The Curiosity Shop with Brené Brown and Adam Grant - Why Grit Isn’t Always Enough with Angela Duckworth

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi there, Adam. Hey, every day. Just have to ask you, did you, as a Michigan fan, did you catch the UT OSU game? I have never rooted so hard for UT, ever. Let's go. Talking about grit, which we are talking about today, and talking about the situation of 100,000 fans in DKR Stadium. What a game.

Starting point is 00:00:26 I felt much better about that, actually, than the Michigan victory squeaked out in an extra second than I'm not sure we deserve. Oh, God. Let me just tell you this. I thought of you when at the UT game, they panned to a guy who had your Michigan hat on. I think the one that's probably you wear sometimes. And then he just had a t-shirt that said, I'm not a longhorn. I'm just here to hate watch OSU.

Starting point is 00:00:50 And I was like, well, that's a commitment to hating OSU, man. I'm getting that shirt. Yeah. My uncle had a bumper sticker on his car growing up. He's a huge Wolverine fan. And it said something like drive south until you smell it and then east until you step in it. What is it? What's the I guess it's like the U-T-A-N-M or OU hate. It's just so deep. Okay. I am very excited for Angela Duckworth today. And we're talking about her new book situated. I'm stoked. This was a hard book for me. I think it's a really important book. And I read a whole bunch of early drafts. Angela's been one of my closest colleagues and friends for two decades now.

Starting point is 00:01:35 And I think she makes everyone around her better. It's such a privilege to have her at my school in my life. And we could go inside baseball very quickly. Oh, I bet y'all could nerd out. There's a danger that we would speak in code. Yeah, yeah. So I think you should run the show on this one. And I'll jump in where irrelevant.

Starting point is 00:01:57 I'll do it. Yeah, I mean, you know, I have 742 questions. Of course you do. And I need a lot of personal therapy and help. So great. I'll run the show. You jump in because I do have a lot of questions for her around. Well, let's talk about who she is first.

Starting point is 00:02:12 She's a psychologist and professor who researches motivation and achievement. And I'm reading this from the prolog because I thought this was a great. We'll put her formal bio on the Curiosity Shop website. But this is a really great way to think about her work. She writes that she's a psychologist and professor who research. motivation and achievement. She began her career studying remarkably successful people. After a decade of study, she took a six-month sabbatical and did her very best, she said, to write their stories in her book, Grit, which summed up everything that she knew about passion and perseverance

Starting point is 00:02:46 for long-term goals. Another decade has passed now, and in that time, she's turned her attention from the psychological profiles of high achievers to a different common denominator. the strikingly similar features of their situations. In other words, her curiosity has taken her from what goes on inside the minds of high achievers to everything and everyone around them. Which, what a cool move. Oh, it's so important. It's like the missing piece of the grit puzzle. And I'm excited to talk to her about what are the kinds of situations to select ourselves into? and then what do we do to change our situation to try to bring out the best in us and those around us? I can't wait. And I'll just be, I'll confess that I read this from a research perspective as someone

Starting point is 00:03:35 who studies courage and vulnerability, but I cried like seven times in reading the book. Like, it was really personal. So I'm excited to tell her, uh, thank you and freak you. Because in equal measure, it was tough. It was so insightful and also hard. Let's jump in. Welcome to the Curiosity Shop. A show from the Fox Media Podcast Network. Angela Duckworth, you're in a shit ton of trouble with me. Are we going to beef? We're going to beef. Okay.

Starting point is 00:04:09 Let's go. I'm ready to moderate. I don't know about what, but like, sure. Okay. This is what I've decided is my six words to describe your new book. Okay. You ready? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:04:22 Insightful, painful, and hopeful. That's good. Wait, is that six? I counted three. No, I'm saying insight, period, full. Yes, okay, got you. Painful. Definitely painful. Hopeful.

Starting point is 00:04:38 I hope so. Yeah, so it is full of, for me, it was full of incredible insight, incredible hopefulness, but it was also a little painful. Tell me more about the painful part. I wonder what you mean. I have my own version of this, but. I witnessed it. Yeah, Adam kind of knows more about the,

Starting point is 00:04:57 the journey that was not straight or sure. Well, first of all, I have to say that this is going to be our next organization-wide read. Oh, what? I didn't know that. Yeah. No, I think it's a game changer. And I do not think at all that it is an about face from grit. I think it is a yes and from grit. I went too far down the grit road, even despite your warnings. You are very gritty, Renee, and I wonder whether, you know, some of our strengths, and I say our meaning maybe you and I share similar strengths, common strengths, maybe they, you know, get us into trouble. Do you mean by that that you've always worked your ass off and that's gotten you really far?

Starting point is 00:05:47 And now I'm projecting. Right now I'm telling you my story, but I'm wondering what you mean. No, it's a direct hit. Let's start with this. Here's a sentence for me that grit is one thing, a great situation is another, and fully realizing your potential requires both. I know in every part of me that that is true, and I hate it. Because? Because I make up that I have complete agency over my grit. Yeah, over what you do and how do you think. Yes. And I want to hear from you what made you do this to me personally. Explain to me what's happening.

Starting point is 00:06:35 And then I have a lot of questions because looking at your work through a courage and vulnerability lens was tough. because sometimes the courage is lock in, grit up, get it done. Yeah, suck it up, buttercup. Yep. And sometimes the courage is have I completely ignored creating the situations around me that bring ease and flow into my life? You know, nuance is not very, I don't know if it's popular or not this day. It's certainly not common.

