Welcome to Sheeper Assisted. I'm your host Sadie Sutton, a 19
year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the
University of Pennsylvania. Sheeper Assisted is the teen
mental health podcast made for teenagers by a teen.
In each episode I'll bring you authentic, accessible and
relatable conversations about every aspect of mental Wellness
you can expect. Evidence based teen approved
resources, coping skills including lots of DBT insights
and education, and each piece of content you consume, She
Persisted offers you a safe space to feel validated and
understood in your struggle while encouraging you to take
ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.
So let's dive in this week on She Persisted.
So you might have heard that it takes 10,000 hours to become an
expert or something. This is actually based on
research. And that is like the objective
benchmark that they look at when they see people that are really
successful, really high achievers that have objectively
become really, really good at a certain skill or talent or
whatever it is. But the specific thing that is
happening within those 10,000 hours is actually what allows
people to get better. We could listen to music for
10,000 hours, but that doesn't mean that we're a musician.
We could watch TV for 10,000 hours mean that I'm a television
producer. What does allow people to become
an expert within those 10,000 hours?
Is this finding? Hello.
Hello you guys, and welcome back to She Persisted.
If this is your first episode, I'm so excited you're here.
It is a good one. I have been looking forward to
this episode all semester and actually been really excited
about this class and this topic for over five years now.
If you are not aware, I am a senior at the University of
Pennsylvania. I'm about to start my final
semester this week, which is absolutely wild.
And when I was applying to colleges, I was two years into
doing the podcast. So I was really sure that I
wanted to do psychology and mental health and that was the
area that I wanted to focus on in my undergraduate education.
And I looked at a ton of different schools.
And when it came time for Early Decision, the one that I landed
on was Penn. And if you want to know like the
specific reasons and everything and how I narrowed that down,
let me know, DM me, send me an e-mail.
But when I was writing my Y Penn essay for my early decision
application, I went back to one of my favorite books that I read
in high school. That really changed in my life
and had such a strong impact on me was personally, but also
academically and how I looked at how psychology research can
impact our lives. And that was gripped by Angela
Duckworth. This was something I read in
high school. My sister read it in high
school. My parents have read it.
They love it. If you guys are not familiar
with Angela Duckworth's work, she is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow
and professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.
She's advised the World Bank, NBA and NFL teams and Fortune
500 CE OS. She is the founder and CEO of
Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance scientific
insights that help kids thrive. She completed her bachelor's in
neurobiology at Harvard, her master's in science and
neuroscience at Oxford, and her PhD in psychology at the
University of Pennsylvania. Grit, the Power of Passion and
Perseverance is her first book and an instant New York Times
bestseller. And so when I wrote my Y Pen
essay, I talked about her class and wanting to work with her and
learn about grit from her. And I talked about a couple of
other labs I wanted to work in. And I've recently reread that Y
Pen essay and I've been able to interface with everyone that I'd
mentioned. And I worked in the labs that I
had talked about in that essay. And so it's been a really cool
full circle moment. And one of those times where
like I did that, I set those goals and I followed through and
this came really full circle. And so this was absolutely one
of my biggest goals coming into Penn.
And one of the things that got me so excited about this school
was the groundbreaking research that was happening, the
incredible minds that were on staff at Penn.
And one of those people is Angela Duckworth.
And so I took her classes last semester.
Her class is called Grit Lab, fostering passion and
perseverance in ourselves and others.
I had been trying to get into this class for a few semesters
and I finally was able to get into my schedule and every
single class period this semester was so thought out and
so intentional, and you never left a class not feeling like
you had some really tangible ways to make a positive change
in your life. And just the way this class was
structured, it was absolutely my favorite class that I've taken
at Penn. It was so intentional and
innovative. It felt like a seminar.
Even though there were 100 people in the class, you were
really engaging super thoroughly with the assignments and the
readings and the research, which you guys know I love.
And so from day one of this class, I was like, I'm going to
do a podcast episode talks about everything I've learned from
this course. And the other great thing about
this class, which Doctor Duckworth talked to us about at
the end of the semester, is that every single piece of
information she gave us is available on YouTube.
It's online, it's on her website, it's in the research.
Like all of this could be found on your own.
But the way that she put it together, the way she structured
the class, the group work that she was really intentional
about, that's what made it a really impactful experience.
And so I'm hoping that I can kind of bring that to you guys
as well, that I can frame this and distill it into one podcast
episode that you guys are seeking out, choosing to listen
to, which hopefully means you're interested and motivated to
implement some of these things and make this information
accessible to you guys. And then you can leave and go
and take these pieces of information, not having to
gather them all yourself and implement them in your own
lives. Because this is absolutely
shifted the way I think about my life, the way I'm pursuing my
goals. And I hope that the same is true
for you. So what we're doing on this
episode is we're going through all of my notes that I took this
semester. During this class, we're going
to go through all these big takeaways, all these learnings,
and share what I think you guys can implement in your own lives
and summarize this and make it as accessible as possible.
