Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Motivation and Emotion
38 (2014): 547–59.
“improvise, adapt, overcome”
:
Michael Martel, 
Improvise, Adapt, Overcome: Achieve the Green Beret Way
(Seattle: Amazon
Digital Services, Inc., 2012).
“made mine wither”
:
Robert Mankoff, 
How About Never—Is Never Good for You?: My Life in Cartoons
(New York: Henry Holt
and Company, 2014), 34.
“I’ve written this book”
:
Syd Hoff, 
Learning to Cartoon
(New York: Stravon Educational Press, 1966), vii.
“How could anyone do more than twenty-seven cartoons?”
:
Mankoff, 
How About Never
, 38.
“I’m the funniest guy you ever met”
:
Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor of the 
New Yorker
, in an interview with the author, February 10,
2015.
“I’m going to be a cartoonist”
:
Mankoff, interview.
“wallpaper my bathroom”
:
Mankoff, 
How About Never
, 44.
“you too were one of the best”
:
Ibid., 46.
“I looked up all the cartoons”
:
Mankoff, interview.
“I had complete confidence”
:
Ibid.

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“things never work out”
:
Mankoff, 
How About Never
, 114.
301 exceptionally accomplished
:
Cox, “Early Mental Traits.”
“Cox’s First Ten”
:
Ibid., 181. Presented here in alphabetical order by last name.
“with somewhat less persistence”
:
Ibid., 187.
CHAPTER 5: GRIT GROWS
worth our attention
:
Psychologist Steve Heine has done research showing that if you think something is genetic, then you think it is
“natural” and therefore the way things “should be.” For example, if you tell obese people that obesity has a genetic basis, they reduce
their dieting efforts. See Ilan Dar-Nimrod and Steven J. Heine, “Genetic Essentialism: On the Deceptive Determinism of DNA,”
Psychological Bulletin
137 (2011): 800–18. Perhaps people would not have such a knee-jerk reaction if they understood better that
the interplay between genes and the environment is complex and dynamic. The interested reader might find the work of Elliot Tucker-
Drob on this topic especially illuminating; for example, see Daniel A. Briley and Elliot M. Tucker-Drob, “Comparing the
Developmental Genetics of Cognition and Personality Over the Life Span,” 
Journal of Personality
(2015): 1–14.
150 years ago:
Timothy J. Hatton and Bernice E. Bray, “Long Run Trends in the Heights of European Men, 19th–20th Centuries,”
Economics and Human Biology
8 (2010): 405–13.
average is five feet ten inches
:
Alison Moody, “Adult Anthropometric Measures, Overweight and Obesity,” in 
Health Survey for
England 2013
, ed. Rachel Craig and Jennifer Mindell (London: Health and Social Care Information Centre, 2014).
gain of more than six inches
:
Hatton, “Long Run Trends.” Yvonne Schonbeck et al., “The World’s Tallest Nation Has Stopped
Growing Taller: The Height of Dutch Children from 1955 to 2009,” 
Pediatric Research
73 (2013): 371–77.
honesty and generosity
:
See Eric Turkheimer, Erik Pettersson, and Erin E. Horn, “A Phenotypic Null Hypothesis for the Genetics of
Personality,” 
Annual Review of Psychology
65 (2014): 515–40.
Ditto for IQ
:
Richard E. Nisbett et al., “Intelligence: New Findings and Theoretical Developments,” 
American Psychologist
67 (2012):
130–59.
enjoying the great outdoors
:
Niels G. Waller, David T. Lykken, and Auke Tellegen, “Occupational Interests, Leisure Time Interests,
and Personality: Three Domains or One? Findings from the Minnesota Twin Registry.” In