Starting point is 00:07:15 But I hope that's what this conversation is, because there is no one-liner prescriptive. Like, you should just always make the best of your situation. Like, suck it up, suck it in, grit it out. Let it go. Yes, right? That's also, you know, whatever pithy aphorism, right? Like, sometimes you have to do that. I do think there is a little bit of a escape patch mindset that some young people have,

Starting point is 00:07:42 like this is painful, this is hard, I'm not vice president, I'm already 24. I mean, there is a danger in saying sometimes you need to change your situation. It can be weaponized, right, so that you're making excuses and not making the best of your situation. But at the same time, you know, if you're pushing a wheelbarrow through like a wet, muddy field, like girlfriend, like you're just not going to get very far. So where does your individual effort and grit, where does it pay off? Where does it make sense? I mean, I think the advice that I was given a lot growing up was that you make the best of your situation. If you don't like your teacher, you don't complain about your teacher, like you get an A anyway. You don't like your, you know, well, I was a cheerleader,

Starting point is 00:08:28 so I'll just say. Like, if you don't like the other girls on the cheerling team, like, well, you're not going to change the other girls on the cheerling team. The only thing you can control is you. I think the provocative concept that I'm trying to, champion here is that agency isn't just controlling your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. I think there is agency in changing the situation. So sometimes it's exactly what you should do. And it is the courageous and vulnerable thing to do, I think, especially if you've been raised, not to think about it, not to complain about it, and not consider it something that you have power over. Angela, it reminds me a little of George Bernard Shaw. To paraphrase, reasonable people adapt themselves to the world,

Starting point is 00:09:14 unreasonable people adapt the world to themselves, and therefore all progress depends on unreasonable people. Yes, yes. I think it's from a play that I only read that little passage of, so I don't have the context. But I think that's exactly right, though, right? I mean, you can't get as far as you want, I think. And also, I don't think you can avoid burnout and exhaustion if the only tool in your toolkit is just try harder. And I hope that this perspective, which really is a figure ground shift, right, to like really consider the surroundings, the other people in your life, your entire situation, unless you take it really seriously, unless you bring it into focus, then I think you really only have one toolkit, you know, and one tool in your toolkit. And it took me a while to learn that too. I mean, I think in my 40s is probably the chapter in my life that I would mark as like, oh, Angela Duckworth finally realized the power of the situation. Let's start with defining what do you mean by a situation?

Starting point is 00:10:22 Renee, I mean everything. Everything outside of your mind, really, right? Okay. The situation is physical, right? So you can look around and you can say, you know, what objects are within? my reach and my site, right? I've got a glass of water. I've got a set of headphones that don't work, right? I'm at a wooden table. I'm sitting in a chair. I'm wearing a black dress. But then, of course, your situation is also social. Talking to Bernay, I'm talking to Adam. I'm in a podcast. So the situation is everything and everyone around you. And by the way, it extends beyond just, you know, your immediate space. So, you know, what zip code are you in? And

Starting point is 00:11:02 what culture are you working in? And so one of the challenges of even beginning a conversation about the situation is it is all of that. And that makes it somewhat, you know, intractable, I think, for many people to consider what they can do about their situation because it has so many layers and so many levels. But that also gives you so many levers, right? Yes. If a situation is so multifaceted, it means there's more there to do. change externally than internally? I think if you're thinking about it that way, yes, right? So if you accept the premise, and again, I do think it's a paradigm shift. I think it's a different way of thinking.

Starting point is 00:11:43 If you consider that the situation is malleable, not fixed, and if you consider your agency to extend from what's inside you to what's outside of you, yeah, then the option space of things that you might change, you're like, oh, you know, I want to have a water bottle near me. Like, I want to have, you know, diet Coke farther away, should that be what you're trying to drink more of and less of? Or, you know, I can move my phone away. So, oh, right. And then I could put my workout clothes out. We could also say, you know, I've been working on this startup and feeling like I'm not getting anywhere. Maybe I should find other people who are working on a startup or, you know, and the list goes on. And so hopefully considering every element of your situation as important and recognizing that at least some

Starting point is 00:12:30 of them can be changed, it really does open up a world of possibility, you know, from the near to the far. Let's go through kind of some of the terminology that you use, because I think it's really helpful to Adam's point about increasing our sense of agency, our sense of, I have some choices here. So when I was writing Strong Ground, trying to understand kind of a large collection of skills that are going to define leadership. It's really interesting because the one that I could not ignore during the interviews with situational awareness. Which is a term, right, that some people use not everybody, right, in business. Not everybody. And so what I want to understand is, so you talk about situational awareness,

Starting point is 00:13:23 situational agency. And situational responsibility. And situational obligation or responsibility. relevant to leadership. Yes. Okay. So our situation, which is as important as our get shit done grit. Yes. Our situation, setting up our space, picking our peers, building relationships with mentors, coaches, and choosing our culture and shaping our culture. How do you think about situational awareness. If I'm listening right now and I'm like, oh my God, this is, I'm having a Brunay reaction to this book and I want to develop some situational awareness. What does that mean for you? Well, let me define it. I think situational awareness precedes any kind of agency of your situation.

Starting point is 00:14:16 You have to notice your situation right before. So situational awareness is really having some conscious attention to who's around you and what's around you. And what's you, it is not the default. Human beings, by the way, in times of stress in particular, I think you'll agree, look inward and, you know, they just ruminate and we quote unquote get inside our heads, right? We sort of have a sense that we're getting inside our heads, too, or then we get inside our heads even more. And really, what situational awareness is, to direct your attention outward, not inward. And again, it's not necessarily to, like, lay blame at the feet of your situation and then like, you know, brush off any sense of responsibility that you have to do

Starting point is 00:14:58 anything differently. But situational awareness would say, for example, I actually made a scorecard for this book because I am a fan of self-reports as a tool for self-reflection. And I thought, why not make this real? So you can audit your personal space. You can say, do I have temptations like a cell phone or crap to eat? You know, like, do I have that within reach? You know, like, do I have that within reach and within due, have I decorated my personal space with reminders of my goals? One of the findings in my research with teenagers is we asked thousands of teenagers all across the United States what they did to study for the SAT. We also had their PSAT scores and their SAT scores because we did this in partnership with the college board. And we gave kids like a really

Starting point is 00:15:47 long list of things that they might. I remind myself that college is important. I have a study, But the number one strategy was I write down my goals for studying somewhere concrete, right, writing it down on a piece of paper, and I post it somewhere I can see it. High achievers decorate their personal space with reminders, with quotes, statements of their mission. So you can audit your personal space. But I also think you can audit those other social dimensions as well. You can ask yourself, you know, am I trying to achieve these goals? with or without a group of like-minded strivers who are also trying to start a podcast, trying to write a book, trying to run a marathon. So the list goes on, the scorecard goes on. There are 10 items altogether. I don't score perfect 10.

