Book Notes: Grit

We are told that success comes down to talent, discipline, or luck.

Angela Duckworth’s Grit suggests something quieter… and harder.

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance is often summarized as a book about “trying harder.” That description misses the point. Grit is really about how people relate to effort over time: how sustained engagement with difficulty shapes performance, identity, and growth. Read through the lens of eustress, Duckworth’s work becomes especially instructive.

Not all pressure breaks us. Some pressure builds us.

Effort as the multiplier

One of Duckworth’s most cited ideas is her simple but provocative framework:

Talent × Effort = Skill

Skill × Effort = Achievement

Effort appears twice. Not because talent doesn’t matter, but because effort is the factor we repeatedly engage with stress.

This is where eustress enters the picture. Effort doesn’t happen in the absence of pressure. It happens because of it. The right level of challenge (clear goals, meaningful stakes, and manageable difficulty) creates the conditions where effort becomes sustainable rather than exhausting.

Passion and long-term pressure

Duckworth defines grit as the combination of passion and perseverance over long periods of time. That combination matters.

Short bursts of stress can be motivating. Long-term pressure without meaning becomes distress. But pressure in service of something you care about is different. It sharpens focus. It encourages persistence. It makes difficulty feel purposeful rather than punitive.

This is a recurring theme in eustress.

The same external demand can feel energizing or debilitating depending on how it’s framed, chosen, and managed.

Deliberate practice and constructive stress

Much of Grit draws from research on deliberate practice: focused, effortful work designed to improve performance. Deliberate practice is not comfortable. It requires feedback, repetition, and attention to errors.

But it also requires the right kind of stress.

Too little pressure and practice stagnates.

Too much pressure and practice collapses into anxiety or avoidance.

Between those extremes is eustress: challenge that stretches without overwhelming.

Duckworth’s examples—from athletes to musicians to students—illustrate this balance repeatedly, even if the term eustress is never used explicitly.

A necessary caveat

Grit has been criticized, often rightly, for underemphasizing structural factors like access, privilege, and opportunity. Perseverance alone does not guarantee success, and not all obstacles are equally surmountable.

Still, within those constraints, Duckworth offers something valuable: a way to think about how effort interacts with pressure, and how resilience is built through repeated, intentional engagement with difficulty.

Why Grit belongs in Eustressed

Read carefully, Grit is not a celebration of suffering. It’s an argument for meaningful struggle: for choosing challenges that are hard enough to matter, but not so hard that they destroy motivation.

That’s the heart of eustress.

Pressure is not the enemy.

Unchosen, unmanaged pressure is.

If you want to read the book

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, Eustressed earns from qualifying purchases.

You can find Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth here:

👉 Grit on Amazon