Monday, January 18, 2021

Overheard at Table 2: Grit to Great

 



Grit to Great: How Perseverance, Passion, and Pluck Take You from Ordinary to Extraordinary

by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval


You will know them as the advertising agency behind the AFLAC duck.  There is some interesting bits about them explaining that it was a team effort and took months to finally come up with it.  These things don't just spill out of a person's head in an instant (regardless of what you see in movies, other ads, and self-help guides).

Currently, after reading a few of these books and having worked for over 30 years, what I've observed is that success comes from a mixture of three main factors: Talent, Endurance, and Luck (or, good Fortune/the stars aligning/whatever you wanna call it).  This book focuses on the need for Endurance (or, as they call it, "Grit").

A few notable sections include:

    Page 24: General George S Patton famously defined courage as "fear holding on a minute longer."

    Page 26: World-renowned cellist Pablo Casals, asked the age of ninety-three why he continued to practice three hours a day, replied, "I'm beginning to notice some improvement."

    Page 28: The quote that opens Chapter Two" "Talent is cheaper than table salt.  What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work." - Stephen King

    Page 36: A passage focusing on Dave Thomas says that "He would quote [his] Grandma Minnie's sage advice decades later, after he had become a grandfather himself, 'Hard work is good for the soul,' she would say, 'and it keeps you from feeling sorry for yourself, because you don't have time.'"



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