Persistence

TLDR: Persistence is the willingness to keep going when you want to quit. In an AI age where friction is being engineered away, it may be the most endangered human capacity.

Related Doing capacities: Agency, Adaptability

In 1998, researchers ran an experiment that upended conventional wisdom about praise.

Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck gave fifth-graders problems from an IQ test, then offered one of two types of praise: “You must be smart at this” or “You must have worked really hard.”

What happened next was startling. Children praised for intelligence became less willing to try hard problems. They chose easier tasks to protect their “smart” identity. When they eventually faced difficulty, their performance collapsed. Children praised for effort showed the opposite pattern: they sought out challenges, persisted longer, and actually improved over time.

The difference? One sentence of praise.

This experiment has been replicated across cultures and age groups. The mechanism is clear: when you praise intelligence, you send the message that ability is fixed. And if it’s fixed, effort is threatening. Why would a “smart” kid struggle? Struggling must mean you’re not smart after all.

But when you praise effort, you send a different message: this is how you get better. Difficulty becomes a sign of growth, not inadequacy.

Carol Dweck discovered growth mindset watching children fail. Why did some collapse at difficulty while others seemed energized? She asked what they were thinking. The answers split into two camps: “I must not be smart enough”—and quit. Or “I need to try a different strategy”—and persist. The difference wasn’t ability. It was what they believed difficulty meant.

This is the paradox at the heart of raising children. We want kids who keep going through difficulty. But our instincts—to praise talent, to remove obstacles, to minimize frustration—often create children who collapse at the first sign of challenge.

Persistence isn’t something you install. It’s something you protect—or inadvertently destroy.

And right now, that protection is harder than it’s ever been.

What Persistence Actually Is

Persistence is the willingness to keep going when you want to quit.

Picture this: two kids hit the same wall on a math problem. One pushes through—tries another approach, sits with the frustration, keeps working. The other gives up. That gap—the capacity to stay in the fight when it’s uncomfortable—is persistence.

It breaks down into three pieces:

• Focus — Sustaining attention on the task. Can I stay with this even when I’m bored or distracted?

• Tolerance — Handling the discomfort of difficulty. Can I bear this feeling of frustration without escaping?

• Drive — The will to continue despite obstacles. Do I actually want to keep going?

Why this breakdown matters

A child might have high drive but low focus—they want to persist but can’t sustain attention. Common in ADHD. Or high focus but low tolerance—they can concentrate but quit when it gets uncomfortable. Or high tolerance but low drive—they can bear discomfort but lack motivation to continue.

The MECE breakdown helps diagnose which component needs attention. A child who abandons tasks might need focus training, tolerance building, or drive cultivation—and the intervention differs dramatically.

Common confusions

Persistence gets confused with a few things. Let me untangle them:

“Isn’t this just grit?” Related but different. Grit combines perseverance with passion toward long-term goals—it’s a personality trait that predicts achievement across years. Persistence is narrower: it’s about what happens in the moment when something gets hard, regardless of whether you’re pursuing a decade-long ambition. Grit is persistence plus direction.

“What about growth mindset?” Growth mindset is the belief that abilities can be developed through effort. It fuels the Drive component—but isn’t the same as persistence itself. You can believe effort leads to growth but still avoid effortful activities. Dweck calls this “false growth mindset”. Belief without action isn’t enough.

“My kid has great self-control—isn’t that the same thing?” Self-regulation is the broader capacity to control impulses and delay gratification. Persistence is one application of self-regulation—specifically to situations requiring sustained engagement through difficulty.

The three capacities form a sequence: Agency gets you off the starting line. Persistence keeps you going when it’s hard. Adaptability helps you change course when needed. Start → continue → adjust.

The key insight

Persistence isn’t about raw willpower. It’s about Focus (staying with the task), Tolerance (bearing the discomfort), and Drive (wanting to continue). If any component is weak, the child quits—but for different reasons requiring different interventions.

The question isn’t how to build persistence from scratch. It’s how to stop undermining it.

The AI Complication

Every technology shifts what’s hard and what’s easy. The printing press made memorization less essential. Calculators made arithmetic less necessary. AI is different in kind: it’s reducing the friction of thinking itself.

The threat to persistence is direct—and the mechanisms compound.