So instead of like 3 months, you guys are getting it in an hour.
So we're going to start with the anecdote that the book Grit
opens with, and we read this book throughout the semester.
It was tied to what we were learning in lectures and the
readings we were doing. But we're going to begin with a
study that you guys might have heard before.
If you're familiar with GRIT, it's very popular and has gone
viral many a time recently in her Ted Talk that she did.
But what Doctor Duckworth did in some of the early days of her
research is she went to West Point and there's this really
competitive and excruciating process to get into West Point.
You need extremely high SAT scores.
You need a high GPA. You need a recommendation from a
senator. They're really highly selective
and who they're accepting into West Point.
And then once you get there, you're put through this
extraordinarily grueling training process and they call
this training session the Beast Barracks.
And it's really intense. It's 5:00 AM to 10:00 PM.
It's mentally exhausting. It's physically exhausting.
And despite the fact that they have selected for these really
high achievers, he's really qualified individuals.
He's extremely smart and talented and all these things.
There's a 20% drop out rate. And this is after they've
selected for all these things that they think predict hard
workers and people that will persevere and stick around and
make it through training. And So what Doctor Duckworth did
as she looked at what was predicting the people that
persevered through the Beast Barracks training process at
West Point. And one thing that they look at
when they're admitting students is a thing called the whole
Canada store. And so it's what I talked about,
which is SAT scores, ACT scores, high school rank, their
leadership potential, their physical fitness.
And you'd think like, logically, OK, this is what would predict
who would make it through basic training?
Who would get to the next step? Who's going to persevere in this
environment? And this is a great predictor
with regard to admissions, but it's not a predictor with regard
to dropout rates and who's going to stick around and make it
through this really challenging and grueling process.
And dropping out was not correlated with talent, which is
what the whole candidate score was solving for.
It's correlated with attitude. And so after interviewing all of
these individuals and then looking at which ones dropped
out, which ones stayed the course, she created the grid
score. And the grid score distilled
this attitude of passion and perseverance, which in turn
created the grid scale. And the grid scale was a really,
really, really reliable predictor of who was going to
persevere through this extremely challenging process.
And again, these candidates were already selected for Extreme
fitness and intelligence and talent and leadership potential,
but the grid score better predicted who would stick it out
in the beast barracks. And what was really interesting
is that there was no correlation between that whole candidate
score, those numbers that distilled the ACT score, the SAT
score, the class ranked leadership potential fitness.
There was no correlation between those two numbers.
And she tested this in a number of different environments and
found that it held fast. So timeshare salesman, people
that are constantly shut down and rejected and people aren't
wanting to buy these timeshares and they're again and again and
again trying to make these sales.
Grit scores predicted who would stick it out and stay committed
and no personality trait predicted who would quit being a
timeshare salesman. But grit did.
Same thing with Chicago Public Schools.
Grit scores, an adult, predicts MBA, S, PHDMDS, and JD Graduate
School degrees, spelling bee finalists.
All of these things can be predicted by grit scores.
And again, grit is distilling passion and perseverance.
So the distillation of this finding is that our potential is
one thing. That whole candidate score, our
intelligence, our talent, our physical fitness, that's one
thing. What we do with it is another.
And that's really what I took away from this chapter, this
beginning, this intro to GRIT, what it is, how this scale came
to be. So that quote was one of my
favourites, which is our potential is one thing, what we
do with it is another. The TLDR on like the grit
overview, the foundation is that passion and perseverance equals
grit. And grit is the greatest
predictor of success in retention and these really
challenging, enduring situations.
So then the other piece of this concept that's probably coming
to mind now is like, well, that sounds like self-control.
Like people are putting forth a lot of willpower.
They're forcing themselves to stay in this situation.
There are time and time again showing up like, why isn't that
self-control? And this is where people get
confused, just that grit and self-control are really separate
constructs. And they can be somewhat related
and they predict different things, but they're completely
separate constructs. So self-control is your capacity
to regulate attention, emotion, and behavior.
And grit is your pursuit of a goal despite setbacks.
And these are correlated, but they're different.
So self-control, capacity to regulate your attention, your
emotion, and your behavior. And grit is your pursuit of a
goal despite setbacks. And both of these require you to
align your intentions with your actions.
So what are your goals? And then how do your actions
line up with that? So another way of looking at
this is self-control is your everyday functioning.
Like do you wake up in the morning when your alarm
immediately goes off? Are you going to the gym?
Are you running 10 miles? Are you eating super healthy?
Like what are those everyday choices that self-control and
grit is your retention and performance long term.
So are you meeting those goals that you set for yourself?
Are you moving forward in your career or your academics or
these larger goals that you have for yourself in your life?
