The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 23 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Duckworth: Teaching grit cannot fix severe systemic educational barriers
“If you are asking questions about, like, you know, underachievement and, you know, closing the achievement gap, etc., and you know, the antidote that's offered is like, well, we should teach kids about growth mindset and grit and agency. Then you might be over…”
Duckworth: Most unconscious thoughts can be made conscious, refuting Freud
“Freud was like, you'll never know. It's under the floorboards, and you can't pry open the floorboards in the basement of your mind. I think that this dialogue that happens below the surface of consciousness can be raised, most of it, To conscious awareness”
Duckworth: Most people satisfice, while top performers maximize without end
“I think that satisficing is a description of most people, and maximizing without end is, is a description of the people that I study.”
Duckworth: Develop passions through iterative experimentation rather than following them
“I would say to you, like, if you change the verb from follow to develop, right, it gives you a little bit of a clue as to what you need to do, which is you need to like Start dating some things, right? And then like, you know, go on a second date with the ones…”
Angela Duckworth: Situation modification improves goal attainment more than willpower
“What we found is that the condition that increased academic Goal attainment best was the one where you just explained to kids like, hey, you can modify your situation.”
Duckworth: Overcoming difficult struggles is the primary source of human confidence
“The number one thing is that people develop confidence When they have struggled to overcome something and they have come out victorious.”
Duckworth: Mischel found cross-situational behavioral correlations top out around 0.3
“The correlation that he observed across situations had like a maximum of about .3. And sometimes people call this like the .3 ceiling, right? So if I observe somebody at home versus at work, you know, the correlation in a data set of lots of people who are obs…”
Duckworth: Personality and situation reciprocally shape and reinforce each other
“What really your personality and your situation are like, it's like a conversation where the personality of the person actually changes the situation. You know, conscientious people, like, select into jobs that require conscientiousness, but then the situation…”
Duckworth: Elite athletes like Kobe and Brady intentionally maintain underdog mindsets
“Some of the most successful people, right? Like the you know, people like Kobe Bryant, like were able to maintain an underdog mindset or even Tom Brady, right? Long past the time where they, you could actually legitimately say that you're an underdog. They are…”
Duckworth: Teaching situation modification outperforms willpower for student goal attainment
“So in that study, there was a control group that learned about willpower and how important it is to, like, you know, use willpower to accomplish your goals, and then there was a neutral control group, and what we found is that the condition that increased acad…”
Duckworth: People who actively seek feedback will reliably resolve their own problems
“Shane, I really truly believe that if somebody is eager for feedback, actively solicits feedback, tries to listen to the feedback, learn something from feedback. Those are the people I never worry about, right? Like, I've had students where they're like, reall…”
Duckworth: Apparent laziness in kids often stems from lacking small mastery wins
“And if your kid is like driving you nuts because they are not taking risks and they seem to be, you know, afraid of failure and that, by the way, that sometimes looks like laziness, right? Even though it's underneath the surface, not at all laziness. Ask yours…”
Duckworth: Young people struggle more with direction than determination
“And I find that many, many young people are struggling much more with the direction in their life than the determinations. That they need to bring to that pursuit.”
Duckworth: Pursue work that feels effortless to you but drudgery to others
“So, so the idea of doing things that are playful for you, but drudgery for others in my class, the passion section of my grit lab course is called choose easy. And then there's another section called work hard, but I think that, you know, doing something that …”
Duckworth: People quit either from lost goal value or lost confidence
“So if you ask the question, like, when do people quit? I think it's either because they, the value of the goal goes down for whatever reason, or their belief that they can achieve it.”
Duckworth: 10,000-hour rule stems from a single study of German musicians
“That number comes from a single study of German musicians at a music academy where the highest performing musicians had done on average about 10,000 hours of practice. The next most expert group was 5000, and the group below that, I believe, was like 2500.”
Duckworth: Deliberate practice requires intention, total concentration, and feedback
“So the high quality practice that Anders called deliberate practice had these three essential elements, any of which being missing, then you're not doing deliberate practice in Anders' view. The first is that there's this Kind of like hyper intentionality abou…”
Duckworth: Highly successful people usually have a few inviolable rules
“The reason I'm studying it is because I do think that very successful people have usually a small number of fairly inviolable rules and also habits.”
Duckworth: Fitbit study found no benefit to strict always-or-never goals
“So I will say this too, in the small amount of research I've done, cause we randomly assigned people to, for example, set a rule about how many steps they were going to take. And you know, these are Fitbit users that we Had recruited because they already had a…”
Duckworth: Personal rules probably work only when self-authored, not assigned
“I think that the rule on rules is probably that you should make up your own rules as opposed to like somebody exogenously handing you one.”
Duckworth: Decisions follow either logic of consequence or logic of appropriateness
“When you are operating according to logic consequence, the three questions are, what are the costs? What are the benefits? What are the probabilities? When you are operating according to the logic of appropriateness, the three questions are, what situation is …”
Duckworth: Elite performers continuously use coaches and therapists throughout their lives
“Most of the people that I study, like they never get out of being mentored, you know, like they have a management coach, they have like a personal coach, they have a therapist.”
Duckworth: Unpredictable trauma induces learned helplessness and depression
“The key is that if they experience these traumas in an unpredictable way, with, like, you know, you don't know when it's gonna end, you don't know the next thing's gonna happen, that's when you actually get, you know, the symptoms of depression and giving up.”