AI eliminates the struggle that builds capacity

When ChatGPT can write your essay, solve your math problem, or generate your code, the incentive to struggle through disappears. But struggle isn’t just the path to the answer—struggle is the answer.

Research on “desirable difficulties” shows that effortful learning produces dramatically better retention than easy learning. The testing effect (d = 0.50-0.61), the spacing effect (d = 0.71)—these are large effects by educational standards. AI offers easy learning at scale. Easy learning doesn’t stick.

AI creates cognitive offloading dependency

A 2024 study found students using ChatGPT for assignments engaged in less deep processing, exerted less mental effort, and were more susceptible to distractions. The researchers called it “weakened sustained attention.”

Each time a child outsources thinking to AI, they strengthen the neural pathway that says this is too hard for me—I need help. The more they outsource, the lower their tolerance for difficulty—creating a downward spiral.

AI undermines the effort-outcome connection

The Drive component depends on believing that effort leads to results. When AI can produce results without effort, that belief weakens.

A study of MIT students using ChatGPT found they exhibited the lowest brain engagement of any group studied. The students were getting outcomes—completed assignments—without the effort that would connect those outcomes to their own capacity.

The neuroscience of why this matters

The dopamine prediction error problem. The dopaminergic system learns through effort-outcome contingency: I worked hard, I succeeded, dopamine fires, I’m more likely to work hard again. When AI provides the outcome without the effort, there’s no prediction error—the brain doesn’t learn that your effort produces results. The reinforcement loop that builds Tolerance never fires.

The anterior cingulate cortex calibration. The ACC evaluates whether effort is “worth it”—weighing costs against expected benefits. Children who consistently experience that effort leads to reward develop ACCs that readily authorize effortful behavior. Children who learn that AI can bypass effort develop ACCs that ask, “Why bother?”

The prefrontal cortex development window. Executive functions—including Focus and Tolerance—develop through use. The PFC isn’t fully mature until the mid-twenties. Children who outsource cognitive work during this window may be literally shaping their brains toward dependency.

Surprising Finding: Screens Are Harder to Resist Than Marshmallows

A 2024 study presented children with a modified marshmallow test using screens instead of treats. Screens were a more potent temptation than food. Even more striking: parental screen use for entertainment was negatively associated with children’s ability to delay gratification—while children’s own screen use was not. Your phone habit may matter more than theirs.

Screen time beyond AI

AI is the sharpest threat to persistence, but the broader screen ecosystem matters too.

Passive consumption trains effort avoidance. Watching videos, scrolling feeds—this requires no effort and provides constant reward. It trains the brain to expect high reward for low effort. The opposite of what persistence requires.

Variable reward schedules create competing pulls. Social media uses intermittent reinforcement—the most addictive reward pattern known. When a child’s attention is pulled toward these high-reward, low-effort activities, sustaining effort on homework becomes harder by comparison.

Video games present a genuine paradox. Well-designed games can train persistence—they keep players in the challenge zone where difficulty matches skill. But this only transfers if children develop generalizable beliefs about effort. A child might persist for hours in a game while avoiding homework, because they’ve learned that effort pays off in games, not in general.

The practical question: Does this activity require my child to push through difficulty? Or does it remove all difficulty?

The Research: What We Know

The evidence base for persistence is substantial—and the findings are actionable.

How you praise shapes whether kids persist. Mueller and Dweck’s foundational study showed that one sentence of intelligence praise (“You’re so smart!”) made children avoid challenges, while effort praise (“You worked hard!”) made them seek challenges. A meta-analysis of 16 studies confirmed the pattern: process praise (effort, strategies) correlates with intrinsic motivation. Longitudinal research showed parental praise during toddlerhood predicted children’s growth mindset five years later.

The harder learning feels, the better it sticks. This is counterintuitive but robust. Bjork’s “desirable difficulties” research shows that retrieval practice beats re-reading (d = 0.50-0.61), spaced practice beats cramming (d = 0.71), and mixing problem types beats blocking them (g = 0.42). The testing effect alone is roughly equivalent to moving a student from the 50th to the 69th percentile. The methods that feel harder produce dramatically better results.