Starting point is 00:16:38 I do think that's what I mean, though, by situational awareness, is to audit your situation and with as much clear-eyed objectivity as you can find. ask yourself whether it is aligned with your goals or not aligned with your goals. That's where I would begin. And then, of course, creating alignment, that's situational agency. Support for this show comes from Quince. Whether it's that versatile sweater that works with everything or that pair of jeans that just fits right, we all have pieces in our closet that have stood the test of time

Starting point is 00:17:11 and are in a permanent place in our wardrobe. And Quince is here to help you find your next one. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and washable silk. The designs are timeless, thoughtfully crafted, and made to be worn again and again. Their 100% Mongolian cashmere sweater is start at just $50, giving you the softness and quality you'd expect from a luxury brand, without the luxury price tag. In fact, everything at quince has priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. I've gotten to try some quints, and I'm a big fan of the Mongolian cashmere quarter-zips

Starting point is 00:17:45 sweater. It's professional and comfortable. Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash the shop. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's QINCE.com slash the shop. I'm Phoebe Judge. And for more than a decade, I've hosted the podcast criminal, telling stories about people who've done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. But while I was starting one of the very first true crime podcasts out there, I was also taking phone calls from my sister, from prison.

Starting point is 00:18:25 This fall, I'm going on tour, and I'm telling a story I've never told before, my own. Pre-sale tickets are on sale now for Criminal Plus members. General sale tickets go on sale on Thursday, September 24th. Get tickets at this iscriminal.com slash live. the weirdest thing happened to me when I was reading this book. And I don't know why I'm so emotional about it, but it's really weird. So I split my time between Houston and Austin, and Houston's kind of the house where we raised our kids. And I'm a maximalist. Adam is a minimalist. But why are you going to Austin? Like at all, I thought you were just in Houston. No, because I work in Austin a lot. I teach

Starting point is 00:19:09 in the MBA program at UT, and I have a lot of work here. So, and both my kids are off. building their big lives. But I was sitting in Austin, where I stay when I'm here, and I was doing some creative exercises, and I called Steve, and I was so weepy. And he said, what's wrong? And I said, I can't be creative here. And he said, why? And I said, because there's not enough of Ellen and Charlie's art on the walls here. And he said, interesting. What do you mean? And I was in, your book. And I said, it's a situational variable. And he said, okay, and I said, there is some beautiful art here. It's some beautiful photography here. But I need the kids art to remind me that that's my favorite art. And it's imperfect. And they just did it without thinking about it. And that's what

Starting point is 00:20:06 inspires me to do my best work. You know, it seems like a crazy thing to say, right? It does. It does. It It feels weird talking about it. You have your like it. But an Adam might know this. We know, and, Bray, do you also know Bob Chaldeany, the psychologist who wrote Influence? No, I don't know him. He does not hang out in Houston much, nor Austin. But if you ever go to Arizona, I mean, you know, that's where he lives.

Starting point is 00:20:34 And when he was writing the book, Influence, he was finding himself to be pedantic, long-winded and dry, which is how you write a scientific journal article. the drier, the better, right? And he's just like, oh, God, how am I writing a book about my research on persuasion for an audience of more than seven people? And what he did was, he changed where he started writing. He moved from his campus office where he was Professor Robert Chaldeen to his home office where he was Bob. And those physical cues, right, the setting, you know, it inspired a different character. And I think this is why when you tune into the Oscars, you know, there is an Oscar for set design. There is an Oscar for costumes. You know, Shakespeare said, all the world's a stage and each of us, it's players.

Starting point is 00:21:30 And what's on that stage? The props, the backdrop, the lighting, I think it makes a huge difference. And I think we have the view of human beings as being reflective. Like, we are the reflective animal. But we are much more reactive, I think, than we're. would admit. And so there are these trigger cues, you know, like when I'm in my house, my voice is a half octave higher than talking to you, right? Like when I drop into Professor Angela Duckworth and I do this and I'm like, I'm all business. I have a cousin who's a physician

Starting point is 00:22:04 and we could be having a conversation. But when I trigger cue her with, so I've got this like cut on her voice drops and she goes into physician mode, right? So I do think there are these situational trigger cues that bring out one self or another. And they seem trivial, but they're not. They're really not. We should take them seriously. Angela, I think anyone who's with us right now can relate to this. We all have places where we do our best work, where we struggle to concentrate, where we find creative inspiration, where we feel like we've never had an original thought. At the same time, I'm really troubled by the reality that we are so malleable. And I think, Think about the power of habits, which is something you've spent a lot of your career studying.

Starting point is 00:22:50 And I think, you know what? I don't have to be in the right hotel room to brush my teeth. Like, I don't need the right toothbrush or the right floss, right? I do it regardless of my circumstances. And I want to be more immune to my surroundings. What can you tell us about that? Well, as we all know, nearly half of human behavior is habit, but the other half is goal-directed. That's the research of Wendy Wood.

Starting point is 00:23:14 and what has Wendy Wood and other habit researchers, you know, discovered? Well, you know, you can actually override any habit system with the goal system. Like, if you have the habit of driving home a certain way, you can override it and, like, stop at the supermarket. Human beings are able to do that. But very often we have what are called habit slips, and you're like, oh, no, the habit system was just in charge. And, you know, I can't tell you how many times I've checked into a hotel and, like, just forgotten to, you know, do one thing or another, especially work out. I'm like, oh, right, just, I didn't have the cues. It wasn't in the routine. Yes. So, yeah, maybe I should have turned on my goal system. And sometimes you have to do that. But I think a wiser approach to changing yourself is to start with the situation. And if you are asking me about the science of habit, something that I don't think is understood, even though there's so much written about habit, so much published about habit in the broader sort of media environment, here's something that habit researchers like Wendy Wood cannot.

