Grit(98)
it’s not hours of brute-force: Rasmussen, interview.
until he was twenty-two: Noa Kageyama, performance psychologist at The Julliard School, in an interview with the author, September 21, 2015.
challenging, effortful practice: Lauren Eskreis-Winkler et al., “Using Wise Interventions to Motivate Deliberate Practice,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (in press).
You just do: Judith A. Ouellette and Wendy Wood, “Habit and Intention in Everyday Life: The Multiple Processes by Which Past Behavior Predicts Future Behavior,” Psychological Bulletin 124 (1998): 54–74. See also, Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (New York: Random House, 2012).
rose at dawn: Mason Currey, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 217–18.
a “tiny mean” hotel room: Ibid., 122.
“beginning of every bit of work”: William James, “The Laws of Habits,” The Popular Science Monthly 30 (1887): 447.
“with your nose”: Robert Compton, “Joyce Carol Oates Keeps Punching,” Dallas Morning News, November 17, 1987.
“feel great while you’re doing it”: Terry Laughlin, head coach and chief executive optimist (not kidding, that’s his real title) of Total Immersion Swimming, in an interview with the author, July 24, 2015.
toddlers don’t mind at all: Elena Bodrova and Deborah Leong, creators of the Tools of the Mind curriculum for early childhood education, in an interview with the author, July 15, 2015. See also Adele Diamond and Kathleen Lee, “Interventions Shown to Aid Executive Function Development in Children 4 to 12 Years Old,” Science 333 (2011): 959–64. Clancy Blair and C. Cybele Raver, “Closing the Achievement Gap Through Modification of Neurocognitive and Neuroendocrine Function,” PLoS ONE 9 (2014): 1–13.
“give their best effort”: Gemmell, interview.
CHAPTER 8: PURPOSE
“have a lemonade stand”: Alex’s Lemonade Stand, http://www.alexslemonade.org.
this three-phase progression: Bloom, Developing Talent.
“the larger purpose and meaning”: Bloom, Developing Talent, 527.
“new perspective on life”: Golden, interview.
Election Day never comes: Melissa Dribben, “Gracing the City Jane Golden Has Made Mural Arts the Nation’s Top Public Arts Program,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 27, 2008, http://articles.philly.com/2008-07-27/news/25245217_1_jane-seymour-golden-globes-philadelphia-s-mural-arts-program.
“so I find ways to get energized”: Ibid.
“it’s a moral imperative”: Golden, interview.
“beautiful bottle of wine”: Antonio Galloni, wine critic and founder of Vinous, in an interview with the author, July 24, 2015
“a million lightbulbs”: “Liv-Ex Interview with Antonio Galloni, Part One,” Liv-Ex Blog, December 13, 2013, www.blog.liv-ex.com/2013/12/liv-ex-interview-with-antonio-galloni-part-one.html.
“sense of purpose”: Galloni, interview.
purpose, pleasure, and age: These data are originally reported in Von Culin, Tsukayama, and Duckworth, “Unpacking Grit.”
well-being of others: Different scholars use the word purpose in slightly different ways. Often it is emphasized that a goal, to be purposeful, has to be meaningful to the self and, at the same time, beneficial to others. Here I emphasize the beyond-the-self aspect of purpose because we already covered the more self-oriented motivation of interest in the last chapter.
the eudaimonic life: Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009), 5.
“pleasure principle”: Sigmund Freud, “Formulations Regarding the Two Principles in Mental Functioning,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 12, trans. James Strachey and Anna Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1958), 218–26.
evolved to seek meaning: See John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008). See also Roy F. Baumeister and Mark R. Leary, “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation,” Psychological Bulletin 117 (1995): 497–529. Finally, see Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste, Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation (New York: Penguin, 1995). Note that recent primate studies show that longevity and reproductive success depend on the ability to form strong, enduring social bonds with others. The desire to connect is as basic a human—even mammalian—need as the need for pleasure. See Robert M. Seyfarth and Dorothy L. Cheney, “The Evolutionary Origins of Friendship,” Annual Review of Psychology 63 (2012): 153–77.
than we care about pleasure: Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potential: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being,” Annual Review of Psychology 52 (2001): 141–66.
which of the three bricklayers: Amy Wrzesniewski, Clark McCauley, Paul Rozin, and Barry Schwartz, “Jobs, Careers, and Callings: People’s Relations to Their Work,” Journal of Research in Personality 31 (1997): 25.
their occupations a calling: We collected this data in 2015.
than those with a job: Wrzesniewski et al., “Jobs, Careers, and Callings,” 25.
survey of 982 zookeepers: J. Stuart Bunderson and Jeffery A. Thompson, “The Call of the Wild: Zookeepers, Callings, and the Double-Edged Sword of Deeply Meaningful Work,” Administrative Science Quarterly 54 (2009): 32–57.