Self-regulation predicts long-term outcomes. A meta-analysis found effortful control correlates with academic achievement (r = 0.27)—a moderate effect that accumulates over years. Longitudinal studies show effortful control measured in toddlers predicts behavioral adjustment through childhood. Early Focus and Tolerance matter.

Executive function can be trained—and physical activity works. A meta-analysis of 90 studies confirmed that behavioral interventions enhance executive function. Physical activity is particularly effective: inhibition (ES = 0.38), core executive functions (ES = 0.20). More recent research found even larger effects for moderate-intensity exercise on working memory (SMD = 1.05) and cognitive flexibility (SMD = 0.86). Optimal: 8-12 weeks, 30-minute sessions, 3-4 times weekly.

Autonomy support fuels effort willingness. A comprehensive meta-analysis of 179 studies (n = 213,612) found autonomy support from parents and teachers had an average effect of r = 0.32 on positive learning outcomes. The largest effects were on autonomous motivation and engagement. When kids feel ownership, they persist.

Surprising Finding: Effort Feels Different Depending on What You Believe

Research shows that children using effort-focused self-talk (“I will do my very best”) performed better on math problems, particularly those with negative competence beliefs. The same objective effort felt more tolerable when framed as a path to growth. Persistence interventions should target both capacity (building tolerance) and interpretation (reframing what effort means).

These findings hold up. Different researchers, different countries, different ages—same patterns.

Early Childhood (0-5)

What we know

Persistence begins with frustration tolerance—the capacity to endure difficulty without becoming overwhelmed.

Infants experience frustration but cannot regulate it. They depend entirely on caregivers. How you respond to infant frustration begins shaping the child’s relationship with difficulty: Is difficulty something to escape? Or something that can be endured with support?

Toddlers show wide variation. Some work at a puzzle until it’s solved; others give up after a few tries. This variation is partly temperament and partly learned—through countless interactions with challenge.

The critical balance: The instinct to immediately help a frustrated toddler is strong. But research shows that children whose parents let them struggle develop better self-regulation. The key is staying present during frustration without immediately solving the problem. Co-regulation means helping the child tolerate the feeling—not escape it.

Surprising Finding: Mindset Patterns Are Visible by Age 4

By preschool, children already show growth or fixed mindset patterns. Preschoolers praised for intelligence choose easier tasks; those praised for effort choose harder ones. The patterns that shape persistence for decades are forming before children can read.

What you can do

• The Struggle Window. When your child faces frustration, wait before helping. Count to 30 internally. If they haven’t quit or become overwhelmed, they’re building tolerance. If they ask for help, offer the minimum needed.

  Instead of: Immediately stepping in when they struggle with a puzzle. Try: “I see you’re working hard on that. I’m right here if you need me.”

  Your discomfort with their frustration is the enemy. Their frustration is the workout.

• Process Praise. Praise effort, strategies, and improvement—never intelligence or talent.

  Instead of: “You’re so smart!” Try: “You worked hard on that!” or “I noticed you tried a different strategy.”

  Mueller and Dweck’s research shows this single change shapes effort orientation for years.

• The Difficulty Narration. When children encounter difficulty, normalize it out loud: “This is supposed to be hard. That’s how your brain grows.” Children who believe difficulty is part of learning are more likely to persist.

• The Wobbly Tower Rule. Let children finish tasks—even imperfectly. A child who builds a wobbly tower themselves develops more persistence than one whose parent “helps” build a perfect tower. Mastery experiences require completion, not perfection.

• The Frustration Narration. When children get frustrated, name the feeling without fixing the problem: “You’re frustrated because it’s not working. That’s a hard feeling.” This teaches that frustration is survivable—a precursor to tolerance.

Middle Childhood (6-11)

What we know

As children enter school, persistence becomes about habits—the default response to difficulty.

During this period, children encounter sustained academic challenges for the first time. They receive formal feedback (grades) that can be interpreted as reflecting ability or effort. They compare themselves to peers—which can support mastery goals (“I want to learn this”) or performance goals (“I need to look smart”).

The danger: domain-specific helplessness. A child might believe they “can’t do” math, or art, or sports. These beliefs become self-fulfilling: the child avoids effort in that domain, doesn’t improve, and interprets the lack of improvement as confirming their inability.