Starting point is 00:24:14 seem to get across to people. A habit is a behavior that is repeatedly rewarded. And then the brain goes on a kind of neural autopilot. It doesn't need to think what should I do. It just does. But it can only do that in a stable situation. In other words, you are not able to do anything habitual unless it has a trigger. The trigger doesn't have to be physical. It can be like, when I'm hungry, then I do this. Like when I'm angry. And I'm not saying all habits are good, Like grinding your teeth is a habit too, like when I'm stressed. But the idea is that preceding any habitual reaction, there is a stimulus, a situational cue. And therefore, if you want to build habits, right, if you're worried about the half of human behavior that is on autopilot and you're saying, that's where I want my exercise routine, right?

Starting point is 00:25:08 That's where I'm my writing routine. That's where I want my mindfulness routine. then you 100% have to honor the situation and you have to design the situation with the cues that you will reliably encounter. Oh my God, that is, you could just come to my house and do a study on if I lay my workout clothes out the night before I go to sleep. Is that not the best hack ever? That's the best hack ever. Isn't it a miracle? It's a miracle.

Starting point is 00:25:35 It's like nothing, Renee, right? Like, okay, I keep my workout clothes in this one drawer in my bureau. I mean, it's really not that hard to reach down into this drawer. And it's all like folded and dry. So like how hard can it be to reach into that drawer and take out this, you know, top and this pair of shorts and this pair of socks? The miracle that happens when that top, that pair of shorts and that pair of socks are laying on top of the same bureau. And it's the first thing I see. I mean, first of all, you can't get into other clothes when you have an outfit out.

Starting point is 00:26:09 You're just like, I'm going to wear this. because it's sitting there. This kind of micro-friction, as a postdoc who works with me, as Soft Mazar calls it, it is incredibly powerful. And once you put on the workout clothes, right, there you go. I mean, nobody doesn't work out in their workout clothes. That's my number one exercise hack is to put my workout clothes out the night before. I wonder if there's a gender difference here. Wait, Adam, are you not a workout clothes layer outer? No. I don't think about clothes at all. Do you have a problem? You work out regularly, right? So you, don't need this hack.

Starting point is 00:26:42 You don't, yeah, I don't think you need it. For me, it takes willpower not to work out. Okay, well, then maybe you don't need this hack. You know what? I actually really enjoy working out, too. I'm not one of those people for whom, like, working out is an exercise and delay of gratification. Like, when I'm at Pilates, I enjoy Pilates.

Starting point is 00:26:57 But even for me, I have found that it helps. And I will say this, Adam, you know, I'm not saying you have to do anything differently, but I've gotten to know Alistair Brownlee, the, you know, world-renowned triathly. you know, some would argue, like, the greatest triathlet ever. And he lays out his workout clothes the night before. You make sure they're dry. Like, he puts the sneakers right where he can see them. And so I find it interesting that even people who have a lot of willpower and a lot of motivation, and sometimes, you know, people who exercise is the only thing they do, they often use this too. I don't think micro-friction benefits anybody when the micro-friction

Starting point is 00:27:33 is an obstacle to your goals. I agree. And for me, I have to lay them out because if I see them, then I have to acknowledge I am choosing to not do what I know is good for me. I am making a choice. If I don't see them, it's just like, yeah, I'm really busy. I got a lot of shit to do. But if I see them, I am choosing a lot of shit to do over myself and my health. It's not just friction. I think you're like making it obvious, right? Like human attention is a pinhole camera. You're thinking about one thing and you're not thinking about not a million things, but a trillion other things, right? So when you lay eyes on your workout clothes, boom, comes to mind. You're like, workout, exercise, health. If you're not looking

Starting point is 00:28:19 at your workout clothes, you can be thinking about who knows what, right? Like, you know, does Brad Pitt have veneers? Like, what's for dinner? Like, what am I doing at 10 o'clock today? Like, I think he does, by the way, but I don't have a lot of it. Oh, I thought about that. Yeah, I think I thought about it too. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Which I have nothing against him. I'm just saying. My dentist says everyone has veneers. So, you know, your mind wanders, right? And your mind is reactive. And this is why advertising works, right?

Starting point is 00:28:48 So you have to put in your own billboards, right? Like install your own reminders. Oh, I love that. Put up your own billboards. Put up your own billboards. You know, there's a person that Adam and I both know, but, Renee, since you're mostly in Austin and Houston and not in Philadelphia, you probably don't know Chaz Howard, who's the chaplain of the University of Pennsylvania,

Starting point is 00:29:07 where Adam and I both teach. And he surrounds himself with books, as I think we all do. I'm usually surrounded by books, but I'm here in another room doing this recording. But he goes beyond that. He is very intentional about the spines of the books that are at eye level. And he keeps the books turned so that he can see the title outward that he just wants to be reminded of. And I'm not saying that he walks back by that bookshelf and takes every book off the show. Dolphin reads it every day, but he is installing billboards, right? People get tattoos. They wear their faith around their neck. Why do they do that? They do that to be reminded of their values and their goals. And so that's the kind of intentional choice that I'm talking about. And it's a

Starting point is 00:29:55 seemingly trivial one, but I think it's the tip of the iceberg, right? If you can do that, then you can ask yourself, like, who am I spending my time with? You can ask yourself, like, should I be living in Houston or should I be living in Austin or should I live somewhere else, right? I think these are the bigger questions, but you can get there by starting small. It's interesting. I was just thinking I have my two watches on. And why? Just my Apple watch is just linear, regular time, and my grandmother's watch is Kyros, God, time, qualitative time and a reminder that I need to make choices based on both.

Starting point is 00:30:34 The quantitative time. Yeah, but it's a billboard. And on my other wrist, I have a tattoo that symbolizes between stimulus and response. There is a space in that space as choice. And so I have my billboards at all times. Yeah, right? And by the way, you don't need to be reminded. It's not like you haven't memorized that sentence, right?

