Michael had grit, how about you?

I think that most people realize that there are very few “overnight” success stories.  Oprah Winfrey did not become a media mogul overnight.  Bill Gates did not become the most epic programmer in the world overnight.  Michael Jordan did not become the most prolific basketball player ever in a single evening.  Their success was likely caused by a variety of characteristics, but one characteristic that they all shared was grit.  There has been a lot written about grit of late.  It is suddenly very vogue to be gritty.

So do you have grit?  Grit is the ability to commit to long term goals, and the ability to maintain focus on those goals in the face of difficulty.  Can you be the next Oprah, Bill Gates or Michael Jordan?  I don’t think genetics has a whole lot to do with it (a point that could be argued I realize), so I guess the answer is yes, you can.  Before you start looking for a agent to represent you, there is one other factor to consider.  According to Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers (conveniently on my Recommended Reading List) it takes about 10,000 hours to become an expert in something.  That’s 10,000 hours of practicing your interview skills, 10,000 hours of programming, or 10,000 hours perfecting your dunk.  I think this is where most people fail in their quest to be a superstar.  We start out with every intention of devoting our life to an endeavor, but then we are distracted and we never get anywhere close to that 10,000 hour mark.  How well you are able to handle distractions and obstacles is what determines just how gritty you are.

I would like to develop my grit, but I am not quite sure how to go about that.  There are no grit development courses that I am aware of.  I think that if you want to be grittier, then you are on you own.  So let’s say I want to be the world’s greatest blogger and I am prepared to commit to 10,000 hours of blogging to develop my expertise.  How do I increase my chances of being the world’s greatest blogger?

1. Define the objective – Being the world’s greatest blogger is probably a little vague.  It is a pretty subjective.  I could say I am the world’s greatest blogger tomorrow if I believed that.  We want to have a more tangible definition.   To make this easy we will define it as have more daily traffic on my blog than any other blogger.  So now that I have defined it, I need to write it down (always write your goals down).
2. Define the necessary actions – To keep this simple, I will say to achieve my goal I need to develop my ability to write original material and I need to research other blogs to determine what works and what does not work.  I want to devote 2 hours a day to each of these activities.  Once I have decided on the necessary actions and the amount of time that I can afford to allot to each activity, then I just need to write it down.  On a calendar that is.  I would plot two hours for each activity into my daily planner.  So far, so good.  I think everyone is capable of doing the first two very enthusiastically.  So where are we likely to fail, on number #3.
3. Now that I have a plan and I have my action items scheduled each day, I just need to do it.  In this case I need to spend two hours writing and two hours researching each day.  It sounds simple enough.  The problem is that at some point, I am going to get distracted by life.  Kids get sick, I may not feel ‘creative’ at the appointed time, or I just might not feel like writing today.  There are two factors that will work against you here.  The first is self-control.  I have never spoken with Michael Jordan, but I feel very confident in saying that I am sure that there were days that he did not feel like playing basketball.  It may have taken a little extra self-motivation on those days, but he still went out there and practiced.  The other factor that works against us is self-confidence.  Most of us don’t believe we can be exceptional.  You may have believed it when you were a kid, but somewhere along the line you lost it.  People love to tell you what you can’t do and at some point you start to believe them.  It is easier to be mediocre.  It requires a lot less effort and gives you plenty of free time for television.  So on those days you don’t feel like writing, you can rationalize not writing by telling yourself that you would never finish the book anyway.

So if you want to develop your grit, then you need to focus on two things.  Exercising a little self-control and developing a little self-confidence.

I am going to try and help you with your self-confidence.  Sometimes all we need to know is that someone believes in us.  Well, I believe in you and I believe you are capable to doing whatever you set your mind to.  I will share my rationale, so you don’t think that I am just saying that.  You are here reading this blog.  I do not write about celebrities or sports.  I write about a relatively dry topic, management and leadership.  If you are here reading this, then I have to believe that you have a sincere interest in bettering yourself.  That fact alone makes you exceptional.  Most people don’t have that inner drive.

People that lack grit simply don’t believe that they have the same abilities as successful people.  If you believe that , then you are wrong.  Planning, effort and persistence are what you need to succeed.

There will be bad days that you don’t do what you needed to do.  Shake them off and refocus.  You only fail when you stop trying.

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