Curiosity leads you to wonder, passion leads you to act, and grit keeps you curious and passionate long after the initial burst of interest or excitement.
What qualities are the greatest predictors of future success? According to Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google: “The combination of persistence and curiosity is a very good predictor of employee success in a knowledge economy.”
His thoughts pair nicely with now nearly 10-year-old talk. from Angela Lee Duckworth titled: Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. She studied kids and adults in a variety of challenging settings, and in every study, her question was, who is successful here and why? She described her findings this way: “In all those very different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't IQ. It was grit.”
Interesting that one of the most successful commercial enterprises and an academic researcher came to a similar conclusion on what leads people to future success. Passion, curiosity, and perseverance (grit).