I recently finished Angela Duckworth’s book Grit. The book is about, well, grit, what it is, how if affects us and how to have more of it. Grit is the ability to stick with someone for the long term and see it through. There were many things in the book that stuck out to me, but probably the biggest was that follow through is the best predictor of long-term success.

According to Angela, “follow through in high school extracurriculars predicted graduating from college with academic honors better than any other variable.”

Take a second and re-read that quote. The best predictor of a graduating from college with honors is not IQ. It’s not social status. It’s not based on public school, private school or homeschool. The best way to predict if a student will succeed in college is to find out if they had the grit to stick with high school extracurriculars for more than one year. That is amazing.

Sometimes I have this idea that success belongs to the smartest people and that the rest of us just struggle for second. That just isn’t true. Success belongs to people with grit. It is the people that will follow through to the bitter end that succeed. The more gritty a person is, the more likely they are to accomplish something great.