Starting point is 00:30:54 It's just that you want to, you know, and when your eyes are light on it, that's your, It's such a brilliant but also so obvious way to control your attention that I don't think people, I can't tell you how many people, for example, have reread many times Eckhart tolls the power of now. Oh, God, yeah. And, you know, like, well, you read it once and you're like, okay, I should be mindful. But like, why are they, you know, rereading it? Why do they have a copy of it? Because they're putting it in their situation.

Starting point is 00:31:22 They know that if you want to do anything, including mindful attention to the present, You've got to design your physicals to make that possible. Same reason why people go on retreats and so forth, right? It's like the way to get into this kind of, I want to control this thought and I want to go is actually with the situation, I think. Obviously, am I biased? I don't know. Adam's like less biased because he didn't write a book about it, you know, although you sort of have, I think, in many ways, Adam. But you can tell me if you disagree.

Starting point is 00:31:53 I don't disagree. I'm actually really struck by the tattoo observation here. And I think there's a study waiting to be done. I've always thought about tattoos as an image thing. You're trying to project something about yourself to other people. You're projecting the tattoos for other people. Yeah, but I'm hearing now there's an identity element of it. And I wonder, here's the study idea.

Starting point is 00:32:15 Do people whose tattoos are visible to others but not themselves have more struggles following through on their plans and goals than people who can see their own tattoos, even if they're not visible to others. Oh, so you're doing like a forearm versus like torso. So they're, I don't know, I think, Brunay, you're the only one among the three of us who has a tattoo. What do you think? I think 100 tattoos and 100 people,

Starting point is 00:32:41 100 different reasons, some to capture something they never want to forget. I mean, a lot of people get tattoos when someone dies. Some of them as reminders and their own billboards. I think there's a lot of different reasons that people do it. And so I think there'd be a lot of confounding variables around that. But one of the things this book really helped me do is for me, situation, context, color, connective tissue is everything. I think situational awareness is probably a superpower, unfortunately, because the way I was raised.

Starting point is 00:33:13 And I think it's probably the downside of situational awareness is hypervigilance. Maybe I'm constantly... Oh, that's interesting. Are you hypervigilant? Yeah, I could be very hypervigilant. Oh, to threat? Are you like scanning the horizon for threat or just in other ways? For understanding. Who's here? What's the dynamic? Oh, so you think you might have an excess of situational awareness.

Starting point is 00:33:37 I can. I have to bring it in sometimes. Oh, that's very interesting. Yeah. I think you're the exception. It also led me to believe that like I was very committed to raising my kids in a Montessori environment. Yeah. Because Montessori is very based on situational cluttered, you know, cluttered rooms, cluttered minds. Yeah, that is a design situation. That's a design situation. Yeah. And even my kids, I remember my dad watching my kids and he said, Charlie, what are you doing?

Starting point is 00:34:03 Charlie said, I'm putting my work away for new work. So he was putting a toy away to get out another toy because in his Montessori program, it was like one toy at a time. And my dad was like, God damn, sis, you run in a tight ship around here. I was like, that's Maria Montessori. Did they go all the way through? How long did they do Montessori? Uh, through Kinder. And then they went to public schools. Okay, right. So all of their preschool years.

Starting point is 00:34:31 Yeah, so very, very formative, very much. Yeah, how was it for you? What was your observation? Well, at first I was like, holy shit, why does my two-year-old have a glass picture and real glasses and what's happening here? And spoons and they just were very much, they were almost kind of Piagian in their thinking. They were just very much like, the situation dictates how they think of themselves, how they think of their work, and how they think of each other. It's also a social element, right? Because the Montessori is mixed age, right? So that's very intentional. Yeah, I mean, Maria Montessori, like, thought very hard about what situation does a child need to be in to develop. Yes. And it was interesting because Charlie had one of those weird birthdays, an August birthday. And when we were talking to his Montessori teacher, she said, you know, he's academically. ready for kindergarten. But one of the things that we'd like to invite you to consider situationally is that he gets to be the oldest in the room. So he will miss his mentoring

Starting point is 00:35:35 year. Right. So what did you decide to do? He stayed in Montessori for another year and then went to public school kindergarten and did that year again. What did they mean by mentoring year when he mentored the younger kids? Yes. So that he had been mentored. At age five. Yes. But that he was, he was the, I'll show you how to hold the glass. I'll show you why we wash our own glasses, you know. And so let me, let me ask you these. I have to get to these, and I'm aware of time, but there are so many freaking paradoxes in your book. And Adam and I always laugh at the paradox, having the podcast paradox. Yes. So can you just comment on these paradoxes as I run through them?

Starting point is 00:36:14 Sure. Self-control can sometimes mean needing less self-control. Self-control. The paradox of self-control. is that to delay gratification, you have to create immediate gratification. So you have to make exercise fun now. You have to make eating nutritiously something you enjoy now. You have to make what's good for you in the future, what's good for you now. And the other paradox of self-control is that you control yourself by controlling the situation. So self-control sounds like something that can only be done on the inside.

Starting point is 00:36:52 It's self-control. But depending on what you have out on the table and what you have out on the desk and the people you're with, like, you know, when I was in Miami during the pandemic, I had just written a New York Times op-ed on the importance of masking.

Starting point is 00:37:09 When we landed there, it was like the first time you could fly, you know, it was the first thing my family wanted to do is like leave Philadelphia. We get off the plane and nobody's masking. I was like, hello people. It's a global pit. Hello, COVID-19. So day one, we're like indignant, day two, we're self-righteous. And day three, I'm sorry to say, we weren't masking either, right? It's like just, it was just, I couldn't believe it. I was just like marveling, but, you know, I couldn't swim against the current.

Starting point is 00:37:38 So we should control ourselves by controlling our situations. Angela Duckworth, you failed to cite your own research to make your point. Well, which study, Adam? Well, I know you've done many, many of them, and it's hard to remember them all. But I'm thinking of your finding that the people who have the most self-control use it the least because they've arranged their situations to not have to exercise it. Yeah, I don't want to take credit for finding that many people, but I do think it was a revolution in self-control research world. Because when I went to graduate school, Brune, it was like 32 years old.