Research on math anxiety shows that effortful control mediates the relationship between anxiety and achievement. Children with high Focus and Tolerance can persist despite anxiety; those without are more likely to avoid math entirely.

The critical balance: When a child struggles, the response matters enormously:

• “You’re just not a math person” → fixed mindset, learned helplessness
• “You’re so smart, you’ll figure it out” → pressure, anxiety
• “This is hard. What strategy could you try?” → mastery orientation, persistence

Surprising Finding: Enjoying Practice Doesn’t Predict Success

Ericsson’s deliberate practice research: how much you enjoy practicing doesn’t predict how good you’ll become. What matters is whether practice is deliberate—focused on weaknesses, slightly beyond current ability, with immediate feedback. The violinists who became world-class didn’t enjoy practice more; they practiced more deliberately. Children who develop expertise aren’t the ones who love every minute—they’re the ones who persist through the uncomfortable parts.

What you can do

• Effort Self-Talk Training. Teach children explicit self-talk for difficult moments. Research shows phrases like “I will do my very best” and “This is hard but I can try” improve performance. Practice these during low-stakes challenges.

• The Strategy Question. When children struggle, ask “What strategy are you using?” rather than offering solutions. This builds the metacognitive awareness that effort can be directed—not just applied blindly.

  Instead of: “Here, let me show you how to do it.” Try: “What have you tried so far? What else could you try?”

  The goal is strategic thinking, not just more effort.

• The Daily Stretch. Identify one hard thing per day—something that requires genuine effort and might not succeed. Academic challenge, physical skill, creative project. The goal isn’t completion; it’s the practice of engaging with difficulty intentionally.

• The Pivot Prize. Celebrate strategy switches explicitly: “I noticed you tried a different approach when the first one wasn’t working—that’s exactly what good learners do.” This reinforces effort flexibility, not just effort persistence.

• Deliberate Practice Introduction. Help children understand that expertise requires focused, challenging practice—not just repetition. Identify one domain where the child can experience the effort-mastery connection deeply.

Adolescence (12+)

What we know

Adolescence brings a neurological shift that complicates persistence. The limbic system (emotion and reward) matures faster than the prefrontal cortex (control). This creates a period where rewards feel more intense and impulse control is weaker—not a recipe for sustained effort.

Effortful control shows a characteristic dip in early adolescence, followed by recovery in late adolescence. Factors that exacerbate the dip: parental hostility, deviant peer association, exposure to violence. Factors that support recovery: warm relationships and structured opportunities for positive challenge.

The identity shift: Persistence in adolescence becomes entangled with identity. “I’m a hard worker” becomes a self-concept that shapes behavior when parents aren’t watching. Or “I don’t try” becomes a defense mechanism—if you didn’t try, failure doesn’t reflect ability.

Research on positive risk-taking suggests channeling adolescent energy toward challenging but constructive activities can build persistence while satisfying developmental needs. The question isn’t whether they’ll seek challenge—it’s whether the challenge is constructive.

What you can do

• From Manager to Consultant. Stixrud and Johnson’s framework: Adolescents need to own their effort decisions.

  Instead of: “You need to study harder for this test.” Try: “What’s your plan for preparing? I’m here if you want to think it through.”

  One puts you in charge. The other puts them in charge—with you available as a resource.

• The Effort Identity Statement. Help adolescents see effort as part of who they are, not just what they do. “You’re someone who persists” is more powerful than “You should persist.” Identity statements shape behavior when you’re not watching.

• The Self-Set Bar. Let adolescents set their own stretch goals—not just accept yours. Research shows self-chosen challenges produce more intrinsic motivation. Your role is to help them calibrate: “Is that goal actually stretching you?”

• The Effort Autopsy. When adolescents fail after effort, debrief the process, not just the outcome.

  Try: “Walk me through what you tried. Where did it start to feel hard? What would you do differently?”

  This maintains the effort-learning connection even when effort doesn’t produce immediate success.

• Failure Inoculation. Before high-stakes efforts (exams, tryouts, applications), explicitly discuss what failure would mean—and what it wouldn’t. “If this doesn’t work out, what will you learn? What will still be true about you?” This prevents catastrophizing and maintains effort willingness.

At Any Age

A few practices that work across the board:

• Model Effortful Engagement. Let children see you struggle with something difficult.

