No, not Grit magazine – although I highly recommend it if, like me, you like to dream about having a wonderful little farm.
I’m at a conference for work listening to a keynote by Angela Duckworth. I’ve been familiar with her work for a number of years because it has been very prevalent in the student success circles I’m active in.
She started with a couple of statements that are indicators of grit, such as “I am a hard worker.” But then moved to some that were less obvious, such as having persistent interests that span years or remaining invested and committed during a project that takes longer than 3 months.
Immediately, I thought, “oh no, maybe I’m not as gritty as I thought.” I love starting projects. But I’m always thinking about what’s next. I’m impatient – once a project starts I am anxious for it to finish and want it to do so as quickly as possible. This is especially true at work – just ask my development team who have to put up with me constantly asking, “Does it really take that long to do it?”
I’m a big fan of the Gallup StrengthsFinder. My top 5 strengths are: Strategic, Competitive, Achiever, Activator, Futuristic. There are definitely some strengths in those first few that drive me to complete things, but those last two mean that I love to think about the future and get things started. Maybe not the strongest indicators of grit.
But then I realized – gardening and beekeeping – the things that give me physical grit in life may also be contributing to my emotional grit. When a stranger asks me, “do you love what you do?” as Duckworth asks, my answer for gardening is “Oh my god, yes.” I can talk about gardening and beekeeping for hours (which is not always appreciated by those I’m conversing with).
These are things I stay invested in year over year. Gardening is never instant gratification. Especially relevant to me right now as we plan to plant apple trees in our front yard that won’t fruit for years or immediately after I’ve planted blackberry bushes that won’t yield anything until next year. Sometimes, it’s a long term investment.
And even for the things that grow more quickly, the return is variable. Sometimes you do everything right and your yield is poor or nonexistent. Sometimes you do everything wrong and you end up with more tomatoes than you know what to do with.
For someone like me, that’s an important lesson. It’s grounding. It’s gritty.
So, I guess the moral is: You should garden! Your kids should garden! Everyone should garden! It makes us better people.