Grit Comprehension Questions

Chapter 1 -- Showing Up

1. In which school grade do West Point students start the selection process? What are three things students must have to get into West Point?

2. What percent of West Point students drop out of the program? When do many of them drop out?

3. What is Beast Barracks (aka Beast)?

4. What about Beast was the author (Angela Duckworth) interested in? What did she want to know about it?

5. What is the Whole Candidate Score? Does the score predict how well a person will do in Beast?

6. According to Mike Matthews what quality was common among those who did not drop out of the Air Force’s basic training?

7. What exactly is grit and why is grit so important?

8. What is the Grit Scale and how is it related with the West Point cadets who have to endure Beast?

9. What other areas did Duckworth look to see if grit was important for success?

10. What does Duckworth mean when she says “Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another” at the end of Chapter 1? Chapter 2 – Distracted by Talent

1. Why did Duckworth leave her job at McKinsey to become a teacher?

2. How wealthy were the students in her school?

3. What did she discover about talent among her students?

4. What does Duckworth mean by “the naturals” in the third paragraph of page 17?

5. How were Duckworth’s New York students different from her Lowell students? Which group seemed to work harder?

6. How did David do at first in the accelerated math course? How did he do on the Advanced Placement test?

7. What did Charles Darwin think was more important for success: talent or hard work and enthusiasm?

8. What do Americans say and what do they actually believe about effort and talent?

9. What is the basic argument in the book The War for Talent? Does the experience of companies like Enron support the report’s thesis?

10. According to Duckworth, what is the danger in focusing on talent? Chapter 3 – Effort Counts Twice

1. What does the phrase “the mundanity of excellence” mean?

2. Why do we want to think experts like Olympic swimmers are talented rather than think they became experts through a combination of talent and hard work? In other words, we do we “prefer mystery to mundanity”?

3. Who inspired Duckworth to develop a theory of achievement? In Duckworth’s theory of achievement what matters most?

4. How does John Irving illustrate Duckworth’s theory of achievement?

5. What was the Treadmill Test? What did the results of the test show?

6. Does George Valliant think he is gritty? Do his actions show that he can be gritty in some areas of his life?

7. What is the suggestion Duckworth has for improving the Treadmill Test?

Chapter 4 – How Gritty Are You?

1. What does Duckworth mean when she wrote “but no just falling in love – staying in love” on page 54?

2. Calculate your grit score using the Grit Scale on page 55. Don’t worry; I won’t ask you to share your score.

3. What does Duckworth mean by passion? 4. What do the experiences of Jeff Gettleman and Pete Carroll show about passion?

5. What is a hierarchy of goals? What is an “ultimate concern”?

6. What is “positive fantasizing”?

7. What is Warren Buffett’s three-step process for prioritizing goals? What would Duckworth add to it?

8. What should a person do if his/her fails to reach a low-level goal several times?

9. According to Catharine Cox’s research what distinguished highly eminent geniuses from geniuses who did not have as great an impact on the world?

Chapter 5 – Grit Grows

1. What does the change in average heights show about the nature-nurture question?

2. What does the study of twins in the United Kingdom show about passion and perservance?

3. What does it mean to say that a trait is polygenic?

4. What is the Flynn effect and what does it show about the importance of the environment on human traits? 5. What is the social multiplier effect?

6. Who has more grit: young adults or older adults? What the possible reasons for this?

7. What is the maturity principle?

8. What are the four things very gritty people have in common?

9. Can a person change her or his level of grit?

Chapter 6 – Interest

1. What do many highly successful people say about the type of work one should do? How is this different from what Duckworth’s father told her?

2. What does the research say about doing work that interests a person?

3. What did Duckworth find about grit paragons such as Rowdy Gaines and Marc Vetri and their passions? Did they know what their passions were early in their lives?

4. How is finding a mate similar to finding a career?

5. When do people generally start to be interested in certain jobs? What are the stages of developing an interest in a career?

6. Describe Benjamin Bloom’s “early years” stage. 7. How did Will Shortz’s and Jeff Bezos’ mothers foster their interests?

8. How often do very gritty people change careers?

9. What is the etymology (origins) of the word interest? What is a neophile?

10. How is novelty different for beginners and for experts?

11. What are some things you can do to build a passion for something?

Chapter 7 – Practice

1. What are the “ten-thousand-hour rule” and the “ten-year-rule”?

2. What is deliberate practice? What are its components?

3. What is unconscious competence? This term is on the top of page 123.

4. How well did spellers who deliberately practice do on the National Spelling Bee? Did they enjoy their deliberate practice as much as other ways to prepare for the contest?