  Instead of: Completing a frustrating task silently, then announcing “Done!” Try: “This is hard. I’m going to try a different approach… Okay, that didn’t work. Let me think…”

  Your visible struggle teaches them that struggle is normal.

Surprising Finding: Adults Who Struggle Visibly Build Children’s Persistence

Research by Leonard et al. found that children who watched adults struggle before succeeding showed more persistence on subsequent tasks than children who watched adults succeed effortlessly. The modeling of effort—including visible frustration and recovery—teaches children that struggle is part of the process. Let them see your hard work.

• Protect the Struggle. Actively resist the urge to make things easier. When you catch yourself about to solve a problem for a child, pause. Their frustration is uncomfortable for you—but essential for them.

• The Challenge Slot. Schedule challenge into the day deliberately. Family puzzle time, a “hard problem of the week,” dedicated practice on a skill everyone is developing. Making effort a scheduled norm prevents it from being crowded out by easier activities.

• Distinguish Effort from Busywork. Not all work builds persistence. Repetitive, unchallenging tasks teach nothing except that effort is boring. Effort resilience requires effortful engagement with genuinely challenging material.

Special Considerations

Neurodivergent children

ADHD: The effort is there—the regulation isn’t. Children with ADHD often show high effort capacity in areas of interest but struggle to sustain effort in non-preferred tasks. Research shows executive function training can improve inhibition and working memory, but gains don’t always transfer. Persistence in ADHD may need to be built domain by domain, with external scaffolding. Autonomy support is particularly important—children with ADHD who receive high autonomy support show better task perseverance.

Autism: Persistence can be a strength—and a challenge. Autistic children may show high persistence in areas of special interest while struggling when tasks change. The challenge is often not persistence itself but cognitive flexibility. Build on autistic children’s capacity for focused effort while supporting the flexibility needed to redirect effort productively.

Anxiety: Avoidance undermines effort building. Anxiety drives avoidance, and avoidance prevents the effort experiences that build resilience. The anxious child who avoids challenges never learns they can handle them. For anxious children, building persistence requires gradually exposing them to manageable challenges—not avoiding difficulty entirely.

Gender differences

Girls tend to show higher self-discipline and task persistence from early ages, contributing to academic success. However, girls are more likely to attribute success to effort while boys attribute success to ability—which could make girls more vulnerable to effort exhaustion.

Boys face higher social costs for academic effort. Males are 1.75 times more likely to report that trying hard in school would make them unpopular. The “effortless achievement” masculine ideal may undermine boys’ visible effort.

The practical implication: Persistence interventions may need gender-specific elements—normalizing effort for boys, preventing effort exhaustion for girls.

Where Things Go Wrong

The help trap

You see your kid struggling. Every instinct says help. Here’s the problem: each time you remove the difficulty, you remove the workout that builds capacity.

Children who never experience difficulty never learn they can handle difficulty. They develop what learned helplessness research describes as “contingency absence”—no connection between their actions and outcomes. When they finally encounter inevitable challenges, they collapse. Not because they lack capacity, but because they never built the belief that effort leads anywhere.

The mechanism is straightforward: persistence requires effort. If you eliminate effort, there’s nothing to become resilient to.

The opposite mistake: toxic positivity about effort

The growth mindset message has been watered down into empty reassurance. “You just need to try harder!” said to a struggling child can become its own dismissal—especially when the child is already trying hard, or when systemic barriers make effort insufficient.

Dweck has warned about this: praising effort without results teaches children that effort itself is the goal. But children aren’t stupid—they know when they’re failing. Empty effort praise feels patronizing.

The corrective: acknowledge difficulty, support strategy development, maintain honest feedback. Effort matters because it leads to learning—not as an end in itself.

Schools that punish struggle

Many school environments systematically undermine persistence:

• Grade-focused assessment creates performance goals. Children learn to avoid challenges that might hurt their GPA.
• Pace standardization means children who need more time feel they’re falling behind.
• Homework volume exhausts effort capacity on busywork, leaving nothing for genuine challenge.
• Teaching to tests rewards shallow effort over deep engagement.

Parents can’t fully compensate for these environments. Advocacy for structural change—fewer grades, more mastery learning, meaningful challenge over busywork—may be as important as individual practices.

