Have you listened to the Freakonomics podcast [1] on this exact question? It was an interesting exploration of "How to get more grit". If I remember correctly, many of the episodes around that time period (May of this year) were about getting good at things/self-improvement [2].

[1] http://freakonomics.com/podcast/grit/

[2] http://freakonomics.com/archive/ (Around episode 245)