“Grit” is so overrated. It implies that economic growth is an effect of doing what we must to get by. What an awful existence, what an untrue presumption.
If there are doubters, they need only contemplate what life was like 200 years ago. It was all about “grit.”
Since work in 1826 had somewhat of a singular quality to it whereby most worked on farms from dawn until dusk six days per week, readers can likely guess the level of happiness that existed. Seriously, imagine if your daily survival were rooted in having to do one thing day after day, and week after week, regardless of whether it had anything to do with what you were good at. Working to live, all of your life? No thanks. No wonder the people were so poor.
Which is just a speculation that there were a lot of unhappy people 200 years ago. Just as tragic, there were lots of “lazy” and “stupid” people 200 years ago. How we know the latter to be true is to contemplate what formerly prevailed relative to the impossibly broad range of work options today.
In thinking about the countless – and growing – ways to make a living in 2026, ask yourself how many of these endless job descriptions fit what’s unique about you in a skills and intelligence sense. As an example, what if football and basketball were your only career options? You know, “games.” Easy, right?
Warren Buffett contemplated just the above question in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece from 2014, and he concluded the opposite. If the economy were sports-based, Buffett contended that he “would be a flop.” He added that “You could supply me with the world’s best instruction, and I could endlessly strive to improve my skills. But, alas, on the gridiron or basketball court I would never command even a minimum wage.” Sports would have rendered Buffett lazy and stupid.
Talking The End of Work the working title of which was The End of Laziness, a prosperous life full of wondrous work is about escaping grit. The surest sign Americans are escaping it in growing numbers can be found in their growing attachment to work.
What boggles the mind is that the passion for work today is a logically pale imitation of what it will be. It's easy to make the previous claim in consideration of the proliferation of AIs that can do very quickly what it used to take teams of highly skilled people months to do.
Translated, the number of mechanized and highly skilled "hands" and "minds" entering the workplace is set to explode before our eyes. This won't make the human work element less employable, rather it will render humans exponentially more valuable in the way that work divided always does. When we can divide up work we can do what we do best, which means our tendency to love what we do grows. It's the end of laziness, and it's rapidly approaching.
It can't be said enough that the antithesis of laziness isn't grit. Quite the opposite. Towering work ethic is what happens when we once again escape grit. This truth speaks to a bigger one about how much laziness is misunderstood, along with its frequent corollary: stupidity. Some think certain people are born lazy, stupid, or both. No, that's incorrect. Rapid automation of work and thought will prove it.
No one is lazy or stupid. There's just a lack of economic growth that reveals one or both traits. Watch how indolence and foolishness disappear as prosperity expands.
