Venkatesh Rao

My wife is the opposite. She’s much more persevering than average across many domains. She’ll get mad but won’t quit till things get pyrrhic. The general part of perseverance is emotional self-regulation, including the ability to get mad and unreasonably invested.

Where I’ll go “this is not worth the trouble” she’ll go “I don’t care that this is not worth it, now it’s about winning” and keep at it. Unpleasant regulatory emotions will make me quit but she’ll just vent a bit and keep at it.

Where I’ll recognize a skill barrier and decide learning it is beyond me or not worth it, she is likely to look for a skilled person to hire and drive *them* nuts until she gets it done. This is a superpower when it comes to dealing with high-skill third parties like doctors.

I think it comes down to raw energy. High-energy people tend to persevere across many domains, low-energy people (like me) tend to strategically identify a few areas where our skill/aptitude makes up for low perseverance energy and low tolerance for emotional regulation stress.

Also cultivating the ability to care about and want many things, which is a skill too. There’s almost nothing I care about enough to not quit at the first sign of trouble/challenges. I’ve improved a bit over the years, and am now dogged and caring in pursuit of more things.

There’s a resourcefulness component too. In the OP the child wanted to simply use a hammer at one point rather than figure it out. People who want the outcome don’t care about the means as much. They’re willing to try many ways and are not attached to prowess in one way.

I’m more resourceful than I am energetic or caring, but sometimes that feels wrong to persevering types. Resourcefulness can go too far and change the goal. For eg. proving you’re right and winning over another person. If you hack the thing too weirdly, you may quit that goal.

Still overall, I think perseverance is over-rated as a virtue. We don’t quit enough or focus our perseverance narrowly enough as a species. We’ve built ourselves a frustrating world that feels like that 6-hours-to-open can must have to that little girl. This feels... unnecessary.