Jordan Peele made history at the 2018 Oscars when he became the first African-American screenwriter to win an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Peele wrote and directed “Get Out.” In his acceptance speech, which is going viral on social media, Peele said,
“I stopped writing this movie about 20 times because I thought it was impossible. I thought it wasn’t going to work. I thought no one would ever make this movie. But I kept coming back to it because I knew if someone let me make this movie, that people would hear it and people would see it.”
Peele’s Passion Gave Him ‘Grit’
Peele has “grit.” In her groundbreaking book, Grit, psychology professor Angela Duckworth uses the word “passion” more than 100 times. After studying the top leaders in business, arts, medicine and law, Duckworth found that people who rise to the top of their profession have a combination of passion and perseverance. You can’t have one without the other. Passion leads to perseverance.
According to Duckworth, passion isn’t just caring about something. It’s pursuing a worthwhile goal steadily, taking steps each day. A setback–or twenty–like Peele experienced during the writing process might delay the ultimate goal, but if you don’t stop thinking about, you’ll eventually come back to it. Grit means holding the same top-level goal for a very long time.
Doing What You Love Isn’t an Option; It’s Fundamental
Duckworth’s observation reminds me of several conversations I’ve had with famous TED speaker and economist, Dr. Larry Smith. His TED Talk, “Why You Will Fail to Have a Great Career,” has been viewed more than six million times. Smith logged more than 20,000 conversations with college students over a 40-year teaching career. He asks them about their life goals and follows up with them to see how well their careers worked out.
“Great careers are driving by the innovations that arise from passion,” he told me. “I defy anyone to be innovative about a subject about which they really do not care.”
According to Smith, who teaches entrepreneurs at the University of Waterloo, anyone can be reasonably successful even if they don’t particularly care about their field of work. If they work hard and have the basic skills to do the job, they can be rewarded with a higher salary, titles and career advancement. But they’ll rarely innovate and push the industry forward.
People who care passionately about a topic–and obsess over it–will tweak, learn, find better ways of solving problems and, most important, will see setbacks as temporary hurdles to their ultimate goal.
According to Smith, “The mind cannot stop thinking about that which it loves.” Writer-Director Jordan Peele couldn’t stop thinking about a topic he loves and that’s why we celebrate him today.