Be Tenacious At The Right Level of Your Goal Hierarchy
After a decade of research uncovering the drivers of success and achievement, the psychologist Angela Duckworth published her findings in Grit: Why Passion And Resilience Are The Secrets To Success. It went on to become a worldwide best-seller, sparking local and international interest in her study of “grit” and its linkage to high achievement. “Grit,” as she described, is a human trait evident in highly successful individuals such as Olympic athletes, Nobel laureates, and visionary, high-stakes entrepreneurs. Ferociously determined, hardworking, and resilient in their quest to reach a particular goal, individuals with high levels of “grit” persevere through their journey despite the sacrifices, the uncertainties, the distractions, the competing interests, and the reasons to give up. Her research, however, led to misconceptions among readers. Many interpreted “grit” as a static, immovable trait—something you have or don’t. Instead, Duckworth explained, “grit” is a dynamic interaction between a person and their “top-level goal,” which is “something that might take years or decades or a lifetime, but which is for them worth pursuing at the cost of other more novel directions.” She contrasts this to “low-level,” tactical goals that define our everyday actions—I want to get out the door today by eight a.m. I want to call my business partner back. I want to finish writing the email I started yesterday. “These low-level goals exist merely as a means to an end,” Duckworth wrote. “We want to accomplish them only because they get us something else we want,” that is, the high-level goals. “The common mistake,” she said, “is to think that ‘grit’ is about being tenacious about the [low-level goals]… It’s really about being tenacious at the top level of your goal hierarchy. And then, being flexible and able to shift or give up easily on lower-level things.” “The secret of applying ‘grit’ correctly,” she concludes, “is to be tenacious at the right level of your goal hierarchy.”
Top-level goals, low-level goals, shuffling through the goal hierarchies—that’s the idea for today.
I Would Go All In
When he was in high school, Paul Rabil’s coach told him that if he could clock a hundred practice shots a day, eventually, he’d get offered a chance to play Division 1 lacrosse. Which was exactly what Rabil did. He earned himself a full scholarship to play at John Hopkins University, going on to win two national championships and earn All-America honours for all four years in college. Despite being one of the oldest sports in history, however, lacrosse is considered nothing more than a “fringe” sport—an unconventional, less mainstream but emerging sport that isn’t part of the common establishment, but still demands the physical and mental capacities of traditional sports. They do not carry the prospects of million-dollar salaries, big endorsement deals, large fanbases, or national TV broadcasts. Most games are played in smaller, lesser-known college stadiums, with just a couple of dozen fans in the stands, and a clear-enough video stream for anyone wanting to catch the game remotely. Bill Belichick, at the time the head coach of NFL’s New England Patriots, thought Rabil was wasted talent. With prior success in converting athletes from one sport to another, and having played lacrosse when he himself was younger, “I told Paul he could be a strong safety in the NFL,” Belichick said. “I thought he had the size, the speed, and the toughness” to transfer his skills into the NFL. In the end, Rabil was given two options: cross over to the NFL and have the chance to “define the pinnacle of a sport,” or stick to lacrosse, his original, first love. “Everything worth anything in life comes at a sacrifice,” Belichick said. How much was Rabil willing to sacrifice? Millions of dollars? Super Bowl titles? Fame and prestige of being an NFL player? Or the call to be the greatest lacrosse player of all time? “I would go all in on lacrosse,” Paul writes in The Way of The Champion. “This was my path.” This was the top-level goal. And with his commitment and perseverance to the sport, Rabil went on to win multiple championships and MVP awards, two gold medals with Team USA, ten All-Star teams, and the all-time record for career points in pro lacrosse. In 2018, he founded the Premier Lacrosse League, which has a major media rights deal with ESPN, pays its athletes full-time salaries, and has many prolific investors backing it. And because of his unwavering commitment to his top-level goal, Rabil raised “the sport’s ceiling so that today’s lacrosse players can take their talents further than was possible when he was playing.”