5. How many hours a day do experts usually do deliberate practice?

6. What is flow? 7. What is the relationship between deliberate practice and flow?

8. What are the components of deliberate practice?

9. What are the suggestions Duckworth makes for us to benefit from deliberate practice and experience flow?

Chapter 8 – Purpose

1. What are the two parts of passion?

2. What is the three-phase progression that Benjamin Bloom discovered?

3. What does purpose mean to grit paragons according to Duckworth?

4. What are eudaimonic and hedonic happiness? Why do humans have these two ways?

5. What is more important to most grit paragons: eudaimonic or hedonic happiness?

6. Who is more satisfied? A person who feels her/his job is a job, career, or calling?

7. How can a person foster the believe that her/his job is a calling?

8. Did Joe Leader think his job was his vocation when he first started the job? 9. In a few sentences briefly summarize the process that Duckworth went through to discover her calling.

10. What did Adam Grant discover about personal and prosocial interests?

11. What are some lessons that can be learned from Aurora and Franco Fonte’s story?

12. How was Kat Cole’s mother important in shaping her grit?

13. What are Duckworth’s suggestions for developing one’s sense of purpose?

Chapter 9 -- Hope

1. What does the word hope mean when discussing grit?

2. Why did Duckworth stay in her neurobiology course in college?

3. What insight on hope did the Seligman and Maier study give us?

4. What is the essential difference between optimists and pessimists? Are grit paragons optimists or pessimists?

5. What does it mean to say that objective events can produce very different subjective interpretations? 6. What did Marty Seligman, Wendy Kopp, and Duckworth discover about effective teachers in the Teach for America program?

7. What is a growth mindset? Does praising a child for her effort help that child to develop a growth mindset or a fixed mindset?

8. Which type of company is probably a better place to work: a fixed or growth mindset company?

9. How did Bill McNabb develop a growth mindset?

10. Why is it important for young people to face challenges?

11. What are Duckworth’s suggestions for teaching yourself to have hope?

Chapter 10 – Parenting for Grit

1. What is the etymology of the word parenting?

2. According to John Watson, how should parents treat their children in order to make them gritty?

3. How much research has been done on parenting and grit?

4. Briefly describe how Steve Young’s parents raised him. 5. According to Duckworth, how can parents raise their children to be gritty? What exactly is wise (i.e., authoritative) parenting?

6. What does it mean when Duckworth says, “what matter more than the messages parents aim to deliver are the messages their children receive” on page 213?

7. What is the difference between imitation and emulation?

8. What does Tobi Lutke’s story illustrate?

9. What did the students who got wise feedback on their essays do?

10. What difficulties has Cody Coleman overcome? Who helped him overcome them?

Chapter 11 – The Playing Fields of Grit

1. What happened with Lucy and the box of raisins?

2. How strong is the research evidence that extracurricular activities directly foster grit?

3. How long should a child in high school do an extracurricular activity?

4. What are the advantages an extracurricular activity has over school and socializing with friends? 5. What did Margo Gardner discover about extracurricular activity and high school students?

6. What is follow-through and what is its significance?

7. What does “controlling for high school grades and SAT scores” mean on pages 228 and 229?

8. What is the Grit Grid? Why is it more reliable than the Grit Scale? What did the Grit Grid show about college students and new teachers?

9. What is the corresponsive principle? How can it be used to grow grit in children?

10. What is the problem with poverty and extracurricular activities?

11. What did Bob Eisenberger learn about hard work and laziness through his experiments?

12. What is the Hard Thing Rule?

Chapter 12 – A Culture of Grit

1. How does Duckworth define a culture? What is an in-group?

2. What is the reciprocal effect of being of a team’s culture? 3. According to Dan Chambliss what is the easy way to develop grit in a person?

4. What does culture do to our sense of identity? How did Tom Deierlein’s identity affect his behavior?

5. What is sisu?

6. Who is Jamie Dimon and what are some examples of Dimon overcoming challenges in his life?

7. What is the developmental model of leadership?

8. What are three cultures that, according to Duckworth, develop grit?

9. What is “the worst call in NFL history”? What does Pete Carroll do when he remembers it?

Chapter 13 – Conclusion

1. What are the two ways grit can be grown?

2. What is the relationship with personal happiness and grit? Are the family members of gritty people happy? 3. What is an inverted-U function and is there evidence for it when it comes to grit?

4. What is the most important character trait that people want others to possess?

5. What are the three clusters of virtues that Duckworth discusses? Where does grit fall among them?

6. How does Duckworth want us to define genius?