Grit(97)

pored through published books: Barrie Trinkle, Carolyn Andrews, and Paige Kimble, How to Spell Like a Champ: Roots, Lists, Rules, Games, Tricks, and Bee-Winning Tips from the Pros (New York: Workman Publishing Company, 2006) “studying as hard as I can”: James Maguire, American Bee: The National Spelling Bee and the Culture of Word Nerds (Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2006), 360.

deliberate practice predicted: Angela Duckworth et al., “Deliberate Practice Spells Success: Why Grittier Competitors Triumph at the National Spelling Bee,” Social Psychological and Personality Science 2 (2011): 174–81. Getting quizzed also predicted doing well in competition, but when comparing kids who got quizzed the same amount of time to each other, I found that those who did more deliberate practice did better. In contrast, when comparing kids who did the same amount of deliberate practice to each other, I found that more quizzing produced no advantage.

benefits to being quizzed: Henry L. Roediger and Jeffrey D. Karpicke, “The Power of Testing Memory: Basic Research and Implications for Educational Practice,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 1 (2006): 181–210.

ten hours per week: Duckworth et al., “Spells Success,” 177.

come to a different conclusion: On the effortfulness of learning, see also Elizabeth L. Bjork and Robert Bjork, “Making Things Hard on Yourself, but in a Good Way: Creating Desirable Difficulties to Enhance Learning,” in Psychology and the Real World: Essays Illustrating Fundamental Contributions to Society, ed. Morton A. Gernsbacher et al. (New York: Worth Publishers, 2011), 56–64. See also Sidney K. D’Mello and Arthur C. Graesser, “Confusion” in International Handbook of Emotions in Education, ed. Reinhard Pekrun and Lisa Linnenbrink-Garcia (New York: Routledge, 2014), 289–310.

experienced as supremely effortful: Ericsson et al., “The Role of Deliberate Practice.”

“daily small deaths”: Graham, “I Am a Dancer.”

“you’re concentrating and you’re exhausted”: Judd Apatow, interviewed by Charlie Rose, Charlie Rose, July 31, 2009, republished in Apatow, Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy (New York: Random House, 2015), 26.

to keep doing it: K. Anders Ericsson, “How Experts Attain and Maintain Superior Performance: Implications for the Enhancement of Skilled Performance in Older Individuals,” Journal of Aging and Physical Activity 8 (2000): 366–72.

“a feeling of spontaneity”: Karen Stansberry Beard, “Theoretically Speaking: An Interview with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Flow Theory Development and Its Usefulness in Addressing Contemporary Challenges in Education,” Educational Psychology Review 27 (2015): 358. Csikszentmihalyi has emphasized that what matters to the quality of our momentary experience is the subjective level of challenge and the subjective level of skill.

“just flows out by itself”: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Play and Intrinsic Rewards,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 15 (1975): 50.

“automatically without thinking”: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Flow: The Joy of Reading,” in Applications of Flow in Human Development: The Collected Works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2014), 233.

“incompatible with deliberate practice”: K. Anders Ericsson and Paul Ward, “Capturing the Naturally Occurring Superior Performance of Experts in the Laboratory,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 16 (2007): 349.

“by no means self-evident”: Csikszentmihalyi, Applications of Flow, xx.

“but its fruits are sweet”: Ibid.

“achieve what you desire”: Ibid.

“passion and world-class performance”: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and K. Anders Ericsson, “Passion and World-Class Performance” (presentation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, August 2006).

flow and grit: In this study, flow was measured using a previously validated six-item questionnaire whose possible scores ranged from a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 5. Example item: “Whether at work or play, I am usually ‘in a zone’ and not conscious of myself.” See Katherine R. Von Culin, Eli Tsukayama, and Angela L. Duckworth, “Unpacking Grit: Motivational Correlates of Perseverance and Passion for Long-term Goals,” Journal of Positive Psychology 9 (2014): 1–7.



“I swam around the world”: Gaines, interview.

“It’s about hard work”: Mads Rasmussen, Danish rower and Olympic gold medalist, in an interview with the author, June 28, 2015.

“testament to the work”: Rod Gilmour, “Ledecky Betters Own 1500m Freestyle World Record,” Reuters, August 3, 2015, http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/08/03/swimming-world-1500m-idINKCN0Q813Y20150803.

“shows off in the meet”: Ashley Branca, “Katie Ledecky: ‘I’ve Just Always Felt Comfortable in the Water from Day One,’?” Guardian, March 10, 2015.

said they enjoyed it more: Duckworth et al., “Spells Success.”

“she has that attitude”: Bruce Gemmell, USA National Team swimming coach, in an interview with the author, August 24, 2015.

“and getting it done”: Kerry Close, 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion, in an interview with the author, August 10, 2015.

basic requirements of deliberate practice: K. Anders Ericsson, “The Influence of Experience and Deliberate Practice on the Development of Superior Expert Performance,” in Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance ed. K. Anders Ericsson et al. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), 685–706. For a fascinating study of the importance of practicing “strategically,” see Robert Duke, Amy Simmons, and Carla Davis Cash, “It’s Not How Much; It’s How: Characteristics of Practice Behavior and Retention of Performance Skills,” Journal of Research in Music Education 56 (2009): 310 21.