it, he says, the opposite rules are more correct - which are: It is better to risk boldness than triviality. A bad plan is better than no plan. Competitive markets destroy profits. Sales matters just as much as products. And finally leaves with a simple definition of contrarianism - it is not to oppose the crowd (or follow a smaller or newer or older crowd) but to think for yourself. "All happy companies are different"...
Post a Comment
Read more

Playing to win

This bright green book with a yellow title has always caught my attention, but I had never read it.  Imagine my surprise that when I finally picked it up as part of a preparation for a workshop that it was such a fantastic book. Playing to win by Alan Lafley and Roger Martin is one of those books that is up there when it comes to learning about how strategy can be crafted and implemented in real business. There is much in the book - and unlike other books - this book is really a leaf out of P&G, but with frameworks and models that can be applied anywhere. Image from here . It is these 5 questions played in a loop (well, iteratively) that are the juiciest part of the book and as simple and obvious as they are, it is this place where the strategy play happens. So, yes, simply put a great book to be read by anyone who is anywhere close to strategy...
Post a Comment
Read more