So self-control short term, in the moment, grit is long term,
really huge top level goals. And the other thing to add here
is that self-control is a skill. It's improved with practice.
And there's a really interesting article that Doctor Duckworth
put out about how we can increase our self-control and
how we can hack our environments to improve how much control we
have over our actions. So I want to do an episode where
we break that down and go into a lot of detail.
But self-control is a scale. It's something that's very
malleable. You can improve it.
And grit is motivation, is volition.
So it's motivation that's aligned with your intentions and
choices. So offering a little bit more
detail and explanations as far as these concepts of grit and
self-control and talent, because these are all part of the
equation. So we have this definition that
grit is your passion and perseverance towards your long
term goals. It's important to note that
passion is not your intensity, it's not how passionate you are
about something, it's how consistently you're passionate
about that goal. So again, we talked about how
great is long term perseverance, how consistent is your passion
over five years, 10 years, 20 years, etcetera.
And we talked about passion and perseverance.
A really interesting part of this equation is that it's a lot
easier when our actions align with these larger goals and our
interests and what we're innately passionate about.
South Grit is easier than self-control because you have
this innate passion, you have this innate Dr. you have this
alignment with your actions and where you want to be.
And so you're not just like white knuckling willing yourself
to get to this finish line regardless of how you feel,
you're aligning how you feel and your thought process and your
larger goals with those day-to-day actions.
And so straight from my notes, grit is not about doing things
you don't want to do that self-control.
Grit is aligning that passion with your perseverance towards
those longer term goals. And there's this other equation
that comes out of the grit book, which is really interesting.
And it's that effort counts twice.
So if we think that talent times effort equals skill, So your
talent is how quickly you get better at a skill.
So that like innate ability to master something times the
amount of effort you put in equals how quickly you master a
skill. And then your skill times your
effort equals achievement. So like your ability to do
something times the amount of effort you put in, That is what
leads to achievement. So effort counts twice there.
That effort and that grit is really, really important in a
really big determinant and how likely you are to master that
long term goal. So one thing we learned in this
class, we're talking about talent and skill and achievement
and grit. And just like these overarching
foundational concepts, we learned about the study where
the way that you frame goals and journeys impacts how motivated
you are and how much persistence you have.
So if you haven't yet achieved a goal, you haven't yet made it to
the finish line. Thinking about the goal, the end
point, that final marker that you're working towards, that's
what increases persistence. But if you've had a history of
success, if you've had a history of meeting those goals, getting
to those benchmarks, thinking about success as a journey and
not the destination, that is what increases persistence.
So if you are like very early on in your process of goal setting,
if you're endeavoring on a new project, a new activity, you're
going to think about that goal, You're going to think about that
end point. That's what you're working
towards and that is what will increase your persistence.
But if you were like on your 12th year of school or your
months into interviewing for a job or whatever the process is
where you've had some success so far, you're going to motivate
yourself by thinking about the journey and the learnings and
positives associated with that, not just the end goal.
And that's what's going to increase your persistence.
So the learning here is that the metaphor you pick has
psychological force. And the way that we frame these
goals, the way that we think about them has a really strong
impact on our likelihood to achieve them and how motivated
we are and how much persistence we show in our pursuit of those
goals. The way we think about them has
a lot, lot, lot of power. So our little summary of this
first little foundational part of grit is that grit is
sustained passion and perseverance for a long term
goal. Grit influences effort.
Where is talent is the rate at which you improve with effort.
Both are malleable. Both change throughout your
lifetime. Success is useful to be thought
of as a journey, and an appreciation for grit should
highlight, not obscure, the importance of context and
opportunity. So again, there are limitations
here. The environments you're in, the
support you have, the resources you have access to, that's going
to impact how gritty you are, how successful you are in the
goals that you're achieving. So now that we kind of
understand what grit is, how passion and perseverance play
into this equation, we talked about how effort counts twice in
this equation and that our effort and our self-control and
our grit, these things are malleable.
They can change throughout our life.
It's important to talk about our values and our purpose because
this is what's going to influence that passion, which
then influences that perseverance.
Because again, it's easier to persevere when we're passionate
about something and our passion is really fueled by our values
and our sense of purpose. So what are values?
According to psychology, our values are enduring beliefs and
goals about what is important to us.
So these are things that last throughout our life.
They do change. Our values change throughout
childhood a lot, as well as adulthood, but our values are
generally enduring and consistent throughout long
periods of time, which allows us to persevere towards those long
term goals. They guide how we think about
people and what we choose to do. So the actions we engage with,
the goals we set, the people that we are attracted to and
want to keep in our lives. And they have a really big
impact on not only our day-to-day, but our long term
choices and the goals we're pursuing and what our lives look
like. We also added a fun little
interesting caveat, which I thought you guys might like to
hear. We talked about self
determination theory. And so as it relates to values,
the three primary drives that all of us have as humans is
competence, belonging, and autonomy.
