After years of studying high achievers in a variety of fields, top psychologist Angela Duckworth has identified what she calls the most reliable predictor of success, and it challenges conventional wisdom about talent and intelligence. By Mel Robbins, who has 4.6 million YouTube subscribers. subscribers, recently asked Duckworth about his findings while recording his podcast, which aired Monday.
“The common denominator of good achievers, whatever they achieve, is a special combination of passion and persistence to achieve truly long-term goals,” explains Duckworth. “And in a word, it’s diligence.”
Duckworth, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a MacArthur Fellow, defines a grain as two interrelated components that work together over time. “It’s these two parts, right? Passion for long-term goals, like loving someone and falling in love. Not that you wander off and do something else, and then something else, and then something else again, but having a kind of North Star,” she said.
According to Duckworth, the tenacity component is equally important. “Part of it is hard work, right? Part of it is practicing what you can’t do yet, and part of it is resilience. So part of perseverance is getting back up on really bad days?”
Research shows that for children or West Point cadets, diligence is paramount
Duckworth’s research, which began in 2007, led to the idea that sand trumps traditional predictors of success. For years, she studied more than 11,000 cadets at the US Military Academy at West Point, measuring their “grit scores” upon entry and tracking their progress through the notoriously difficult Beast Barracks curriculum.
The results were astounding: Grit proved to be the strongest predictor of which cadets would graduate from the grueling six-week program, beating out SAT scores, high school GPAs, physical fitness scores and even West Point’s comprehensive “Total Applicant Score.” While 3% of new cadets usually leave through Beast Barracks, those with higher scores were much more likely to stick around.
The academy’s traditional metrics have failed to capture what matters most: the ability to persist in the face of extreme challenges.
Similar patterns emerged when Duckworth studied National Spelling Bee contestants. Children with higher scores were more likely to advance to later stages of the competition, regardless of their measured intelligence. The study found that rough wizards were more likely to engage in what scientists call “deliberate practice”: the strenuous, often unpleasant work of studying and memorizing words alone, rather than engaging in more pleasurable activities, such as asking others questions.
The effort equation
Duckworth’s research found a conflicting relationship between conscientiousness and traditional measures of ability. “I think absolutely anything that any psychologist will tell you is good is partially controllable,” she told Robbins during the podcast. “I’m not saying there’s no genetics involved, because any psychologist will tell you that’s part of the story too, including the details. But you know, how gritty we are depends a lot on what we know, who we’re around, and where we go.”
In one study, Duckworth found that smarter students were actually less intelligent than their peers who scored lower on intelligence tests. This finding suggests that individuals who are not naturally gifted often compensate by working harder and with more determination—and their efforts pay off. At an Ivy League university, not the smartest, but the most curious students achieved the highest GPAs.
Duckworth believes that “effort counts twice” in the achievement equation. Its formula is: talent × effort = skill, and skill × effort = achievement.
“Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take the skills you’ve learned and put them to use,” she said. Forbes in 2017.
An important caveat: diligence is not everything
Duckworth’s work has influenced educational policy debates and military training programs, although she has expanded her thinking on the role of trait. in 2018 in an interview with EdSurge, she acknowledged that “when we talk about what kids need to grow up and live happy, healthy and good lives for other people, it’s a long list of things. Grit is on that list, but it’s not the only thing on the list.”
Recent research has confirmed and refined Duckworth’s findings. in 2019 a study of West Point cadets, to which Duckworth also contributed, found that while grit remained a significant predictor of graduation, cognitive ability was the strongest predictor of academic and military performance. Other studies have questioned whether grit provides significant predictive power beyond established personality traits such as conscientiousness.
Despite the ongoing scientific debate about the uniqueness of the grain as a construct, the basic insight remains compelling: sustained effort and commitment to long-term goals are often more important than natural ability alone. As Duckworth said back in 2017, “Our potential is one thing. What we do with it is quite another.”
You can watch Mel Robbins’ full interview with Angela Duckworth below.
This story originally appeared on Fortune.com