Why is tenacity important in learning, and how can you cultivate more of it?

It’s the third essential element of building a skill / integrating new learning.

The first two elements are commitment (affirming why the skill's important and vowing to defend it as a priority) and ingenuity (being creative in fitting it into your busy, messy life).

Tenacity is basically a lasting determination to stick with an effort till a goal is reached (not in a mindless, repetitive way but strategically… observing, collecting data, and tweaking your actions and mindset when needed).

Tenacity works hand-in-hand with commitment and ingenuity. Clearly if you’re not really committed, you’re not going to have much staying power when the going gets rough. You will get distracted / discouraged.

And if you’re not ingenious enough, you won’t have the flexible, design thinking that, honestly, we all need to juggle our responsibilities these days. You’ve got to try stuff and see how it works, and then act smarter based on the results.

The great news is that you can expand your tenacity. It’s also a skill! And requires practice. But it will unlock a lot of other things for you, and save you time, effort and energy in the end.

You can think of it as a muscle. To build tenacity, keeping doing stuff you’re bad at (e.g., a new hobby, sport, etc.). You can start with low-stakes learnings and move up to skills that might require more courage and persistance.

What are some key components that feed into the trait of tenacity? Having faith in yourself, being patient, being reflective, and being able to look at things with some objective distance. Everybody has a least a few of these qualities to some degree, and they all help you build your tenacity muscle.