Grit: What Ultimately Sets People Apart, at Work and in Learning

When children hit a snag, their reaction in the next few seconds can differ strikingly. Some turn back to it on their own — "let me try once more" — while others stop right there and say "that's enough."

Take a program a child has written that won't run the way they hoped. Some look at the error on the screen and start checking, once more, where it went wrong; others walk away from the screen the moment they realize it isn't working. And this difference does not end with that single moment.

Related to this capacity to keep going without quitting, psychologists study concepts such as "grit" and self-discipline. In a 2005 study, Angela Duckworth and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania found that self-discipline predicted middle schoolers' academic performance roughly twice as strongly as IQ did. It was not raw intelligence but the ability to see things through that most shaped their grades, attendance, and admission to a competitive high school program.

This is not confined to school, or to childhood. At work, too, clear gaps open up between people with roughly the same ability and experience. Some see a task through to a finished form, while others stall at the final details, or when things aren't going well. Often, what separates the people we call "good at their job" from the rest is not raw intelligence or dexterity, but whether they can see things through instead of giving up.

A 2014 study by Duckworth and colleagues, spanning four different settings — the military, the workplace, school, and marriage — likewise found that people with higher grit tended to keep going rather than drop out, in every one of them. That difference remained even after accounting for IQ and personality traits. More than innate ability, it was the capacity to see things through that shaped what came next.

This capacity tends to vary with a child's environment at home and at school. Materials published by Japan's Ministry of Education note a link between grit and a family's socioeconomic environment. In other words, unless it is deliberately nurtured, this gap can stay fixed along with the gap in circumstances that produced it.

The same pattern is now showing up in how people use AI. A 2026 survey by SHIFT AI found that 40.1% of respondents said they were interested in generative AI, but only 4.1% had actually started learning it. There is still a real distance between being interested and actually getting started.

A similar pattern shows up in learning more broadly. A 2025 survey by Bizmates found that 84.4% of working adults who had studied English had experienced giving up at some point, and the single most common reason, cited by 56.5%, was "couldn't manage myself well enough to keep going." Starting is one thing; keeping going is far harder.

Why "Persistence" Tends to Become a Dividing Line in the AI Era

AI has lowered the barrier to getting started — writing, drawing, even building a simple program. But whether someone folds it into a daily habit, and keeps adjusting instead of giving up when it doesn't work, is not something AI can do on their behalf. Even when the same tool is handed to everyone, the gap between those who keep using it and those who stop will likely keep growing.

What Can Be Built From Childhood

Grit is built through accumulated experience, not through results. In that same Bizmates survey, the most commonly cited way to avoid giving up was "setting small, achievable goals" (33.0%). It is the same for children: rather than aiming for a big finished product from the start, the foundation is built by stacking up small goals that are just within reach with a little effort. What parents can do is not rush to evaluate the outcome, but put words to the act itself — "you kept at it" — when a child sticks with something instead of giving up. This is not only relevant for elementary schoolers; middle and high school students can build this capacity starting now as well.

At Digital Kodomo BASE, our programming and computer classes are designed so children can try, fail, and try again. Tracking down why a program won't run, tweaking a project a little, trying an operation that didn't work last time — we put these small do-overs at the center of how children learn with us. The look on a child's face the moment the screen finally does what they intended — after all the frustration — is something we never tire of seeing.

Before "I did it," there is always "let me try once more." The experience of stacking up those small second tries quietly becomes something that supports the child on the day they run into a real wall. We want to be a place that can be there, gently, for that very first try — the one a child makes just as they are about to give up.