Madame Butterfly
This is not to say that the low-level, tactical goals are any less important. Take, for instance, three-time Olympic gold medalist Mary T. Meagher. From a young age, everyone knew that Meagher’s top-level goal in life was to break the 200 Meter Butterfly world record. In order to accomplish that goal, she made two fundamental changes to her practice routine. First, she would never again be late for a training session. Second, during these training sessions, she would treat each one as if it were an actual Olympic race. While it’s common for most athletes to train more casually in practice than in competition, this attitude, Meagher realised, would jeopardise her top-level goal. In reality, adjusting these low-level habits would have little or no noticeable impact. But by sticking to it despite the mundaneness and frustration of the day-to-day, she was unconsciously making herself a little better than those around her, compounding into an unbeatable force of an athlete. In 1981, at the U.S. Swimming National Championships, 17-year-old Meagher broke the world records in both the 100- and 200-Meter butterfly events. At the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, at 19 years old, she clinched gold in both the 100 Meter and 200 Meter. She then went on to claim her third gold in the butterfly leg of the women’s 4x100m medley. On top of her Olympic gold medals, Meagher won two gold medals at that year’s World Championships, making it her ninth World Championships gold medal in her career thus far, surpassing her original top-level goal. Widely regarded as, without a doubt, the greatest female butterfly swimmer to grace the pool, Meagher earned herself the name “Madame Butterfly.”
I Just Want The Burger
Like Meagher, from the outset, John Mayer knew he wanted to be a musician. He wanted to play the guitar and to write songs, to perform in a stadium full of people. But he always felt stuck because, like most people in life, he had to do stuff that was unrelated to his top-level goal. He had to go to school. He had to work odd jobs. He had to consistently bear the grunt of listening to people criticise him for having stupid, unambitious goals. “Pick another career,” they said, for the odds of a kid from a small suburban town making it as a world-class musician were never in his favour. And yet, he was absolutely set on his top-level goal. “It was like going to a restaurant,” Mayer said, “and the waiter is reading the specials, going on and on, and you’re thinking, ‘I already know what I want. I don’t want that. I don’t want to hear about the lobster and how it’s cooked and put back in the shell. I just want the burger.’ I knew what I wanted. I wanted to go do this music thing. So that was actually one of the hardest times of my life—to have to be 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, when I knew exactly what I wanted to be doing instead. That was really tough.” But the reality is, Mayer said, we have to start somewhere. We have to grind through the low-level, tactical things that can bring us towards our top-level goal. Fast forward to 2008, in a concert in front of a sold-out stadium, before performing his song Wheel, Mayer told the audience, “I’ve had this guitar since I was nineteen years old. I was nineteen, and I worked at a gas station. I bought this guitar with the money that I made working at the gas station. And I remember saying one night when I was holding this guitar in my bedroom, ‘I know that I’m going to keep playing you in this room, and someday, I know that I’m going to play you in a sold-out stadium.’”
They Focus On The Wrong Things
It’s not that we aren’t ambitious. It’s not that we don’t have any aspiration to succeed. It’s not that we aren’t aware of the goal hierarchies that form the structures of our life. But it’s a common mistake to allocate equal importance to every single thing that seems related to the top-level goal. Using stand-up comedians who struggle to start out as an example, Carmichael said, “They focus on the wrong things. There are a lot of aspiring comedians who aren’t funny or don’t have stage presence, but they have excellent websites… shiny business cards, and their headshots are impeccable. And who gives a damn about those things? You know what I mean? They focus on the wrong things.” What about those who go far and succeed? They do things differently. Their top-level goals are cast into the back of their minds while they manoeuvre through the day-to-day mundanity of life. I’ll complete one hundred practice shots a day. I’ll change my attitude and treat this like the real thing. I hate my part-time job, but I have to do it because I have to start somewhere, because it brings me closer to my top-level goal. “I think that’s all it is,” Carmichael said. “They focus on the work. On the content. On creating something of substance.”
