> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://log.desipundit.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best ★★★★★ - URL: https://log.desipundit.com/situated-find-the-people-and-places-that-bring-out-your-best/ - Published: 2026-10-18T17:03:51.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-18T17:03:51.000Z - Author: PM - Tags: Books Duckworth answered the criticism of '[Grit](https://log.desipundit.com/grit-the-power-of-passion-and-perseverance/)', which raised this book's quality. I’m a big fan of her work. I met her and went to a conference at her Character Lab before it shut down. Researchers and practitioners who work with low-income groups criticized her ideas after '[Grit](https://log.desipundit.com/grit-the-power-of-passion-and-perseverance/)' became successful. I think this feedback led her to rethink her views and look at success more broadly; her book Situated shows this shift. She claims that willpower and persistence matter, but the environment also plays a role. Her research says: > "of all the ways you can change your behavior, willpower is the absolute worst." In a study of almost twenty thousand high school students, those who used force to study got lower SAT scores than those who set up a visible schedule. This theme appears often in housing research. The economist Raj Chetty argued that a zip code is a strong predictor of life outcomes. Duckworth builds on this by looking at how much control people have over their environments and social circles. She notes that ambitious people are rare. When people are mixed together at random, ambitious individuals have few peers like them. They do better when they are grouped together. Duckworth moves her focus away from internal thoughts to emphasize the physical situation. She follows a rule: "*Physical distance creates psychological distance*." Her advice is to get closer to desired influences and distance yourself from unwanted ones. She writes in a clear and simple style. She adds many stories, including personal details about a difficult period in her marriage that she has not discussed before. She stresses the importance of finding mentors and using professional networks. One specific suggestion is to volunteer to help with projects that are already in progress. Social capital will not always benefit you. The book advises that you should change the parts of your situation that you can control. Your thoughts and outcomes will change as a result. I'll leave you with this interesting tidbit - people who moved to a more walkable town walked over a thousand more steps each day. They did not need to use additional willpower to achieve this. --- ## Edition Read - **Edition Type:** Hardcover - **Number of Pages:** 352 pages - **Date First Published:** September 1, 2026 - **Publisher:** Scribner - **ISBN10:** 1668005948 - **ASIN:** 1668005948 - **Language:** English ## Description > From the #1 bestselling author of Grit, a new book that reveals the hidden power of situations and how you can shape them to bring out your best. > > In Angela Duckworth’s first book, she showed that a common denominator of successful strivers is a blend of passion and perseverance she dubbed “grit.” This second book springs from her deepening realization that grit, while necessary, is sometimes not sufficient. How you situate yourself to meet a challenge can be crucial. > > Duckworth’s in-depth research reveals the enormous influence wielded by the objects within arm’s reach, your peers and mentors, and even your zip code. Though you’re often told to make the best of your situation, it is far, far better to make your situation better first. > > In Situated, you’ll discover: -Why your personality changes, sometimes dramatically, from one situation to another—and how you can harness that shift -The secret to conquering temptation without willpower -Why taking the less effortful path can feel like cheating but often solves a stubborn problem -How the company you keep shapes the person you become -The most effective ways to help others succeed > > Highlighting four essential elements of successful situations, Duckworth shows how high performers like Taylor Swift, Michael Phelps, and Jerry Seinfeld create situations that make it easier to excel. And, with disarming honesty, she shares her own struggles with burnout and marriage—and how learning to change her situation, not herself, made all the difference. Whatever it is you want to achieve, there’s a situation that can make your journey easier. > > It takes effort to make your situation your ally—but a little effort goes a long way...when you get situated. *Source:* [GoodReads](https://www.goodreads.com/book/isbn/1668005948?ref=log.desipundit.com) --- ## Notable Highlights > your situation provokes thoughts. You notice some aspect of your situation, and your mind immediately interprets it. This happens so fast that you're typically unaware of the countless judgments that take place beneath conscious awareness. It may seem like you directly experience reality, but you don't-you experience your brain's interpretation of reality. Thoughts are subjective. *\[p. 26\]* > Our research shows that of all the ways you can change your behavior, willpower is the absolute worst. In one study, we surveyed nearly twenty thousand American high school students. Students who relied on willpower-for example, saying they "just forced" themselves to study-actually studied less and earned lower scores on the SAT college entrance exam. In contrast, students who used situational strategies-for example, saying they "set a concrete study schedule somewhere I would see it regularly"studied more and earned higher test scores. *\[p. 33\]* > Ross went on to study the fundamental attribution error for decades, leading him to the conclusion, published in one of the last articles of his long career, that "when making judgments about each other, people tend to be insufficiently sensitive to the impact of situational factors and too ready to make unwarranted attributions about traits, abilities, and other dispositions." *\[p. 49\]* > My collaborators and I recently surveyed adults trying to spend less time on social media. By a large margin, they said changing the situation was preferable to relying on raw willpower, but when asked what they actually do, the pattern was reversed: using willpower is common, changing the situation is rare. Later, we asked participants why they insist on willing themselves to just try harder, even when they know that changing their situation is a far more effective strategy. *\[p. 68\]* > In powerful yet invisible ways, the places that motivate us to think and feel and act in one way or another are what Barker came to call behavior settings. If we want to understand behavior, Barker concluded, we must train our eye on the place, not the person. If we don't follow the script of a behavior setting, he said, the setting coerces us into compliance. Through social norms and sometimes physical obstacles, we're constrained to behave in the way the setting demands. And if you don't fall in line, Barker warned, then the setting vetoes you. It kicks you out, literally. *\[p. 72\]* > Attempting to bridge the empathy gap by strengthening your inner resolve is fruitless. You must externalize your commitment. Good intentions are here today and gone tomorrow, but strategic modifications to your physical