So we want to feel good at things.
We want that sense of mastery, we want that sense of success,
we want that sense of belonging. We want to feel needed and heard
and understood and validated. That's really, really, really
important to us as humans and drives a lot of our choices.
Then lastly, we want a sense of autonomy that we don't want to
feel forced or put in a position that we have no control over.
We want that sense of choice over our lives.
And so that's something that's important to remember as you're
thinking about what your values and your purpose are.
Those tend to be 3 underlying factors that drive all humans
and influence all goals and behaviors and decisions.
One thing we learned about in class is a goal hierarchy.
And so this is how our day-to-day actions align with
our biggest goals in life and then also our values and our
interests, which we just talked about.
So if our day-to-day choices, if we work out, if we see a friend
for coffee, if we go to class, if we do our homework, those are
our actions, right? And those are connected to
goals. Maybe it's make new friends, get
an A in that class, meet someone new, meet a certain fitness
goal, like whatever those low level goals are that are
happening over a couple of weeks, a couple of months.
And then those are connected to higher goals, which is maybe I
want to be connected. I want to have that sense of
belonging. I want to be successful
academically. I want to achieve this career
goal. And then we have top level
goals, which is like our internal guiding goal that
influences our entire lives. And so Doctor Decker shared with
us her number one top level goal that guides everything she does
is to help kids thrive using psychological science.
My top level goal at this point in my life, it will probably
change and evolve, but to help teens struggling with their
mental health and then evidence based, accessible and relatable
way. And then our top level goal is
influenced by our values and our interest.
So the values there are achievement and benevolence and
the interest there is psychological science, mental
health, relationships, all of these things that kind of are
integrated and related to this concept of teen mental health.
So if we think about the school hierarchy, we have our
day-to-day actions, the choices we make, self-control impacts
those day-to-day actions and those are fueled by our low
level goals like I mentioned, things like getting a grade on
an assignment, doing a new hobby, making a new friend,
etcetera. That we have our mid level
goals, going to school, working in a certain career field,
getting to a certain spot with your mental health.
And then we have our top level goal, which is that one leading
determining goal that influences our career paths, our
relationships, the projects we engage in over 10-15 years,
decades of our lives. And this caveat here, which is
that if you're a young adult listening and you're tuning in,
you probably don't know what your top level goal is yet.
You probably have an idea of what your values and your
interests are and you're still figuring out what those mid
level and top level goals are. And so this is a really big
disclaimer to add here, which is that you don't need to know what
your top level, what your final goal is yet.
You don't need to have that completely distilled and nailed
down and established at this point.
But it's something that's fun and helpful to keep in mind,
which is that you probably do have a top level goal.
You're still figuring out what it is, but that's going to
impact your mid level goals, your low level goals and your
day-to-day actions. And we were a lot, lot, lot
better at exercising self-control and achieving that
top level goal when we connect those two things.
So when we say I need to study for this test today because it
connects to my mid level goal of getting a good grade in this
class, which connects to my higher level goal of helping
these people with these things or working in this field.
So again, the way that we frame things, the way we think about
them has psychological force impacts our actions and our
ability to follow through and how much self-control we have.
So remembering to connect those values and that top level goal
with those day-to-day actions will help you be more successful
and effective in achieving them. One thing to add as we're
talking about goal hierarchies, is that what allows us to
succeed in these larger goals and to be in alignment with our
values and our interests is flexibility at the bottom.
So we're not rigid with our day-to-day actions.
We're not rigid with our mid level goals.
I must get the certain grade on this test.
I must do the certain hobby. I must go to the certain thing.
I must get into this school or this program.
We're more flexible with that because we're rigid with our top
level goal and there are lots of different ways to get there and
there are a lot of things that are outside of our control.
But it's important to remember that what's allows us to
persevere over a long period of time is flexibility on those
lower goals and rigidity for that top high level goal that's
guiding our choices. So you can think about those
lower goals, the subordinate goals, as a means to an end.
We have more flexibility with those because there's stepping
stones along the way, but they're not absolutely required.
They're not like a rung of the ladder.
We can take multiple paths to get to that end goal.
And then I mentioned this, but that idea of connecting your
day-to-day actions to the larger level goal, that's called goal
fusion. And goal fusion is when you say
to yourself, your higher level goal when you're completing
tedious things. So for me, my goal is to become
a clinical psychologist to help teens that are struggling with
their mental health in an evidence based, accessible way.
And so when I'm studying for a neuroscience test that I don't
like and that I don't enjoy because I like the psychology,
like social positive, abnormal, I like that kind of stuff.
I like talking to you guys. I like sharing these things in
digestible ways. I don't love learning about
neurons and memorizing every single part of the brain.