Starting point is 00:38:11 It was 2002. And the first thing that I read were all these articles about how self-control was a muscle. And it was like, you have to like exercise the willpower muscle. And like if you do things like hold a hand grip tight for like five minutes, which is very hard and painful, then you'll be better at like, you know, not procrastinating and controlling your temper. And I did a bunch of willpower studies and they all failed. And what I and many other behavioral scientists have discovered is that willpower is exhausting. Willpower is fallible. It's not quite the muscle we think it is.

Starting point is 00:38:42 And it is the worst way to change your behavior. So I don't want to take credit for that finding because over the last 20 years, it really has been a C change and how we think about behavior change. But it is an epiphany that we should be talking about more often. Okay. So this is interesting and related. So the next paradox that I wrote down, agency can grow sometimes when our self-sufficiency story gets smaller. You know, when we think that we are able to do things by ourselves, then we don't ask for help. When we think that it is our job to do things by ourselves, to be independent, hello, I'm raising my hand to that one as well as you, Brunei, then, you know, we don't admit vulnerability. We don't admit like I can't. And the courage to say, I can't, I can't do this alone.

Starting point is 00:39:39 I need help. I don't have the answer. My motivation is an all-time low. I'm a dumpster fire. You know, we think of as shameful, embarrassing, an admission that we're lesser than. But it really has to be less in. And I have to credit you more than really anyone, Brune, for spreading this important message. Like, it is strength to say I can't. It is strength to ask for help. It is strength to say, I don't know. And it's been very hard for me too to do that as somebody who's always wanted to be independent and also didn't want to be a burden on anyone. But it is a lesson that I keep trying to repeat and learn better because it's just true. And however great you can be by yourself, you can be greater when you ask

Starting point is 00:40:27 other people for their help. Hint, hint. Shut up, Adam. Okay, last paradox. And I think this is interesting. And Adam, you and I've talked about this before. perseverance may require leaving. You know, I'm often asked, when do I quit and when do I grit, right? Oh, I love it because it rhymes. When do I keep going? I don't take credit for that question, but it does rhyme, and I let things that rhyme. So when to quit, when to grit.

Starting point is 00:40:57 And recently some folks over at the NFL who do player development for the National Football League said, you know, these young football players, like they quit too soon, you know, like they don't get to start, you know, suddenly they want another team, you know, when they're in college, it's like they don't get enough playtime. They want to, like, change universities. Like, how do I get them to grit and not to quit? And so I want to answer you this way, right? I do think there are times where you're in a situation where you're suffering and it's hard and you should stay because that is the nature of the work. That is the nature of the past. to where you're trying to go. And there are other times where you should quit. When, when there's a

Starting point is 00:41:42 different path, a better path, that will get you to where you want to go. And it is maybe a smoother path or a straighter path. So sometimes it is the right thing to quit. But I don't think you should quit only because, like, this is painful. I don't like it. I wish I were there already. I do think those are wrong decisions. But I don't think it's a terrible question. to ask yourself, right? Like, should I keep going or should I go somewhere else? And I don't think the answer is always one or the other. But if you can just keep the guiding principle, which is, where am I trying to get to? What are my real goals here? And then to try to look with some objectivity at the options. And the last thing I'll say is, most people cannot do this by themselves.

Starting point is 00:42:35 they need to actually have other people who say, I know you, Brunay, and I have some objectivity. I have some psychological distance on this question. And I think you should do this. If you hear a chorus of opinion from people who know you and who care about you and who also know something about these paths, I would listen to that course of opinion, you know. It's not always that you should just be like, oh, you know, everyone's wrong. That's not grit to like never listen to other people. Angela, this is a great resolution of the debate that we started exactly 20 years ago when we met, which was...

Starting point is 00:43:11 We've been debating so many things. Adam, where did it all begin? It was the fall of 2006, and we had a great debate about where do you draw the line between healthy grit and escalation of commitment to a losing course of action? And I think you just resolved it. I think what I just took away from what you just said is we should be slow to abandon our goals, but quick to rethink the path. we should be hyper adaptable with the how and hyper stubborn about the why. There are many ways to get to what you want to achieve. That's the why, right? Like, what is your purpose? What are you all about?

Starting point is 00:43:50 And maybe you do use AI to do it. Maybe you don't. Maybe you do do it with these people. Maybe you need new collaborators. Like, you have to be, I think especially now, hyper adaptive, like so quick to walk away. from a dead end, but the destination, you know, the overarching principle of what you're about, like, I'm here to communicate, like, I'm here to bring out the best and other people. Like, it's to be the best chess player. You have to have steadfast dedication to your highest level goal

Starting point is 00:44:22 and, you know, infinite ability to walk away from a tactic that's not serving you. I think it's time for you to walk away. Yeah, we're going to do our rabbi-hire, but this is why I said hopeful, because I think what you're describing reminds me so much of C.R. Schneider's research on pathway as an element of hope that we think a pathway is all internal. High levels of hopefulness require just grit and pathway, but that pathway is equally situational, which I think is so interesting. I couldn't agree. You mean Snyder of and Lopez, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:45:05 Yeah, the, like, really seminal work on happiness. And, you know, I will tell you that in my 40s, when all I knew how to do was try harder, my early 40s in particular, I was not happy and I got less happy with every extra hour of work. And to really fully embrace the idea of the situation matters and I can change it is something I can't claim to now if I mid to late 50s. I'm working on it. But the more I do, I think the more human I become, you know, like when you see somebody and instead of blaming them for being like not gritty enough, right, not dedicate enough, and you really take a step back and you try to consider that person and their situation, do it for

Starting point is 00:45:48 yourself, do it for others, you know, maybe you'll be more successful. You'll definitely be more of a human being. Grace. I love grace. Okay. Exactly. Two questions in the lightning round. you get to leave any one item in our curiosity shop, no matter how weird it is, how wacky it is, what's one item you leave on our shelf in the curiosity shop? Well, if I could leave a painting from my mom, I would leave the painting that hangs above my bed that I saw every day growing up.

