Gritty People Stick to One Thing. Creative People Change Their Minds.
Why creativity requires persistence—but not unwavering interests
The idea of grit is as American as the proverbial apple pie. The American dream myth is based on the premise that dogged hard work is what makes that dream come true. We tell our children that everything is possible. If they can imagine it and work on it, we can make it happen.
So, surely, creative people are gritty. Right?
Let’s start with step one. Defining what we mean.
What is grit?
Grit as a psychological attribute is a combination of consistency of interests and persistence.
Imagine a child who wants to play soccer. They get started, go to practice for a couple of weeks, and seem to excited about all things soccer. Then, one weekend they don’t feel like it. The following week they skip another practice. And then another. They don’t wanting to do soccer any more. Now they want to try tennis.
You have seen this before. Last year they tried track and volleyball. Losing interest in each.
In other words, there is no consistency in their interests, no stick-with-it-ness, no persistence.
By contrast, imagine a child who gets excited about a Spelling Bee. They do well in the competition in their classroom and when the teacher asks them to participate in the school-wide contest, the child decides to study hard for it. And they keep at it, eventually qualifying for the city-wide competition and gearing up for the state Spelling Bee. This is a gritty kid.
Do creative people consistently stay with their interests?
The psychological definition of consistency of interest as a component of grit includes:
- Not getting distracted by new ideas and projects
- Interests not changing from month to month or year to year
- Setting a goal and not changing it along the way
- Not getting obsessed with a certain idea or project for a short time and then losing interest
Does this apply to creative individuals? Well, artists routinely work on multiple pieces at the same time. They abandon some and pursue others. They might even destroy some, literally taking them apart or cutting them into pieces to use a portion of it for something new. Setting a goal, but later choosing to pursue another direction and pursue a different goal is essentially the name of the game.
Writers often describe being surprised by the directions they take. They think they have a plan, but then their characters take them in new directions as if having a mind of their own. In interviews, writers describe starting a story or a book and abandoning it for something else, sometimes coming back to it years later. Again, according to the psychological definition of consistency of interests, these writers would not be considered to fit the bill.
B. F. Skinner, one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, advised scientists to drop whatever they are doing if they come across something interesting.
Research shows that consistency of interest has no relationship with creativity in samples of adolescents and young adults (students in high school and college) See article here. In adult samples, we find that more consistency of interests is related to less creativity. If you want to read the whole article: here.
Teens and young adults might need to stay with an interest long enough to gain experience and expertise that helps build creativity. On the other hand, professionals benefit from diversity of interests that provides material on which to draw inspiration. Staying with a single interest, goal, or idea to the exclusion of others might not provide breadth that can lead to original connections.
Creative individuals do not tend to have consistent interests. They start with one idea and that idea changes on the way of developing and building it. Their goals transform and change directions because they are trying to do something that has not been done before and takes a lot of experimentation.
How persistent are creative people?
This one is easy. Creative people are persistent. Sometimes stubbornly so. Sometimes defying what could be considered reasonable.
The psychological definition of persistence includes:
- Overcoming setbacks to conquer important challenges
- Achieving goals that took years of work
- Being diligent and hardworking
- Finishing what one begins
In a recently published study of more than 500 professionals in different industries, we found that more persistence, predicts greater creative achievement. The same results are found in long-running study in which persistence assessed in college predicted occupational creativity three decades later.
Stories of persistence of creative individuals can go from impressive to dramatic to close to inconceivable. Mathematician Yitang (Tom) Zhang worked on a problem in number theory for years without making much progress. During that time, he was a lecturer at a university, position that did not enable him even to pay everyday living expenses and he had to supplement his income by keeping books at a Subway restaurant. But he continued to work on it and eventually had a breakthrough. This was so important to his field that he went from a lecturer to a full professor overnight and received the MacArthur award colloquially known as “the genius grant”.
Persistence is certainly necessary on the non-genius level of creativity too. In addition to months to years from an idea to study design to data collection, analysis, and writing, scientists often face multiple rounds of peer review when trying to publish their work. The review process takes at least a year and often multiple years during which scientists have to address different, and sometimes inconsistent, lines of feedback. We can tell similar stories about developing a new app or piece of software, launching a business, developing and testing curricula, or virtually any other kind of human endeavor.
So, are creative people gritty? No, not in the psychological sense of the term. Although for many well-defined goals (doing well on a Spelling Bee!) staying with a single interest and persisting on it go together and help achievement, this is not so for creativity. Creative achievement thrives on having wide interests and cross-pollinating from one to another and jumping from one to another. But creative achievement takes time and overcoming obstacles or finding a way out of dead ends. And that takes persistence. Much persistence. Creative individuals are persistent, but not consistent.
Persistence is key to creativity on long-term goals that take ideas, run with them, and transform them into performances and products. But that process is… well, difficult. It takes stamina.
Chapter 7 of The Creativity Choice is specifically about how we can manage emotions in a way that supports persistence.
And Chapter 8 is how to get unstuck when experiencing creative block.
If you’ve been enjoying this newsletter and found The Creativity Choice meaningful, I would be deeply grateful if you shared a brief review on a site like Amazon or Goodreads. Even a few sentences make a difference. Reviews help other readers discover the book and decide whether it speaks to them — and they matter more than most people realize. Thank you for helping the ideas travel.
Great post - thanks! The thing I love about creative people, that's to say, every person on the planet, is that they can often operate at both ends of a spectrum. This makes them challenging to categorise. I'm thinking right now of a good friend whose middle name is persistent. (Of course, it's not, but it should be!) When she starts on something, she sticks at it doggedly until she reaches a conclusion, whether that be a success or a failure. Equally, on a different project, she can be flighty and fickle, abandoning something that appears to have promise before it's had time to grow. I wonder if persistence correlates with passion, desire, vision, and fit with personal values and goals, and operates with different intensity depending on the endeavour.