Grit: My Mid-Year's Resolution
For whatever reason, I didn't come up with any New Year's resolutions for 2016 until now. I've been doing some soul searching these past few months or perhaps years, and a couple of things I've read recently struck a chord in me.
The first was an article about Angela Lee Duckworth and her research on what she calls "grit", which she defines as passion (consistency of interests) and perseverance (consistency of effort over a long time) toward a superordinate goal. My takeaways are that grit is a key predictor for success, especially in contexts where progress is difficult and dropout is common, in achieving a superordinate goal, which is a challenging goal that reflects deeply held values and ideals, and that gritty individuals are motivated more by meaning and engagement than by pleasure.
The second is a book I am nearly through reading called Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat, Pray, Love fame). In it, Gilbert encourages readers to embrace creativity despite fears of imperfection, unoriginality, and being ignored. She too writes of pursuing creative endeavors with persistence even in the face of obstacles, lack of motivation, and seemingly little progress (what Duckworth might call grit). Gilbert also mentions that creating things doesn't need to help people and that part of the wonderful thing about creativity is that it is paradoxically unimportant and important. Creativity is not critical to the functioning of the world, and people will not die due to a lack of creativity. She also advises against overburdening creativity to be the sole breadwinner, which I take as advice to not up and quit my day job in pursuit of creativity.
While it is enlightening to begin recasting myself as a creative being who is worthy of being heard for who I am, I also worry that my problem may be a lack of passion in the way that Duckworth describes passion -- a consistency of interests. Perhaps my passion is so broad that it dilutes consistency of effort across a variety of pursuits. Such is the predicament of a generalist. Duckworth and her co-authors acknowledge in "Grit: Sustained Self-Regulation in the Service of Superordinate Goals" that little is known about how individuals develop superordinate goals that "inspire allegiance across a lifetime." (Eskreis-Winkler, et al., "Grit: Sustained Self-Regulation in the Service of Superordinate Goals", accessed online on May 11, 2016, at https://upenn.app.box.com/s/cbi1bgfrt93soakilk9cc2wcg9ml4kw9). I scored relatively low on the Grit Scale, which makes sense given my affinity for pursuing interests quickly and dropping them to pursue new interests just as quickly. In the end, I never seem to accomplish much of anything substantial. I'm just not sure what it is that will sustain my interest over a long period of time or, worse yet, whether anything will.
I suppose if I lumped all my creative pursuits into a broad category of "Making Things", that could be a superordinate goal. My goal has been the making of things, without strict loyalty to the means used to make them. A superordinate goal is supposed to reflect deeply held values or ideals. I used to think that public service was a superordinate goal of mine, but service isn't really a goal. It's something to do, with no particular desired result. Being in a managerial public service position is the kind of job that allows you to see the dark side of public service; quite frankly, it has been somewhat of a repellant from public service for me, at least for the time being. Throughout my life, the few constants as far as interests go have been sports, a love for learning, and a desire to create. I'm not sure whether my goals need to be more specific, but at least for the remainder of this year, I'd like to show some grit in pursuing these goals. Gilbert writes that curiosity can be a "milder, quieter, more welcoming, and more democratic entity" than passion, which "can seem intimidatingly out of reach . . . ", and I agree. I certainly have tons of curiosity. She gives credence to the life path I seem to be on, saying that I might spend my whole life following my curiosity and have absolutely nothing to show for it at the end, except the satisfaction of knowing I spent my life devoted to inquisitiveness. I'm starting with writing and drawing more frequently, taking pictures more often, and continuing my running, sewing, and coding endeavors. And doing it all with some levity. As Gilbert suggests, maybe a passion or greater specificity will come as I persist in my pursuits.
I don't know what I'll have to show for my efforts at the end of my life, if anything, but I sense a growing excitement now that I've identified my curiosity and urge to create as strong ideals. If that's all I have to work off of for now, at least it's a start.
The first was an article about Angela Lee Duckworth and her research on what she calls "grit", which she defines as passion (consistency of interests) and perseverance (consistency of effort over a long time) toward a superordinate goal. My takeaways are that grit is a key predictor for success, especially in contexts where progress is difficult and dropout is common, in achieving a superordinate goal, which is a challenging goal that reflects deeply held values and ideals, and that gritty individuals are motivated more by meaning and engagement than by pleasure.
The second is a book I am nearly through reading called Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat, Pray, Love fame). In it, Gilbert encourages readers to embrace creativity despite fears of imperfection, unoriginality, and being ignored. She too writes of pursuing creative endeavors with persistence even in the face of obstacles, lack of motivation, and seemingly little progress (what Duckworth might call grit). Gilbert also mentions that creating things doesn't need to help people and that part of the wonderful thing about creativity is that it is paradoxically unimportant and important. Creativity is not critical to the functioning of the world, and people will not die due to a lack of creativity. She also advises against overburdening creativity to be the sole breadwinner, which I take as advice to not up and quit my day job in pursuit of creativity.
While it is enlightening to begin recasting myself as a creative being who is worthy of being heard for who I am, I also worry that my problem may be a lack of passion in the way that Duckworth describes passion -- a consistency of interests. Perhaps my passion is so broad that it dilutes consistency of effort across a variety of pursuits. Such is the predicament of a generalist. Duckworth and her co-authors acknowledge in "Grit: Sustained Self-Regulation in the Service of Superordinate Goals" that little is known about how individuals develop superordinate goals that "inspire allegiance across a lifetime." (Eskreis-Winkler, et al., "Grit: Sustained Self-Regulation in the Service of Superordinate Goals", accessed online on May 11, 2016, at https://upenn.app.box.com/s/cbi1bgfrt93soakilk9cc2wcg9ml4kw9). I scored relatively low on the Grit Scale, which makes sense given my affinity for pursuing interests quickly and dropping them to pursue new interests just as quickly. In the end, I never seem to accomplish much of anything substantial. I'm just not sure what it is that will sustain my interest over a long period of time or, worse yet, whether anything will.
I suppose if I lumped all my creative pursuits into a broad category of "Making Things", that could be a superordinate goal. My goal has been the making of things, without strict loyalty to the means used to make them. A superordinate goal is supposed to reflect deeply held values or ideals. I used to think that public service was a superordinate goal of mine, but service isn't really a goal. It's something to do, with no particular desired result. Being in a managerial public service position is the kind of job that allows you to see the dark side of public service; quite frankly, it has been somewhat of a repellant from public service for me, at least for the time being. Throughout my life, the few constants as far as interests go have been sports, a love for learning, and a desire to create. I'm not sure whether my goals need to be more specific, but at least for the remainder of this year, I'd like to show some grit in pursuing these goals. Gilbert writes that curiosity can be a "milder, quieter, more welcoming, and more democratic entity" than passion, which "can seem intimidatingly out of reach . . . ", and I agree. I certainly have tons of curiosity. She gives credence to the life path I seem to be on, saying that I might spend my whole life following my curiosity and have absolutely nothing to show for it at the end, except the satisfaction of knowing I spent my life devoted to inquisitiveness. I'm starting with writing and drawing more frequently, taking pictures more often, and continuing my running, sewing, and coding endeavors. And doing it all with some levity. As Gilbert suggests, maybe a passion or greater specificity will come as I persist in my pursuits.
I don't know what I'll have to show for my efforts at the end of my life, if anything, but I sense a growing excitement now that I've identified my curiosity and urge to create as strong ideals. If that's all I have to work off of for now, at least it's a start.