I tell myself my goal is to be a clinical psychologist and to
help people. And a step in achieving that
goal is doing well in this class so that I can apply to grad
school and have a certain GPA and be able to achieve that goal
and jump through these hoops in an academic setting so that I
can have the qualifications and training to help people in the
most qualified way possible. And so I become more motivated.
And research shows us you become more persistent and more
motivated when you do that goal fusion.
So the next time you're struggling with one of those
tedious things, tie it to your larger value, tie it to the
larger goal. What are you trying to achieve?
And remember, how does this day-to-day action, how does this
habit, how does this behavior connect to that larger
principle? And then the last thing that I'm
going to mention here about goal hierarchies and the way that we
structure and think about our goals is that they allow us to
be focused and directed at this one thing when we have our like
5 different mid level goals. Like for me, it's being a
student at Penn, building my skills with regard to media and
communication, becoming a clinical psychologist, sharing
on TikTok, like all of these different things that get me to
this larger goal of helping teens with their mental health
in evidence of a successful way. But there's like 6 different
ways to get me there. I can't focus on all those at
once, but I can focus on that higher goal and I can be more
flexible with these bottom level goals because I understand what
my larger goal is. So our goal hierarchy helps us
not be in conflict with these lower level goals, not have
ourselves really spread thin and overwhelmed, but allow us to be
more persistent over a long period of time because we're in
alignment and we understand what that goal is and we can allocate
our energy accordingly. So now just to recap as to where
we're at so far. We know what grit is.
We know it's this predictor of success and achievement and
persistence. And grit is a result of passion
and perseverance. And our passion is guided by our
interests and our values. And the way that we persevere is
by having a goal hierarchy and understanding what our leading
goal is, and then being flexible with our day-to-day, our month
to month, our year to year, so that we're in general
persevering towards that long term goal and exercising grit to
get us there. So we understand the
psychological principle that's showing up here, that's grit.
We understand how we kind of start to understand what our
passions are that we're being persistent towards.
And we understand that we have this framework that will get us
to this long term goal. But how do we set the goals?
How do we be intentional there? How do we know how to do that in
an effective way? So we learned this thing called
the Rubicon model, which is basically crossing over a river,
which is when you go from like thinking about something to
actually doing it. So you go from deliberating,
thinking about what the goal is. You then set your goal and
that's when you're crossing the river and getting to the point
of actually trying to achieve this thing.
And then after you've crossed the river and decided I'm going
to do this, I'm going to commit. That's when we plan, we act, and
then we evaluate. And this is the cycle with which
we frame and understand goal setting and goal achieving.
And there was a really interesting study that was done
in 1975 that we learned about, which was done on Lumberjacks.
And they did a study in goal setting and they gave them two
different goals that they could set.
One was to do your best and the other one was a specific goal
relating to lumberjacking. I'm not a lumberjack so I don't
know exactly what these looked like, but generally imagine it's
just so bad. Like cut down a certain number
of trees, reach a certain square footage.
I don't know exactly what this would look like but just pretend
we'll imagine. And they found that when they
framed it as doing your best, 60% of them met a certain
performance marker, like a set marker that everyone was
evaluated on. But when they set a specific
goal, a specific hard goal, 95% of the people met that external
marker. So being specific, giving
ourselves measurable things that we can say, yes, I did that, no,
I didn't. And making it hard.
That is what allows us to actually, quote UN quote, do our
best to achieve those things, not just giving ourselves these
abstract concepts like I will try my hardest, I will do my
best. Set yourself those specific
measurable hard goals. And then I want to give you guys
a couple of other things that are really helpful in setting
goals and things that you should be aware of when it comes to how
we succeed and thrive and learn things as humans.
So we learned about another really interesting study where
people use ChatGPT to write their cover letters.
And the hypothesis was that if you use ChatGPT, you won't
improve as much with your ability to write a cover letter
and put together this final product.
You think, OK, you're like half assing it, you're using a
crotch, you're using AI. It's not actually going to get
you to this final goal. That was not the case.
They got substantially better when they use chat GBD in
conjunction with their own work versus when they just
independently worked at trying to improve this cover letter.
So the key here is that we learn by example.
That's what allows us to accelerate our growth and our
outputs and our improvement. So this is that idea of you
watch one, do one, teach what we hear this in medical school.
If you watch Grey's Anatomy, I watch Grey's Anatomy, there's
this framework where you watch when you do, when you teach 1.
And so this idea of watching 1 and learning from others and
using an example, using a framework to then replicate and
implement in your own life is really, really powerful and
really, really effective in getting us to those final goals.
Another piece of psychology research should be aware of when
we're setting our goals is that we have really social brains.
We learn from others and when they do research on like what
makes the human brain so different?
What makes us such a superior species to like apes or chimps
or lions or whatever these other mammals are that have similar
somewhat structures of brains. What makes us really powerful is
our social brains, how we're able to interact with and engage
with our peers, how we communicate, how we work
together. That is what has given us the
upper hand in evolution and allowed us to thrive.
