Grit: The Rise and Fall of a TED Talk Idea

Angela Duckworth's TED Talk on grit is the sixteenth most viewed of all time. Her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance has sold over a million copies. Her academic work has been cited 80,000 times. Schools held grit pep rallies. The Obama administration incorporated non-cognitive skills into federal education policy. And then, almost as quickly as it rose, the whole thing collapsed—with Duckworth herself helping to dismantle it.

The Origin Story

Duckworth's biography follows a familiar pattern for overeducated professionals who briefly teach before building a career talking about teaching. After earning a BA from Harvard and a master's from Oxford, she worked as a management consultant at McKinsey. At 27, she left to become a public school math teacher in a low-income area of Manhattan. She taught for about four years.

Her core insight came from grading: the "smart" kids weren't necessarily getting the best grades. Something else was driving performance. She entered the psychology PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania in 2002, initially studying self-control. But she eventually landed on a new concept she called "grit"—defined as "perseverance and passion for long-term goals."