Starting point is 00:46:17 And she painted when she was 24. And it's a painting of a mountain and the ocean and some sailboats. And one of the little sailboats represents my mom. And when I used to look at that painting, I thought she was just like a little brave sailboat on her own. But then recently I've been noticing that there's a flotilla of sailboats and the sails are full. So she must have had a tailwind.

Starting point is 00:46:40 So I think now I look at it and I see my mom. And with increasing sensitivity, I'm appreciating her situation. God, that's beautiful. We may have to just leave it there. It's a very nice thing in the curiosity shop, I'll just say. It might be the prettiest thing in your curiosity shop. I don't know what else. I bet it will be.

Starting point is 00:46:57 No question. Thank you for being with us. Thank you, Renee. Let me just hold up this, I was going to say bad boy, but this bad girl right here. Girl boss book. Girl boss book, but also girl love book. Like, yeah, it's just thanks for continuing to make things better for all of us. Thank you, Renee.

Starting point is 00:47:19 Thank you, Adam. Angela, I'm so glad you didn't quit writing this book, which I know you considered many times. But I think this was the path to helping us all see how we can improve our situations. Well, thank you. I hope others enjoy it. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get. Like an AI solution that works for you, not against you. SAP Grow is built with AI embedded at its core, working across every system. And it's ready to go from day one so you can hit the ground running. Bring it with SAP Grow. AI Cloud ERP for any size business. I love that.

Starting point is 00:48:01 conversation. What about you? Me too. I love being a fly on the wall watching you interview and watching you create a situation that brings out the best in other people. Oh, that's so thoughtful. No, it's just so fun to watch the, you light up when, you know, when somebody has a mic drop or when there's something, you know, thought provoking. But you're also, I think one of the things I learned through, you know, being a little bit, I got to spend a little more time observing in this one than we usually do. And I really love the way you acknowledged what was hard for you about the book. And I think that's something I normally shy away from. And you went right at it. Yeah, it was hard for me because it's when you step back and think for me to achieve what I want to

Starting point is 00:48:53 achieve, it requires a letting go that's really scary for me. and not just, you know, being in a room that has my kids' art in it, but asking for help. And I have a great coach and I have a great mentor. I have to say that I thought about you many times when I was reading this book in a weird way. So she talked about the four elements of situational agency, kind of setting up your space, attracting mentors, choosing your culture, but one of them is picking your peers. And one of the things that are unexpected and new friendship has done for me is, and Steve has pointed this out, and so has Barrett. I can talk to you in a shorthand that I can, that I can not use with very many people at all in the world.

Starting point is 00:49:45 Same. You know, I can say to you on a quick text, like, great event, big migraine, and you can say what happened, and I can just say zero houselights all stage, and you're like, why do they do that? We can't, you know, like, you know what that means. You know that they, like cooked me on a chicken rotisserie with a light that gave me a migraine. And the worst thing is when you're speaking, like you and I speak, maybe if you just get up and do schicks, it's different. But you and I try to engage and change what we're saying depending on how it lands. So I need the house lights at least 50 percent so I can see people's faces. I don't need to be lit up like the Empire

Starting point is 00:50:26 State Building. No. But you know what that means. Oh. And I mean, there's so much shorthand there. I'm also, if you're asking people to engage in a vulnerable conversation, I want sometimes the house lights to go down so that they feel like they can raise their hand and be a little bit anonymous. And how do we then choreograph that dynamic so that the lights are up at the right time and down at the right time? And yeah, there are very few people that would know what I'm talking about if I just brought that up out of nowhere. Yeah, and it's like that's a technical thing, but there's also, there's just also real conversations. Like having you in like my situation world now has really changed the way I think about my work. Because there's very few people that while we're opposites in a lot of ways, we do a lot of the same work.

Starting point is 00:51:17 Yeah. Like we both taught MBA intensives at the same time this year. And I literally texted you and said, I'm freaking losing it about this. I have never been up against this. and you're like, oh my God, two years in a row I was up against this. Here's how I thought about it. Oh, helpful. Okay.

Starting point is 00:51:35 And it wasn't like, just grit it down, Brunei. You can beat this thing. It was like, I don't know what to do. Let me call someone. Let me phone a friend, which made me better. Well, I've experienced that more times than I can count. And it's just I think that one of the things I really hadn't thought enough about until we talked to Angela and, you know, really put her book in this context is,

Starting point is 00:51:58 I think the farther we move through career and life, the more idiosyncratic our circumstances are. You go through school and you have a lot of peers who have gone through the same thing. But now, it's a smaller and smaller cohort that accompanies us each step. That's true. And finding then the person who, even just to bounce something off of, who's a mirror, and you can say, oh, wow, you do that? I never would have thought to do that. You can have a team of people who work with you? What?

Starting point is 00:52:31 Yeah, I think it's interesting. I think I'm not as open to it. I'm more open to it now than I've ever been in my life, which means it's taken like five freaking decades. But that's also, I'm wondering if you come from kind of the volatility that I come from in my family of origin, if you overdevelop grit as a survival mechanism because as a kid, the situation part, does feel outside of your control. Yeah. Do you know what I mean?