So using that social brain to our advantage when we're setting
our goals, we know that we learn from each other and so use more
models, use more collaboration, and that will contribute to the
rate of learning and expertise acquired.
And then the last piece of psychology research should be
aware of when it comes to goal setting is this idea called the
three boxes model. It's also called the process
model. Doctor Duckworth worked on this
with the Stanford psychologist. It's really, really interesting.
I want to do a full episode on this because it's a super
interesting framework. But if we think about the three
boxes model, it's an adapted version of the process model.
The process model is that you put in a situation, your
attention is directed somewhere, we appraise it, so we interpret
it, we respond to it, and then we have an action, which is our
response. The three boxes model condenses
it a little bit, it simplifies it.
So we have our situation, we have our thoughts about the
situation, and then we have how we respond.
That's the action or the behavior.
So we have some control over how we think about a situation, and
we've done a lot of podcast episodes about that.
The way that we attribute our successes and our losses has a
really strong impact on our self esteem.
The way that we think about these things has an impact on
our mental health. We can also use our thoughts to
change our behaviors. We can use our behaviors to
change our thoughts. There's lots of ways we can
adjust that. The most powerful and biggest
determinant and goal setting and our outcomes is the situations
we're putting ourselves in. Because if we're not in that bad
situation, if we're not in that situation that causes us to be
unproductive, we never have the thoughts and the behaviors that
follow. So this is like probably the
biggest take away I took from this class is what box 1:00 AM I
putting myself in? Am I putting myself in a context
where I'm going to succeed? Am I putting myself in a context
where I'm going to be held accountable?
Am I setting myself up for success?
And I think this is an approach that gives you a lot of self
compassion and a lot of grace and a lot of understanding in
the way that we achieve our goals.
Obviously, there's a lot of accountability that has to take
place and we have to be doing the work and deliberately
practicing these skills that we can improve with time.
But a really big determinate here is the box one that we're
putting ourselves in. So if we think about those like
psychology things, we just learned one, which is that we do
really well when we see examples of things, when we see models of
things. So are you giving yourself
examples of essays that were done really well, projects that
got A's, people that are thriving mentally or physically,
whatever it is, Do you have those examples that you can then
replicate and follow? Second, we are social, we learn
from others, we learn with others.
So how can you collaborate and work with others to be held
accountable and expedite that learning process?
And 3rd, what is the context you're putting yourself in?
Are you allowing yourself to be successful?
Are you setting yourself up for success?
And that Box 1 probably involves examples and social
collaboration to allow you to be successful.
So going back to the Rubicon model, which is that we
deliberate, we then set a goal, we plan, we act, and we
evaluate. And taking into account these
other things that can help us be successful, which is giving
ourself examples, making sure we're learning in a social
context and that we're putting ourselves in a box, one that
will allow us to be successful. So what is an effective goal?
We talked about like what influences our goal setting,
what allows humans to thrive? The framework of goals.
But what actually is an effective goal?
It's specific, it's challenging, it's declared publicly in
person, which is really counterintuitive to what you see
on Tiktok, or at least what I see on Tiktok and Instagram.
Real to see all these like Moody entrepreneurs in low light and
they're like never tell anyone your goal.
Work in private, celebrate in public.
Never tell anyone you what you want to do.
Never show your cards wrong. If you want to be successful in
a goal, tell people and tell a lot of people you hold yourself
more accountable. They hold you accountable
psychologically, scientifically speaking, the evidence shows
that when you declare your goals and you declare them publicly,
you're more likely to achieve them.
And even just setting the intention, explaining the
action, again, we wanted to be specific and challenging, makes
you more likely to succeed. They did a study on goal setting
and they found that only 7% of people achieve their goal
without setting an intention. I mean, like duh, but like only
7% will actually get to the outcome they want without being
specific and intentional with the goal is being set.
And then the other thing to mention here, what makes an
effective goal? Without a sub goal related to
your performance, you're not going to achieve the goal.
So if your goal is to run a 5K, if you don't have sub goals that
you're going to run a mile, you're going to run 2 miles,
you're going to run 3 miles, you're going to do those under a
certain time. You're going to run them, not
walk them. You're going to do them by a
certain date. If you don't have sub goals
related to your performance, you're not going to get to your
end goal of running the 5K under a certain time, whatever that
goal is. So again, effective goals are
specific, specific also that they have sub goals related to
your performance. They're challenging and they're
declared publicly in person. So tell a friend, tell a family
member, DM me, tell someone your goal post about it online,
you'll be more likely to achieve it.
So we understand what grit is. We have our goal hierarchy so
that we can understand the framework that grit works in, so
that we can persevere long term. We understand how we set goals
and now we have to practice, We have to do the thing to get
better and show that long term perseverance towards those long
term goals. So you might have heard that it
takes 10,000 hours to become an expert of something or takes
10,000 hours to be really good at something.
