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Nobody outworks someone who loves it
Tom Brady kept wanting to play, and Federer and Djokovic did not want to retire. They are good at it because they love it. Stories of Larry Bird or Steph Curry being the first one in the gym and the last one out come from the same place.
A million people want to be Djokovic, Brady, Curry, or Warren Buffett. If even 0.1 percent of them love it so passionately that they go to bed thinking about it and wake up thinking about it, someone who does not love it to the core cannot compete with that.
Wanting to be rich, famous, or adored is a different fuel. It is ephemeral and transitory, and it can fool a person for a while. It is linear, and the people who truly love the work are on a log scale.
Why does enjoying the work outlast ambition?
Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan developed self-determination theory, which separates intrinsic motivation, doing something for its own satisfaction, from extrinsic motivation, doing it for rewards or approval. Their research linked intrinsic motivation with more persistence and with better performance on tasks that call for creativity. In a 1973 study by Mark Lepper and colleagues, preschoolers who were promised a reward for drawing later spent less time drawing on their own than children who were not. The theory has since been tested in schools, workplaces, and sports.
How did Duckworth's research measure grit?
In a 2007 paper, psychologist Angela Duckworth and colleagues defined grit as perseverance and passion for long-term goals. They measured it with a questionnaire that asks people how much statements about persistence and consistent interests describe them. Grit scores predicted which West Point cadets finished the demanding summer training known as Beast Barracks. They also predicted how far students advanced in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, beyond the other measures the researchers checked.
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