situation endure *\[p. 107\]* > Many people assume that if you do some thing over and over again, you eventually build a habit. That's not true. A the Three Boxes model reveals, repetition is necessary but not sufficient Habits link situational cues to automatic responses, so building a habi requires repeating the same behavior in the same situation. And not just any situation. The situations that set up healthy hab its are special. They contain salient cues that make it obvious to your Future Self what to do; they minimize friction so it's easy to take action; and they make that action immediately rewarding. *\[p. 111\]* > Physical distance creates psychological distance. That principle is so important that I'm going to say it again: physical distance creates psychological distance. So what you want to do more, draw near. And what you want to do less, push away. *\[p. 122\]* > I sat wide-eyed as these adolescent boys absorbed their criticism like men. Not one objected. Not one made excuses. You could hear a pin drop as each Commitment Card partner took his seat. Later, I asked the coaches to explain this miraculous absence of defensiveness. Coach Lad's answer was simple but profound: because every player has been on both sides of the feedback, they understand that it's a gift--one that is both difficult to receive and difficult to give. It is this cost-the inherent discomfort and effort required on both ends-that endows feedback with value. *\[p. 134\]* > He has gone on to say that "ambitious people are rare, so if everyone is mixed together randomly, as they tend to be early in people's lives, then the ambitious ones won't have many ambitious peers. When you take people like this and put them together with other ambitious people, they bloom like dying plants given water." *\[p. 138\]* > Belief is not something you do by or for yourself, he explains. What matters is not just “believing that things can get better, that I can get better," but, crucially, "that we will get better." What's fundamental, he says, is not just "to believe in yourself" but "to believe in one another." *\[p. 163\]* > The single most cited study in the history of sociology is entitled "The Strength of Weak Ties." In the study, originally published in 1973, researchers asked hundreds of professional, technical, and managerial job changers in the Boston suburbs how they'd found their new jobs. The original assumption was that close friends and family would prove the most helpful conduits to new employment. The data, however, produced the opposite pattern: When people got a new job, it was more likely to come from an acquaintance than from a close friend or family member. And most often, a new employer turned out to be not one degree of separation away but two-a connection of a connection. *\[p. 166\]* > Here's a tip: If you want a relationship to extend beyond one curioduty conversation, offer to assist your mentor on a project that's alread in progress-any endeavor for which elbow grease and a positive attitude will be an asset. Don't hesitate, since the very worst respon you can get is "No, thank you." And you'll be surprised how often instead, you'll hear "Wow, really?" *\[p. 179\]* > What is culture, anyway? -our tradiCulture includes language--the way we talk. Ritualstions and routines. Artifacts-everything from the way we dress to our tools to the colors that identify us. Norms-how most people behave. Values-what we hold to be important. And identity-who we think we are. *\[p. 188\]* > Using three years of cell phone data from over 2 million Americans, they asked a simple question: When a person relocates, does the walkability of their new neighborhood change their behavior? The answer: Yes! In their data, people who moved from a less walkable town to a more walkable one took more than a thousand additional steps per day. A massive improvement-without an iota more willpower. *\[p. 193\]* > The number of books in a child's home reliably predicts their lifetime educational attainment, income, and health. One twenty-year study that controlled for an array of family background factors found that living in a home with five hundred books has as great an effect on lifetime educational attainment as having collegeeducated parents. The same study found that while more books are always better, as few as twenty books in the home make a measurable difference. "You get a lot of bang for your book," the lead researcher has said. "It's quite a good return on investment." *\[p. 215\]* > Research also shows that the instinct to imitate continues throughout our lives. From cradle to grave, we look around, see what other people are doing, and from that figure out what the right and best thing is for us to do. Situational parenting, therefore, means being intentional about the behavior you model. Because imitation is not only the highest form of flattery, it's the most primal form of learning. *\[p. 216\]* > A parent can, in fact, influence which will replace them as trusted authorities on how to dress and speak and eat and think and dream. They do so by choosing the one place where teens are most likely to develop relationships with and peers mentors-and where they absorb, without even realizing it, the prevailing cultural norms: school. *\[p. 220\]* > As a leader, you create the conditions that make positive, optimistic thoughts second nature. It's your responsibility to situate your team for success. Too much challenge without support? Burnout. Ample support without challenge? Complacency. High challenge plus high support? The sweet spot. In that situation, your team will work incredibly hard and yet wake up each day energized to do so again. *\[p. 232\]* > "When you say 'situation, do you mean the physical environment?" student once asked while we were debriefing this activity. "Yes!" 1 eplied. "And more. I also mean the organizational chart, processes or onboarding and professional development. I mean the behavior ou yourself model as a leader." I could have gone on, because when comes to motivation, just about every aspect of a performer's sitution matters. What doesn't matter-at least not as much as a rookie eader might think-are empty exhortations about hard work. *\[p. 233\]* > When some poor single mother walks into our place, after hours at some miserable job, after scrambling to find someone to take care of her kids, after riding buses, bumming rides, or walking on her own two feet to get here, she gets to rest for a moment on an exquisitely made, one-of-a-kind Japanese bench handcrafted by a master craftsman just for her. How can she help but start thinking she deserves that beautiful bench? How can she stop herself from thinking she deserves even more beauty and order in her life? *\[p. 256\]* > Performers strive to deliver their best as individuals; leaders are responsible for bringing out the best in others. > What I've learned is that situations wield enormous influence-and yet, strangely, we're largely oblivious to their power. Mind over matter, we say. You can't control the situation, but you can control how you react to it. It's true that what we do is influenced by what we think-but it's equally true that what we think is, in turn, influenced by where we are. Like it or not, our every thought and action is profoundly shaped by our peers and mentors, by our culture, and even by the objects in our personal space.