Grit(99)

“Monday through Friday sort of dying”: Studs Terkel, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), xi. Note that the names of the workers in Terkel’s book were pseudonyms.

“I don’t think I have a calling”: Ibid., 521–24.

“find a savor in their daily job”: Ibid., xi.

“It’s meaningful to society”: Ibid., 103–6.

when she studied secretaries: Wrzesniewski et al., “Jobs, Careers, and Callings.”

“waiting to be discovered”: Amy Wrzesniewski, professor of organizational behavior at Yale School of Management, in an interview with the author, January 27, 2015.

all the way to Chicago: Metropolitan Transit Authority, “Facts and Figures,” accessed March 10, 2015, http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ffsubway.htm.

“and I got hired”: Joe Leader, senior vice president at New York City Transit, in an interview with the author, February 26, 2015.

“experience I’ve ever had”: Michael Baime, clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Penn Program for Mindfulness, in an interview with the author, January 21, 2015.

having fun at the same time: The next year, we doubled in size and, to better support our students, developed an after-school enrichment program. The following year, the program won the Better Government Award for the state of Massachusetts. Around the same time, professors at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government wrote up the story of Summerbridge Cambridge as a case study in social entrepreneurship.

hundreds of students every year: For more information on Breakthrough Greater Boston, see www.breakthroughgreaterboston.org.

“you can have both”: Adam Grant, Class of 1965 Wharton Professor of Management, in an interview with the author, July 15, 2015.

prosocial interests in mind do better: Adam Grant, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success (New York: Penguin, 2014).

interest in the work itself: Adam Grant, “Does Intrinsic Motivation Fuel the Prosocial Fire? Motivational Synergy in Predicting Persistence, Performance, and Productivity,” Journal of Applied Psychology 93 (2008): 48–58.

raised more money: Ibid.

about a hundred adolescents: David S. Yeager and Matthew J. Bundick, “The Role of Purposeful Work Goals in Promoting Meaning in Life and in Schoolwork During Adolescence,” Journal of Adolescent Research 24 (2009): 423–52. Relatedly, it’s been shown that affirming values can boost performance for other reasons, particularly by maintaining a sense of personal adequacy. Geoffrey L. Cohen and David K. Sherman, “The Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and Social Psychological Intervention,” Annual Review of Psychology 65 (2014): 333–71.

“didn’t give in to obstacles”: Aurora and Franco Fonte, wife and husband founders and directors of Assetlink, in an interview with the author, March 13, 2015.

“something you’re interested in”: Bill Damon, professor of psychology at Stanford Graduate School of Education, in an interview with the author, July 20, 2015.

personal loss or adversity: For example, detectives who have themselves been the victim of a crime are grittier and, in turn, more engaged in their work. See Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, Elizabeth P. Shulman, and Angela L. Duckworth, “Survivor Mission: Do Those Who Survive Have a Drive to Thrive at Work?” Journal of Positive Psychology 9 (2014): 209–18.

“became family to her”: Kat Cole, president of Cinnabon, in an interview with the author, February 1, 2015.

exceeded one billion dollars: Charlotte Alter, “How to Run a Billion Dollar Brand Before You’re 35,” Time, December 2, 2014.

“My passion is to help people”: Jo Barsh, in an interview with the author, July 31, 2015.

“like they are that person”: Kat Cole, “See What’s Possible, and Help Others Do the Same,” from Kat Cole’s blog, The Difference, August 7, 2013, http://www.katcole.net/2013/08/see-whats-possible-and-help-others-do.html.

“be a better place?”: David S. Yeager et al., “Boring but Important: A Self-Transcendent Purpose for Learning Fosters Academic Self-Regulation,” Attitudes and Social Cognition 107 (2014): 559–80.

calls this idea job crafting: Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane E. Dutton, “Crafting a Job: Revisioning Employees as Active Crafters of Their Work,” Academy of Management Review 26 (2001): 179–201. See also www.jobcrafting.org and Grant, Give and Take, 262–63. This section also reflects personal correspondence between the author and Amy Wrzesniewski, professor of organizational behavior at Yale School of Management, October 20, 2015.

“be a better person”: Interested readers can find a more complete list of questions that Bill Damon uses in his book, The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life (New York: Free Press, 2008), 183–86.





CHAPTER 9: HOPE


getting up again: For a more expansive discussion of how hope can be conceptualized, see Kevin L. Rand, Allison D. Martin, and Amanda M. Shea, “Hope, but Not Optimism, Predicts Academic Performance of Law Students Beyond Previous Academic Achievement,” Journal of Research in Personality 45 (2011): 683–86. Also see Shane J. Lopez, Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others (New York: Atria Books, 2013).

major in—neurobiology: At Harvard until 2006, you actually declared your “concentration” (which is Harvard’s terminology for “major”), in the spring of your freshman year and at the same time mapped out every class you intended to take. My official concentration was the neurobiology track within biology, since neurobiology as a separate concentration was not created until years later.