Funny, I just happened to listen to the Freakonomics podcast with Angela Duckworth on it this morning... It also goes into a better definition of grit, why they measure what they measure, etc.<p>Grit basically boils down to (me paraphrasing the author paraphrasing her work) interest in the subject, finding meaning in it that can help you get through troughs of despair, a positive outlook that you can get better with effort, and an ability to find nuance in the activity so that instead of jumping to the next new subject you can focus on a specific subset of the thing you&#x27;re trying to get better at, leveling up if you will.<p>What I took from what she said is that anyone can be gritty at anything if they want to be, but you have to ACTUALLY want it, not just say you do. Grit, the way she describes it just seems to be a roll up of a lot of values we (at least I) intuitively have always felt were important for being able to get better at something.<p>I always knew I was better at certain things because I liked doing them more than other and not the other way around because I was naturally very good at some things that I just didn&#x27;t like and never got any better (golf). There were some things I liked and got very good at that initially I was horrible at (archery).<p>I think the thing that people who don&#x27;t feel gritty (I have always been described as someone who is, which I think has made me grittier all around, just to reaffirm it) can get from this is that grit isn&#x27;t necessarily something you are born with and it doesn&#x27;t necessarily apply to all of life. it&#x27;s also something you can foster and work on- but you have to be honest about how you&#x27;re applying it.