This is actually based on research and that is like the
objective benchmark that they look at when they see people
that are really successful, really high achievers, that have
objectively become really, really good at a certain skill
or talent or whatever it is. But the specific thing that is
happening within those 10,000 hours is something called
deliberatis. And this is actually what allows
people to get better. We could listen to music for
10,000 hours, but that doesn't mean that we're a musician.
We could watch TV for 10,000 hours.
I'm definitely on my way there. It doesn't mean that I'm a
television producer or an actor or an expert in storytelling.
What does allow people to become an expert within those 10,000
hours is deliberate practice. And so the four steps in
deliberate practice is to have a stretch goal, something that's
outside of your current ability to give your undivided attention
and effort to seek feedback on your performance and then repeat
the process. So deliberate practice, you set
your stretch goal. This is a specific aspect of
your performance and you're trying to improve a weakness.
So if I was re recording this podcast and I was setting a
specific goal related to my performance and a weakness, I
would say I would type out and read better organize the way
that I'm going to go through this episode rather than just
looking through my notes from the semester, which Sam who's
editing this has probably realized that this is probably
not the most effective and efficient way to record this.
And I could probably structure this out before recording.
So what I would do is I would set that goal.
I would say I'm going to outline and write out and organize the
entire flow of the episode and the examples I want to bring up
and how much time I want to allocate to each topic and the
arc that this episode is going to follow.
That's the weakness that I'm addressing.
It's specific. It's a little bit outside of my
skill set of what I've done in previous episodes, but it's
something that I can achieve. And then I'm going to give my
undivided attention and effort and strive to reach that goal.
So I'm going to lock in. I'm going to sit down.
I'm going to go through my notes.
I'm going to type them up. I'm going to write out all the
parts of this episode and give my attention and effort towards
this specific goal. Then I'm going to seek feedback.
So I'll understand, say, hey, Sam, like what do you think
about this outline on this episode?
Does this make sense? Is it intuitive?
I'll ask you guys. I'll say I outline this episode
rather than just kind of hopping on the mic and going through my
notes. What did you think?
Was it more effective? Did you feel like it was easier
to follow? Did you feel like you had more
takeaways? What were your thoughts?
So get feedback on how it went, compare the two, see if there's
an improvement, and then I would repeat.
So I would continue to outline episodes.
I would continue to be more intentional with the way I'm
presenting information, continue to get feedback, continue to
devote my attention and focus. And then you repeat in this
framework, the deliberate practice framework.
You repeat until conscious incompetence becomes unconscious
competence, which I thought was kind of like a fun, interesting
way to explain that. So until the weakness that
you're aware of becomes something that you're no longer
aware of because you're so good at that.
And if you're like this, like not very fun way to approach my
goals and a lot of work, it's true, deliberate practice is
more effortful and less enjoyable, something that takes
a lot of time and attention and mental and physical effort.
But this is how we get better. This is how we actually
measurably improve in our goals. And if you did the grit scale
beginning this episode or you know, you're a gritty person, a
little fun fact is that gritty kids enjoy deliberate practice
more. So you will enjoy this.
And the other positive thing on the other side of this is that
there are two positive experiences that come from this,
and that is getting better and performing your best.
And deliberate practice allows us to get to those two positive,
subjectively enjoyable and experiences.
And then in addition to deliberate practice, there are a
couple of other things that influence who becomes an expert.
And one of the takeaways from this class is that experts are
made, they're not born. Talent is innate, how quickly we
acquire skills, but the effort we put towards those skills and
how we achieve them based on the effort we're applying to those
skills is dependent on us. So experts are made, they're not
born with. It's malleable.
We have an ability to engage with that.
And so the other things that allow us to achieve and become
experts in these areas is devoted teachers and family
support. Having people in your corner,
holding you accountable, supporting you, that is another
thing that they found in research.
That is a strong predictor of who becomes an expert and
becomes highly successful in their field.
Also, the amount and the quality of practice is correlated with
the level of expertise. So again, deliberate practice
versus just passively doing something will impact how good
you get at something. Experts also look at how they
analyze things wrong. So how are they thinking about
things inefficiently? How was their goal not quite
right? How are they approaching this
test rock? How are they solving this
problem inefficiently? They think about how they're
thinking about things. Not just did they get the thing
right or wrong, they also improve the skills that they
have and extend the reach and range of them.
So not just looking to acquire new skills and get better at all
the things, but what skills you have and how can you improve
those as much as possible. And then also coaches accelerate
learning because they provide lots of feedback.
So teachers and coaches have a really strong impact on allowing
us to be experts. Again, we talked about how
deliberate practice involves feedback.
