Angela Duckworth reverses course: enough with willpower, environment matters.

Angela Duckworth, the psychologist famous for her bestselling book 'Grit' celebrating the power of passion and perseverance, takes a surprising turn in her new book 'Situated.' The author now asserts that willpower is "absolutely the worst way" to change one's behavior, challenging the conventional wisdom she helped popularize.

According to Duckworth, success and personal growth largely depend on the "situation" we find ourselves in: our community, the people we associate with, the spaces we live and work in. The book proposes strategies of 'self-binding,' like the ancient 'Ulysses pacts,' to strategically engineer one's life and make success more likely without constant struggle.

This new stance represents a significant shift from the message of 'Grit,' which identified grit—sustained willpower over time—as the best predictor of success, even surpassing IQ. Duckworth argues that 'Situated' is not a refutation but an expansion of her previous research, where grit is "necessary but not sufficient" and must be integrated with the broader framework provided by the situation.

The book aligns with a recent trend in popular psychology that downplays the role of willpower, focusing instead on how environmental cues influence decision-making. Duckworth cites David Foster Wallace's speech 'This Is Water' to illustrate how difficult it is to practice 'situational awareness,' the art of seeing how our environment influences our behavior.