Are you Gritty or Flitty?

We all know that "Grit is Good". But what about "Flit"?

When Angela Duckworth published 'Grit' nearly a decade ago, I'm not sure that she expected us to pick it up and run with it like we have. It's almost as if grit has become the singular secret sauce to success. You just need to stick with stuff. Push through. Persevere.

But new research published just yesterday on great-tailed grackles (yes, the bird pun is real) tells a bit of a different story. 

The most adaptable birds weren’t the grittiest. 
They were the flittiest.

The birds who investigated new environments and updated their strategies (flitty) adapted best to changes. The ones that kept pecking persistently at the same solution (gritty) didn’t actually gain an advantage in a changing environment. 

The same mechanism plays out in us, which is probably no surprise.

Whether you lean toward grit or flit isn’t just about personality or habits.
It’s rooted in your biology. It's your inbuilt cognitive wiring.

Some brains are tuned to persist, others are tuned to explore. And that wiring shapes how you approach goals, handle uncertainty, and respond to change.

That’s why this study is so relevant to humans, too. If you know whether you’re more gritty or more flitty, you can stop fighting it and start leveraging it.

Some people are all grit and no flit. 
Others are all flit and no grit. 
That’s why we need each other.

Because grit helps you hang in there once a plan is made.
But flit helps you adapt when the world changes.
And if you know which way you lean, you can find the right wing-(wo)man to provide you with balance.