5x15 Special: Angela Duckworth on How to Succeed in Work and Life

For over a decade, Angela Duckworth has shaped how we think about achievement. Her multi-million bestselling book Grit argued that success depends not on talent alone, but on a sustained combination of passion and perseverance. Now, ten years on from Grit, she returns with a major new book.

In Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best, she turns from what lies within us to what surrounds us. Drawing on years of research, she explores how the people we spend time with, the environments we inhabit, and the structures around us quietly shape our behaviour, motivation and potential

From classrooms and workplaces to the habits of high performers, she shows that success is not simply a matter of trying harder. It is about placing ourselves in situations that make good choices easier and lasting change possible.

Kenneth Cukier is deputy executive editor of The Economist, following two decades at the paper as a foreign correspondent, technology writer, data editor and commentary editor. He is the coauthor of the NYT bestselling book Big Data with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, which was translated into over 20 languages, and Framers on AI and mental models, with Viktor and Francis de Véricourt. He is a board director of the European Graduate School (EGS).