Starting point is 00:53:09 And then you have to recalibrate. Yeah, I can see that. I think I've also seen, and I think live to some extent, the, like another flavor of that, which is, you come from an unstable situation, and so you try to create just complete stability. And that becomes where you exercise control. And I mean, this is maybe in a mundane way, but I was, as we were talking about arranging your space, and you were describing needing to have Ellen and Charlie's art around you, I was thinking, okay, the mistake I would make is thinking,

Starting point is 00:53:50 I need to design every situation to be alike because I want it to be consistent and predictable and repeatable. And I started thinking about, there's this body of research that Eric Abrahamson started on how if your desk is a little messy, you tend to have more creative ideas. And I think it's the same thing as the art. It's the permission to be imperfect, to make mistakes to try new things. But that's not me. I want to have a neat desk. I want to be ordered and structured. and organized and realizing that I need to put myself in different situations for different goals, that was an aha in this conversation as we were talking. I have thought the same thing because there are times where if I'm getting ready to meet

Starting point is 00:54:36 with our accounting person, I am croxing down the entire house before that happens. If it's going to involve a spreadsheet, I got to lock in and shit's got to be picked up. I've got it. My house has to look like a spreadsheet. If I'm in a creative, vulnerable chapter, I want my kid's art. If I'm writing something else, Annie Lamont has this quote that I love. She said, before, when I first started writing, the house would have to be spotless. And now if I'm inspired, there could be a corpse in the kitchen sink and it wouldn't matter. I'm writing. You know, and so I do think it's situation is situational. Like I know that's like very meta, but I do think one One thing that I wanted to say, too, when I was prepping for the conversation with Angela,

Starting point is 00:55:25 I just have to say that, like, for some folks who are looking at the new book and saying it's an about face from grit, what a terrible indictment of our inability to yes and. Like Jim Collins' tyranny of ore, like this idea like, wow, now she's changed her mind. And I was like, did you read the book? Like, it's grit and situation. Yeah. And it's building a situation that means you don't have to rely on grit every minute of every day. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:56:02 I mean, yes. And what is your take on grit versus willpower? Well, I think I've learned most of what I know about this from Angela. I think of willpower as a capacity and grit more. as a motivation. So I guess willpower is the can-do part and grit is the will-do or want-to-do part. Interesting. That's helpful.

Starting point is 00:56:34 I am so excited about the sea change that has happened in the research community around willpower. Me too. Yeah, it's just, it's so, as a resource, so finite and so small. And I don't know. I love the book.

Starting point is 00:56:51 and I love the conversation. Me too. And, you know, one other quick thing that I was thinking about is... Yeah. I was just thinking about this issue of, like, it's sometimes hard to recognize the power of the situation. But I think anybody who's trained as an athlete has lived it. I was just thinking when Angela was talking about how, like,

Starting point is 00:57:14 when I think about trying to hit a personal best on the treadmill running, like, I know how many miles I want to go. I know what my target time is. And I think I've controlled every aspect of the situation. Like the gym temperature, the same, it's constant. I'm listening to the exact same playlist. And one day I can do it and another day I can't, no matter how hard I try. And I look at that and I think, oh, yeah, I didn't have full control over how well I slept the night before.

Starting point is 00:57:45 And my circadian rhythm is a little different today than it was yesterday. and my recovery might be different based on the travel that I did in the last few days. And there are all these situational factors that I didn't even think are relevant that influence how far does my grit take me on a given day? And I think that actually for anybody who's still questioning, how important is it to shape your situation, try controlling every aspect of your situation next time you have a simple goal to achieve and watch how much your performance fluctuates from day. day. And that to me is just personal proof that we need to pay attention to the situational variables

Starting point is 00:58:25 that are invisible to us. And I was just thinking about you playing pickleball and how much of that experience you've lived as well. Oh my God. It's so weird that you brought this up. I played yesterday and my coach is at this place where I play. And so I saw him walking toward me and I was like, oh, Lord, why is he coming this way? And I was playing open place. And I was playing open place. my paddle was stacked ready to play with, you know, the next time of court came open. And I said, how are you? And I kind of tried to walk by him. He goes, do you have a second? And I was like, oh, what's happening? And so he said, I watched your last game. And he said, I just wanted to check to see if you're doing all right. I was like, beg your freaking pardon.

Starting point is 00:59:12 And he said, I can just tell that something's going on. And literally what happened is I forgot to put my watch on mute. So I got six or seven work texts when I was on the court. And I was so distracted. And there I am. It's not like from one game to the next. My skills changed, to my experience change. I have the same number of games behind me. I have the same number of lessons behind me, the same number of drills behind me. But my situation shifted. And in pickleball, unlike tennis, if you take your eye off the ball for a split second, you're going to get hit in the face with it, you know? And I said, yeah, I just, I lost focus. And he said, yeah, I just wanted to check in. And I was like, but it's good luck controlling every situational variable. Yeah, it's not going to

Starting point is 01:00:04 happen. And I think sometimes we just need to be patient around letting the situation evolve. Just one other sports example I was thinking about is my diving coach, Eric Best. Sometimes I'd come into practice. And I would do a dive that was going well and it just would be off. And I would want to do five or six more reps to try to fix it. And Eric would say, Adam, move on. This is just not working today. Before we overanalyze it, let's see if it's better tomorrow. And then we'll know, is there a change you need to make or do we just need to wait for the situation to fix itself? And sometimes he would even say, look, you need to take, we're going to not do this dive for a week or a month.

Starting point is 01:00:45 I'm like, no, no, I don't want to lose it. And he would say, look, you want to break a bad habit? Stop repeating the bad habit. And just let the situation evolve. And then sometimes you find that you've evolved with it. Eric is my coach, too. Your driving coach is my coach too because I took a lesson on something I'm trying that's new.

Starting point is 01:01:07 And I gave up halfway through a game trying to do it. And again, my coach walked over and said, you got to be willing to be bad to get better. And I said, what? And he said, you got to use this new two-handed thing that you're doing. I'm like, I'm missing. And he's like, I know, I know. I'm watching them all go into the net.

Starting point is 01:01:26 You're going to have to do that 140 times in a game, not in practice, but in a game, to get that right. So 20 down, 120 to go. It's your choice. You want to get better? You've got to be willing to get bad. Bingo. Shit. Because then that changes the situational context from my freaking work all day.

Starting point is 01:01:43 So, yeah, what a fun conversation. I really appreciate it. Same. Same. As always. Thank you. Yeah. See you next time.

Starting point is 01:01:54 The Curiosity Shop is produced by Brunei Brown, Education and Research Group, and granted productions. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcast.com.

The Curiosity Shop with Brené Brown and Adam Grant - Why Grit Isn’t Always Enough with Angela Duckworth

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.