Blog

In this article, Jessica Lackey explains the difference between grit and grind to help you improve your performance.

I talk about “growing without the grind” for individuals and businesses, and in my talks I sometimes reference magic, manifestation, and the power of recovery. How we can make leaps forward without it being a consistent, unrelenting slog.

So I usually get one question.

“I don’t believe in The Secret, the idea that you can just believe it and it will come true.”

And I agree.

I believe that no progress comes without a combination of beliefs and thoughts AND intentional action.

But, there’s a difference in the quality of action.

Intentional action during the messy middle where success isn’t immediately apparent….

Versus extractive action designed to keep you hustling, overwhelmed, grasping and burned out.

I call this Grit versus Grind.

What is grit?

Grit is defined by Angela Duckworth as “passion and perseverance for long term goals. It’s not talent. It’s not luck. It’s having an ‘ultimate concern’ – a goal you care about so much that it organizes and gives meaning to almost everything you do. And grit is holding steadfast to that goal.”

I want to add one element: I define grit as operating in accordance to your mission and your values, even when it’s inconvenient to your comfort. (But not when it’s threatening to your actual or perceived sense of safety.)

If you have a value like mine of sustainability, then grit doesn’t mean sacrificing that sustainability in service of short-term, “expected” results that will just lead to a crash later. But it does mean stretching outside of my comfort zone to stay true to the mission.

In contrast, the grind is about sacrificing your values for urgency, perfection, productivity and ultimately external definitions of success.

It’s about treating our bodies and businesses like machines, and getting caught up in the never-ending grind of the machinery.

It’s about running so hard for results that we crash and burn – ourselves, our teams, our communities.

It’s about succumbing to the performative nature of business, setting aside your values and needs in service to the expectations of a company or societal system.

I remember the long nights and high anxiety of obsessing over a powerpoint for weeks… knowing that nothing we changed would impact the output or even get discussed.

Key points include:

• Intention and recovery
• Avoiding action
• External pressures

Read the full article, Are you Operating from Grit or Grind?, on LinkedIn.