Annie Duke

when the book actually goes out into the world, it's like you have just literally opened yourself up to criticism, right?

And you know that being a public figure, right?

Like, that's where it's like, okay, now everybody sees my work, right?

So there's a lot of things that are just like really hard about writing a book.

So I won't write a book unless there's something that's just digging at me.

And what was digging at me in the case of quitting

is that Angela Duckworth has written this wonderful book, wonderful book called Grit, and everybody loves it.

And as I was watching the discourse around grit, what I realized is that people were kind of like what I felt like missing the point of what she was saying.

What she says in that book, Grit, is,

Even if things are hard, if they're worthwhile, it's a good quality to stick to them.

Simple message, right?

Just because it's hard doesn't mean that you should stop.

Being gritty means sticking to hard things when those things are worthwhile.

How would we define worthwhile?

Well, worthwhile might be different for you than me because we have different goals.

But let's broadly say worthwhile means that I am doing something that is going to help me to advance toward my goals.

It's going to help me achieve my goals in alignment with my values.

Let's define worthwhile that way.

Okay, so I think that's an amazing message because I think that's great and it's true.

The problem is that as I saw the discourse around grit, it was just sticking to things is good, full stop, period.