Is Grit Overrated? (Part 1)

TL;DR: When it comes to achievement, the talent narrative has been usurped by the gospel of grit, but even that paints an incomplete picture and can lead to a misguided life strategy. Further complicating the endeavor to achieve more is the natural order of things to drift towards the average. I believe it’s not just about raw talent or even how insanely hard your work, but where you live. In short: Reference Groups > Grit > Talent

In Part Two of this series, I talk about leveraging reference groups in order to raise your benchmark.

Wishes of the Dying

“I wish I would have achieved more” is definitely not one of the oft cited wishes of the dying. To check, I did a survey of articles and YouTube videos on wishes of the dying (it’s a popular topic), such as from and , and the following are the top five that come up for what people wish they would have done as they approach the end of life:

1. Work less. “I wish I’d spent more time on Slack!” said no one.
2. Pursued my dreams / be myself. Not “I wish I’d been more like Karen from accounting.”
3. Spent more time with family. Shocking: loved ones > TPS reports.
4. Told my loved ones that I loved them more. Apparently, grunting while passing the potatoes doesn’t count as emotional expression.
5. Not worried so much. That anxiety you’re feeling about your presentation? Nobody will remember it in 3 days, let alone on your (or their) deathbed.

Runner ups included:

• Stayed in touch with friends. Yeah your college roommate still wonders why you ghosted them.
• Been kinder to myself. That voice in your head is a jerk. Tell it to shut up.
• Taken better care of my health. Turns out “sleep when you’re dead” is terrible health advice.
• Lived more in the moment. Instagram doesn’t count as “experiencing life.”
• Taken more risks and been more courageous. Your comfort zone is cozy but boring.

But yet so many of us find meaning and validation in achievement. While it may be in vogue to be stoic and say that you don’t care about achievement, it is neither productive, practical, nor hopeful for many of us, especially when it comes to our kids.

But Kids.

If you’re awesome, then the likelihood that your kids will be equally or more awesome is low. If you have fancy degrees from now-impossible-to-get-into schools, make a lot of money, have amazing party tricks, have enlightened life values, etc. then chances are, your kids will probably be fine but not necessarily as awesome as you. They will likely be above average but also having outlier performance like their parents is unlikely. Inversely, if you suck, the chances that your kids will suck even worse or just as bad is analogously lower than random.

So if we will all inexorably march down the generations on the path towards being average, should we just cool it with the over-parenting? There is a ready supply of short videos and memes that talk about how we cannot engineer our children.

But achievement matters to a lot of us and end of life regrets can wait. However, the narrative on how we get there is confused.

The Talent vs. Grit Cage Match: Round 1

Two competing narratives duke it out in the human achievement octagon. In the red corner, wearing genetic determinism trunks: RAW TALENT! In the blue corner, sporting a “no pain, no gain” tattoo: GRIT!

The traditional view celebrates raw talent: either you popped out of the womb reciting Shakespeare or you’re destined for a life of mundane mediocrity. Sorry, kid — blame your parents’ subpar DNA cocktail.

Round 2: Humble-Brag Olympics — Silicon Valley and Beyond

In recent years, it’s become more in vogue to cite “grit” as the success explanation. Angela Duckworth’s research defines grit as “passion and perseverance for long-term goals” and argues it predicts achievement better than IQ. Her data shows the “grittiest students — not the smartest ones — had the highest GPAs” at elite universities.

This “grit over talent” gospel has seeped in our culture (not terrible thing) far beyond Silicon Valley. The elite have transformed humble-bragging about their work ethic into a competitive sport:

• Elon Musk: Claims you need “80–100 hour workweeks” to succeed. “You’ll achieve in four months what takes others a year.” Sleeping is apparently for the weak.
• Jeff Bezos: Promotes “Work hard, have fun, make history” while expecting Amazon employees to “wake up every morning terrified” as a motivational technique.
• Dwayne Johnson: The Rock’s motto? “Be humble. Be hungry. And always be the hardest worker in the room.” His famous 4am gym sessions serve as public proof of his dedication.
• Kobe Bryant: The late basketball legend embodied the “Mamba Mentality,” believing that “dedication makes dreams come true” while famously outworking everyone on the court.
• Gary Vaynerchuk: The entrepreneur and social media guru constantly preaches hustle culture, telling followers to work evenings and weekends while others “waste time” relaxing.