Coaches and teachers provide that feedback, which is a really
important part of the learning process.
And then the last thing we'll give you here with regard to
improving and practicing is that if you cannot measure it, you
cannot improve it. We talked about this with mental
health when we're not measuring objectively our goals, like
sleeping a certain number of hours every night, seeing our
friends a certain amount of time every week, tracking our mood,
tracking our behaviors, tracking the skills that we're using.
We have no way to measure and observe objectively.
Our mental health and mental health specifically has a really
unique and interesting thing to set goals around because it is
so subjective and our emotions can't necessarily be objectively
measured super effectively. It can be really hard to say,
have I gotten better? Have I improved?
Do I feel like I'm recovering? Am I less depressed?
Am I less anxious? Am I more happy?
Like these things are really, really hard to measure and
describe. And so again, making sure our
goals are things that can be measured, otherwise we can't
improve them. O there's a lot of things that
we learned in this semester that I didn't touch on.
We also touched on how to find mentors, how to pay it forward.
How do we accept feedback? How do we ask for feedback?
How can we create habits so that these things are more
streamlined and less day-to-day decisions?
How can we think about failure and stress more effectively so
that we continue to persevere and continue on that course
towards those larger goals? I don't want to throw too much
at you. I've given you quite a lot of
information, but I feel like we've really covered these
basics. We talked about what is grit?
What does it predict? What is it indicative of?
How do we define it? We talked about how our values
and interests impact our larger goals and how we can create a
goal hierarchy to understand how we achieve these long term goals
and how grit plays into that framework.
We talked about how we set goals psychologically as humans, what
makes us more likely to achieve our goals and how we can set
ourselves up for success and the context we put ourselves in.
We talked about how we actually do the thing, how we do those
day-to-day actions that help us achieve those small goals, which
in turn help us achieve those big goals, and what deliberate
practices and how that can expedite the process of becoming
an expert. And so I'm going to give you
guys little summaries that I wrote from these different
classes, the bullet point takeaways for you to internalize
based on everything that we just talked about.
South Grit is sustained passion and perseverance for a long term
goal. Grit influences effort, whereas
talent is the rate at which we improve with effort.
Both are malleable and subject to change.
Success is useful to be thought as as a journey.
Again, we talked about like how we frame things as psychological
force. So success think about it as a
journey and appreciation for grit should highlight, not
obscure the importance of context and opportunities.
Our context and opportunities have a really big impact on how
greatly we are and how many of these goals that we set for
ourselves do we actually achieve.
Finding our purpose is a lifelong journey.
Goal hierarchies allow us to have more harmony.
In our long term pursuits and they decrease conflict between
different goals. Goal fusion is one way to make
tedious activities less tedious. Self concordant goals reflect
our deeper interests and values. Goals, including sub goals,
direct our energy plans, specify what we're going to do and when
we're going to do it. Being good at something is more
than just talent, and the way that we become good at something
is deliberate practice. There is always an easy and
enjoyable alternative to deliberate practice.
It's a hard choice to make and we can use habits which are more
an autopilot response to cues rather than exercising
self-control every time we're trying to achieve a goal.
So that's our really abbreviated expedited 30,000 foot view of
grit. What it is, how it applies to
our life, what I learned this semester, how you can use these
principles to be more gritty, find your passions, persevere
more in pursuit of those passions, and achieve your
goals. I want to thank Doctor Angela
Duckworth for all that she taught us throughout the
semester. All of this comes from her
teaching and her research and her work.
And straight for my notes from this class.
It truly was so informative. A lot of this is also in her
book. Like she mentioned in the Class,
A lot of this is available online either in the literature
or in pieces of content she's put out.
So if you want to learn more, you can check out her book.
I'll put it in the show notes. You can also watch her Ted talk,
go to character lab, which is her lab where she shares this
information more generally to the public.
So there's a lot more research available and I really hope you
guys enjoyed this. Definitely let me know, give me
some feedback like we talked about in the episode.
Do you like these style of episodes?
Is it fun to kind of hear the distillation of an entire
semester worth of course work? Learn about the psychological
principles and how they can apply to your life.
Let me know your thoughts, you want to hear more, if there's
other topics you want me to dive into based on classes I've
taken, and then if you guys have questions.
And as always, make sure to share with a friend or family
member, post about it on social media, all the things.
I really appreciate it. It really helps with the
podcast. Leave a review and I will talk
to you guys next week. Thank you so much for listening
to this week's episode of Sheep Persisted.
If you enjoyed, make sure to share with a friend or family
member. It really helps out the podcast.
And if you haven't already, leave a review on Apple Podcast
or Spotify. You can also make sure to follow
along at at Sheep Persisted Podcast on both Instagram and
TikTok. And check out all the bonus
resources, content and information on my website,
sheeppersistedpodcast.com. Thanks for supporting.
Keep persisting and I'll see you next week.