Dr. Angela Duckworth

But Anders, who passed away five years ago, to his dying day, wanted the world to know that it's not just the quantity of practice, it was the quality of what those musicians were doing.

Not just quantity, but quality.

So when I talk about this second stage in the evolution of Paragon of Grit, and by the way, Anders and I did a lot of research together.

What we found was that this kind of high-quality practice where you have a goal, usually something that you're weak at, you completely concentrate on trying to get better at it.

You have like a mental picture of what you want to do, but you can't do it yet.

And then you try really hard, mentally or physically, depending on what you are trying to do.

And then you get feedback on what you did well, maybe what you didn't do quite as well as you need to.

I hate that part.

That's the part that stings.

I hate that part.

That's the hard part, right?

Because your ego is screaming.

And then you do it over and over again.

That's the high-quality practice.

When you look at the thousands of hours of practice that a lot of us do, including myself, when I met Anders, I was like, wait, I don't know if I believe this.

Because I've been running, if I tabulate all the hours I had jogged in my life, I was like, I should be Usain Bolt.

And he was like, well, do you have a goal?

And I was like, never.

Never.

He was like, do you practice with complete effort and concentration?