After the seedbop, it’s about the slog to the finish line – the cutting-edge artwork, the ground-breaking solution to a complex and thorny problem, the innovation that sets you ahead of your competitors. Even those of us who aren’t going to become MacArthur geniuses or viral Ted Talk speakers need the grit to fulfill our destiny.
“Why were the highly accomplished so dogged in their pursuits? For most, there was no realistic expectation of ever catching up to their ambitions. In their own eyes, they were never good enough. Each was changing something of unparalleled interest and importance, and it was the chase – as much as the capture – that was gratifying. Even if some of the things they had to do were boring, frustrating, or even painful, they wouldn’t dream of giving up. Their passion was enduring. … They knew in a very deep way what it was they wanted. They not only had determination, they had direction. … In a word, they had grit.” – Angela Duckworth, THE grit researcher, in Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
Before you start yawning and feeling exhausted, here’s the thing. You, too, can develop this quality. And you’re not too old to start.
The incredible story of Dr. Raymond Davis, Father of solar neutrino detection through the personification of true grit. His story from Nature.com:
Dr. Davis was fascinated by the idea that a neutrino – a minuscule could be captured and counted. His first efforts failed. After decades of scientific work, Davis began spending 15 hours a day underground at Homestake Gold Mine in South Dakota. For 20 years. By doing so, he helped discover something unexpected in particle physics.
He was 53 when this new experiment began. When the data started coming in, “Davis’s measurements were about a third of what was predicted. In spite of more refined calculations and more data, the discrepancy remained. Dubbed the ‘solar neutrino problem,’ it persisted for 20 years. Davis and his experiment remained in the crosshairs the entire time. He was challenged repeatedly — about efficiencies, chemical traps, pump changes, and the like — but he faced all questioners with his trademark candor, graciousness, and wit. He brought technical precision and thoroughness to his answers, recounting the many careful, quantitative tests he had performed to address each concern. He had deep humility, but also quiet confidence in his experimental skills — which were formidable.”
In the end, new tests showed Davis was right. He was 73. “Neutrinos from the Sun were changing ‘flavor’ en route to Earth. This unexpected result meant that neutrinos, formerly thought to be massless, necessarily had some — a finding that required revision of the standard model of particle physics and gave these mysterious messengers a mass on a par with all visible matter in the Universe.”
Davis persisted for 20 years when peers told him his work had failed, that he was wasting his time. He trusted he was on the right track. In 2002, at 88, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Due to his declining health, the King of Sweden came in person to give him “the gold that Davis had never sought, never mined for.”
“Although people value grit and persistence – or at least we say we do – we don’t admire these traits, at least not in the same way that we admire acts of radical genius. In fact, most of us see perseverance as a distinctly uncreative approach, the sort of strategy that people with mediocre ideas are forced to rely on. .. The reality of the creative process is that it often requires persistence, the ability stare at a problem until it makes sense. It’s forcing oneself to pay attention, to write all night, and then fix those words in the morning. … The answer won’ arrive suddenly, in a flash of insight. Instead, it will be revealed slowly, gradually emerging after great effort.” … The imagination, it turns out, is multifaceted. … We can’t always wait for the insights to find us: sometimes, we have to search for them.
Furthermore, even if a person is lucky enough to experience a useful epiphany, that new idea is rarely the end of the creative process. The sobering reality is that the grandest revelations often still need to work. The new idea – that thirty-millisecond bursts of gamma waves – has to be refined, the rough drafts of the right hemisphere transformed into a finished piece of work. Such labor is rarely funded, but it’s essential.”
And final words from graphic designer Milton Glaser: “There is no such thing as a creative type as if creative people can just show up and make stuff up. As if it were that easy. I think people need to be reminded that creativity is a very time-consuming verb. It’s about taking an idea in your head and transforming that idea into something real. And that’s always going to be a long and difficult process. If you’re doing it right, it will feel like work.”
Gratifying work, but work.
Photo by Kayvan Mazhar on Unsplash
1 https://www.nature.com/articles/442150a
2 Jonah Lehrer. Imagine: How Creativity Works. Houghton, Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. pgs 55-56 Note: Subsequent to the publishing of this book, Mr. Lehrer was found to have fabricated quotes from Bob Dylan. In my opinion, the information he researched and used in this book still has great value and is replicated in creativity research of other authors. I do not include any Bob Dylan quotes Lehrer wrote.
3 Ibid. pg 69
