Dr. Angela Duckworth

He has said, they don't give me a 10 out of 10.

They give me eight out of 10.

But if you rack up a lot of 8 out of 10s, if you don't miss any 8 out of 10s, if you come every day and you do your 8 out of 10, wow, you can become really special.

So when I began to study gritty individuals and I expected them to be 11 out of 10 on enthusiasm or 11 out of 10 on effort at all times, that's not what I found.

Like Bob Bowman, I found that they are consistent.

They don't take days off and they don't...

Well, they do fall off the horse sometimes.

And by the way, they do cry and they get disappointed and they doubt themselves, but they get back on.

And I think consistency is really the heart and soul of grit.

So you got to figure out... Like what?

Okay.

Okay.

So like...

Michael Phelps did actually spend apparently like 10 years with 365 days a year without taking a day off for Christmas, without taking a day off for his birthday or New Year's or New Year's Eve.

That's unusual.

And I think any athletic trainer would tell you that days off are a good thing.

So I don't want to say that there's anything magic about seven out of seven or 365 out of 365.

But most of us can look at the project that we're trying to do.

Uh-huh.

And tell ourselves, like, this is what consistency is.