I mean, they’re not completely wrong. The message is consistent: what separates winners from losers isn’t talent but sheer determination. There’s undeniable appeal in this narrative. After all, the talent story feels elitist and a little too (pre)deterministic for most people’s tastes— you either have it or you don’t. The grit story feels democratic — anyone can succeed through persistence. It aligns perfectly with American mythology about bootstrapping, transforming economic outcomes into a simple matter of personal choice. But often it does feel like hot girls saying that looks don’t matter. Quick shout-out here for a favorite X feed on humblebragging: here’s an appetizer:

Round 3: The Hard Work Myth — When Grinding Gets You Nowhere

The idea that anyone can succeed with enough elbow grease makes for nice inspirational posters, but reality tells a different story:

• First-Generation College Students: Despite equal intelligence and work ethic, students without college-educated parents face unique challenges. Research shows even highly talented individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds struggle with cultural barriers, lack of networks, and fewer opportunities to gain the “soft skills” valued in professional settings.
• Inner-City Teachers: Dedicated educators working 70-hour weeks in underserved communities often burn out without seeing systemic change, while their counterparts in affluent districts enjoy better resources, parent support, and student outcomes with the same effort.
• Immigrant Workers: Recent immigrants often face significant “occupational gaps” despite tremendous work ethic, taking years to overcome language barriers and adjust to new environments. Their children typically see much better outcomes with the same work ethic.
• Rural Entrepreneurs: Ambitious small business owners in economically depressed regions lack access to capital, markets, and infrastructure that their urban counterparts take for granted, despite working just as hard or harder.

Recent surveys reveal most people recognize this reality. The UK’s Social Mobility Commission found only 35% of adults believe everyone has a fair chance to go as far as their hard work will take them, while 46% believe where you end up is mainly determined by your background and parents.

This isn’t to say talent and grit don’t matter — they absolutely do. They’re probably necessary, but definitely not sufficient.

Thou Shalt Be Average

Here I want to note that there is a natural, mathematical law that governs our destinies: regression to the mean. This phenomenon occurs because of mathematics and probability theory — specifically the Central Limit Theorem (the “CLT” — lots of Medium posts on that like and ).

The CLT states that “given a sufficiently large sample size, the sampling distribution of the mean for a variable will approximate a normal distribution regardless of that variable’s distribution in the population”. This mathematical principle applies not just to statistics but to companies and industries as well.

Examples from the Corporate Graveyard of Innovation

We see this at play in companies. No matter how awesome and dominant companies start, no matter how fiery their culture is that drives innovation, they eventually become average. Consider these cautionary tales of corporate regression:

• Kodak: Invented the first digital camera then refused to develop it because it might hurt their film business. Bankruptcy: the ultimate photo finish.
• Nokia: Dominated mobile phones with 50% market share but clung to hardware while software ate the world. Snake game: 1, Nokia: 0.
• Blockbuster: Turned down the chance to buy Netflix for $50 million because people would “always want to drive to a store to rent movies.” Spoiler alert: they didn’t.
• BlackBerry: Refused to abandon physical keyboards while touchscreens conquered the world. Turns out thumbs aren’t as important as they thought.
• Xerox: Invented the personal computer at PARC but failed to commercialize it, essentially gifting the future to Apple and Microsoft. The original “you had one job” company.
• Sears: Once the Amazon of its day with a revolutionary catalog business but failed to adapt to modern retail. From “The Everything Store” to “The Nothing Store.”

The pattern is clear: companies may still thrive financially despite regression but that distinctive spark that made them revolutionary often dims. They become more risk-averse, more process-oriented, and less willing to cannibalize their cash cows for future growth opportunities. Innovation is replaced by meetings about innovation, and revolutionary thinking gives way to PowerPoint presentations about revolutionary thinking.

Example from Generational Wealth

A lawyer friend works in private wealth management for a big bank and his life revolves around designing trusts and other novel structures for the rich to e̶v̶a̶d̶e̶ optimize taxes. He says for the vast majority of families he services, wealth generally lasts three generations, at least in the US. This might have something to do with our heavy estate tax, the so-called “death tax.” So:

Strong men → easy times → weak men → tough times → strong men

This concept, popularized by , suggests a cyclical view of history where prosperity breeds complacency which leads to decline, until hardship forges resilience again. And the cycle accelerated with taxes, slowed or stopped only by with enduring values. *Footnotes for a near counter example from Italy.

Doomed?

From financial gravity / behavioral economics to mathematical laws, are we just doomed to be average over the generations? Should we just take up stoicism to feel better about ourselves? “Yes, I know my great-grandfather was a titan of industry, and I’m a part-time dog walker, but Seneca says material success is meaningless anyway…”

In the next part of this post series, I cover leveraging reference groups to level up, though it does involve being comfortable with being the dumbest in the room.

Footnotes

Italians, wealth,and estate taxes
* I thought the Italians must have figured out something we didn’t because the wealthiest families in Florence from the 1400s are still the wealthiest families in Florence today. According to a study by economists Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti from the Bank of Italy, who compared tax records from 1427 and 2011, the same families that were at the top of the socioeconomic ladder in Renaissance Florence remain the top earners today, nearly 600 years later.

Strong Italian family values. The Corleoene Code of Conduct. Catholic values. Maybe, but my guess is it has something to do with the fact that their estate tax is 7x lower. Their estate tax rate is capped at about 8% compared to our 40% for the wealthiest.