Persistence without judgment

Effort without wisdom is just spinning wheels. Children need to learn not only to persist but when to persist. Sometimes quitting is the right answer—when the goal is wrong, when the strategy is broken, when costs exceed benefits.

Pure persistence without Judgment can lead to throwing good effort after bad. A child who never gives up on anything will exhaust themselves. A child who gives up too easily will never achieve mastery. The balance requires wisdom that develops throughout childhood.

The Research: Going Deeper

Everything above is the practical version. If you want mechanisms, debates, and frontier research, keep reading. If not, skip to Resources.

The neuroscience of effort

Effort has a neurological cost. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) continuously evaluates whether expected benefits justify effort costs. This evaluation integrates signals from the dopaminergic system (expected reward), the prefrontal cortex (goal representations), and bodily states (fatigue, arousal).

When the ACC authorizes effort, the prefrontal cortex maintains goal representations against competing demands. This is cognitive control—holding in mind what you’re trying to accomplish while inhibiting impulses toward easier alternatives. This capacity is metabolically expensive. Brain glucose consumption increases during effortful tasks.

The dopamine system shapes effort willingness through learning. Dopamine neurons encode prediction errors: when outcomes exceed expectations, dopamine fires; when outcomes disappoint, dopamine decreases. This signal trains the brain about which actions are worth their effort costs. Critically, this learning requires action—you have to do the effortful thing to learn that effort pays off.

Effortful control is the temperament-level capacity underlying persistence. Longitudinal research shows it’s measurable in toddlers and predicts behavioral adjustment through childhood. Children with high effortful control can inhibit impulses, sustain attention, and regulate emotion more effectively. This capacity is partly heritable but substantially shaped by environment—particularly by parenting practices.

Surprising Finding: Korean Toddlers Score Higher on Effortful Control

A cross-cultural study comparing toddlers from Chile, Poland, South Korea, and the United States found significant differences in effortful control. South Korean toddlers scored highest on attentional focusing, inhibitory control, and low-intensity pleasure. This wasn’t IQ or socioeconomic status—it was temperament shaped by cultural childrearing practices. Persistence is substantially malleable and culturally transmitted.

Where experts disagree

The growth mindset replication problem. Growth mindset is the most controversial construct in effort research. Early studies showed large effects. But replication attempts have yielded smaller or null effects. The 2023 Macnamara and Burgoyne meta-analysis found near-zero effects (d = 0.05) after adjusting for publication bias. Burnette et al. (2022) found small academic effects (d = 0.14) but moderate mental health effects (d = 0.32).

The debate matters practically: should schools invest in growth mindset programs? Dweck has pushed back: “The growth mindset was not designed to be a quick, one-time lesson. It’s about creating a learning environment where struggle is valued.” The discrepancy likely reflects intervention quality: generic messaging doesn’t work; sustained environmental change does.

The grit vs. conscientiousness question. Is grit just conscientiousness with better branding? Credé’s meta-analysis found correlations of r = 0.84 between grit and conscientiousness—high enough to question whether grit is distinct. The “perseverance of effort” component drove most predictive power; “consistency of interest” added essentially nothing.

Duckworth has responded by pointing to specific contexts—West Point retention, Spelling Bee performance—where grit predicts outcomes conscientiousness misses. The debate matters because conscientiousness is a relatively stable trait, but grit’s perseverance component might be more trainable.

The “is effort always good?” question. Some researchers argue that emphasis on effort can become toxic. Telling children to “try harder” when they face systemic barriers is cruel. The structural critique: effort narratives can locate responsibility in individuals while ignoring systems. A child in an under-resourced school may not benefit from hearing that effort leads to success when effort demonstrably doesn’t lead to success in their context.

The frontier

Effort as a learnable belief. Emerging research is investigating whether children can be taught to interpret effort differently. Coaching children to say “I will do my very best” improves performance. Effort tolerance may be less about raw capacity and more about learned interpretation.

Computational neuroscience of giving up. Researchers are building computational models of effort allocation to understand when and why people quit. These models treat effort as a cost-benefit calculation the brain continuously updates. “Giving up” isn’t failure of will—it’s the brain’s rational response to perceived cost-benefit ratios. To help children persist longer, you either increase expected benefits or decrease perceived costs.

