I wish I had written this article. It’s timeless, fascinating, entertaining, and applicable. The concept “grit” crossed my mind daily for months after I first read this, and still frequently comes up in my thoughts. Read this if you want to view excellence and execution in a new light.
It’s the single most famous story of scientific discovery: in 1666, Isaac Newton was walking in his garden outside Cambridge, England – he was avoiding the city because of the plague – when he saw an apple fall from a tree. The fruit fell straight to the earth, as if tugged by an invisible force. (Subsequent versions of the story had the apple hitting Newton on the head.) This mundane observation led Newton to devise the concept of universal gravitation, which explained everything from the falling apple to the orbit of the moon.
There is something appealing about such narratives. They reduce the scientific process to a sudden epiphany: There is no sweat or toil, just a new idea, produced by a genius. Everybody knows that things fall – it took Newton to explain why.
Unfortunately, the story of the apple is almost certainly false; Voltaire probably made it up.
Excellent article on grit! I tried to take the grit quiz, but it required feedback from other people before it would give you a rating. Too much work, in my opinion. Does that mean I have a grit problem?