If you have interest in your work and conduct deliberate practice, you’ll make progress. But ultimately, if you don’t believe that your work matters and contributes things of value, you will find it difficult to maintain your work for a long time.
This leads to the third component of grit: purpose. Purpose, as defined here, is "the intention to contribute to the well-being of others."
Duckworth found that universally, grit paragons extend the benefits of their achievement to a level beyond themselves – other people (like their children or clients) or an abstract concept (society, my country, science).
Evolutionarily, we may developed a drive for altruism, because a cooperative species thrives more than the individual. Altruism improves grit by both sustaining passion (because your goals are more important) and perseverance (because you fight harder for goals that you care more about).
There is a possible confound here where grittier people may take on jobs that are generally accepted to have more purpose (like being a doctor), making the purpose questions easier to answer. However, across a range of careers, Amy Wrzesniewski has found similar proportions of people who consider their occupations a job, a career, or a calling. Among secretaries and garbage collectors, there are people who find their work purposeful and those who don’t.
Gritty people show a greater interest in purpose than non-gritty people. There are at least two large ways of achieving happiness: pleasure (self-centered enjoyment) and purpose (outward-benefiting). People of all grit levels show similar amounts of pleasure in their work, but grittier people tend to feel a greater sense of purpose.
It may seem that self-oriented and other-oriented motivations are on opposite sides of the spectrum, but research has found that they’re independent. You can have neither, and you can have both. You can at once want to be the most successful person, while at the same time helping others. People who have both self-oriented and other-oriented motives tend to be the most productive.
(Shortform note: do gritty people naturally empathize with people and want to be altruistic? Or can you develop purpose, which in turn makes you grittier? Is this malleable? The book doesn’t address this.)
Here’s an illustrative story. Three bricklayers are asked, "what are you doing?"
The first bricklayer has a job. The second has a career. The third has a calling.
Defined further, people who have jobs are interested only in the material benefits from work and don’t receive other rewards from it. The work is not an end in itself. People who have careers have deeper personal investment and enjoy advancement within the organizational structure.
People who have callings find their work inseparable from their life – the work is personally fulfilling.
(Shortform example: a reporter visited the SpaceX factory floor and asked someone what he was working on. The SpaceX worker replied, "the mission of SpaceX is to make humans a multi-planetary species. To accomplish this, we need to lower the cost of rockets by making them reusable. I work on the guidance system that helps the rocket be reusable." These employees see their work as closely aligned to the company’s broad, humanity-wide purpose. Surely they feel a strong sense of purpose in their day-to-day work.)
People who feel purpose in their work show meaningful benefits:
Like interests, purpose takes time to develop. You don’t have to feel purpose right away. In fact, some students may be giving up too early if they skip from job to job every couple of years.
The book gives several anecdotes of a subway engineer and a physician who spent over a decade learning the intricacies of their craft and deepening their interest before broadening their purpose to a broader impact.
How do you cultivate a sense of purpose?
Reflect on how the work you’re doing can positively contribute to society.
Researchers asked students to connect what they were learning with how the world could be a better place. The one-time intervention took just one class period. Compared to control, students increased their GPA (from 1.9 to 2.1), doubled their time studying on practice questions, and completed more math questions. Results were stronger for students who were at greater academic risk.
Think about how you can change your current work to connect to your core values, even if just in small ways.
An experimental group of employees was assigned to a job-crafting workshop, where they came up with their own ideas for changing their routines and building a map for what would constitute more meaningful work. Six weeks later, coworkers rated the employees as happier and more effective.
Find a purposeful role model.
Identify someone who inspires you to be a better person, and who acts on behalf of other people. This exemplar proves to you that it’s possible to be successful carrying a mission greater than yourself. In turn, this inspires your own belief that you can personally make a difference.