AI as effort coach. Most AI research focuses on how AI undermines effort. But some researchers are asking whether AI could be designed to build persistence—providing adaptive scaffolding that keeps children in the challenge zone, delivering feedback that reinforces effort-outcome connections. Can we design AI that makes children grittier rather than weaker?

The Fringe

Ideas with merit but insufficient evidence—worth understanding, even if not endorsing.

The case against homework

The appeal is visceral for any parent who’s watched homework consume evenings and spark nightly battles. Alfie Kohn argues homework doesn’t build persistence—it drains it. By extending school into home life, homework exhausts rather than builds capacity.

• The evidence: Research on homework effectiveness is surprisingly weak. For elementary students, homework shows minimal academic benefit. The costs—family conflict, reduced play, effort exhaustion—may outweigh gains.
• The mainstream view: Moderate, meaningful homework can build responsibility. The problem is quantity and meaningfulness, not homework itself.
• Worth considering: Even if homework continues, recognizing its effort costs and prioritizing quality over quantity may protect persistence for things that matter more.

Unschooling and effort

What if children, freed from coercion, would naturally seek challenge? Radical unschoolers argue children should direct their own learning entirely. Forced effort, they claim, builds compliance, not resilience.

• The evidence: Surveys of unschooled adults show many pursue higher education and report feeling well-prepared. But research also shows unschooled children may struggle with subjects that require persistent effort through un-fun foundational work.
• The tension: Unschooling may build persistence in self-chosen domains while leaving children unprepared for non-negotiable challenges.
• Worth considering: Even within traditional schooling, expanding domains of genuine choice may build persistence more effectively than coerced compliance.

Against grit: the structural critique

Critics argue the “grit” narrative is ideological—it locates responsibility in individuals rather than systems. A child in an underfunded school, facing discrimination, dealing with poverty—should they be told to “be grittier”?

• The evidence: Research shows supportive environments matter more than parenting style for outcomes. The zip code you’re born into predicts more than your grit score.
• The mainstream view: Both individual effort and systemic support matter. False dichotomy helps no one.
• Worth considering: Effort resilience interventions should be paired with systemic advocacy. Telling children to try harder while ignoring what they’re up against isn’t just ineffective—it’s cruel.

Resources

If you only do one thing after reading this:

Start here: Mindset by Carol Dweck. Despite replication controversies, the core insight—that beliefs about ability shape effort—is foundational.

Contrarian pick: The Homework Myth by Alfie Kohn. You don’t have to agree, but the challenge to effort-for-effort’s-sake is worth engaging.

Books

• Peak by Anders Ericsson — The definitive guide to deliberate practice. Shows how effort produces expertise.

• Grit by Angela Duckworth — Accessible synthesis of persistence research. Better on inspiration than intervention.

• NurtureShock by Bronson & Merryman — Chapter on praise research is excellent. Shows how common practices backfire.

• How People Learn from the National Academies — For the deep reader. The scientific foundation for why productive struggle matters.

Research

• Mueller & Dweck (1998) — The praise study that should hang in every parent’s kitchen.

• Bjork (2011) on Desirable Difficulties — Will permanently change how you think about “easy” learning.

• Ericsson (2014) on Expert Performance — Goes beyond “10,000 hours” to explain what deliberate practice actually is.

• Burnette et al. (2022) Growth Mindset Meta-Analysis — The most rigorous recent analysis. Start here for the real numbers.

Tools & Products

• Challenging games (Chess, Go, strategic video games) — Create flow states where effort leads to mastery. Build the effort-reward connection in engaging contexts.

• Khan Academy — Mastery-based learning with explicit effort messaging. Progress visualization shows effort-mastery connection.

• Physical challenge equipment — Balance boards, climbing gear, challenging sports. Physical persistence transfers to cognitive persistence.

Researchers to follow

• Carol Dweck — Growth mindset. Stanford.
• Angela Duckworth — Grit and Character Lab. Penn.
• Robert Bjork — Desirable difficulties. UCLA.

Field Notes

Personal reflections and experiments coming soon. Subscribe to get notified when they’re published.

Last updated: 2025-11-29 Status: 🌿 Growing