| Not at all like me | Not much like me | Somewhat like me | Mostly like me | Very much like me | |
| 1. New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones. | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
2. Setbacks don’t discourage me. I don’t give up easily. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
3. I often set a goal but later choose to pursue a different one. | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
4. I am a hard worker. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
5. I have difficulty maintaining my focus on projects that take more than a few months to complete. | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
6. I finish whatever I begin. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
7. My interests change from year to year. | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
8. I am diligent. I never give up. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
9. I have been obsessed with a certain idea or project for a short time but later lost interest. | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
10. I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
To calculate your total grit score, add up all the points for the boxes you checked and divide by 10. The maximum score on this scale is 5 (extremely gritty), and the lowest possible score is 1 (not at all gritty).
You can use the chart below to see how your scores compare to a large sample of American adults.
Percentile | Grit Score |
| 10% | 2.5 |
| 20% | 3.0 |
| 30% | 3.3 |
| 40% | 3.5 |
| 50% | 3.8 |
| 60% | 3.9 |
| 70% | 4.1 |
| 80% | 4.3 |
| 90% | 4.5 |
| 95% | 4.7 |
| 99% | 4.9 |
Keep in mind that your score is a reflection of how you see yourself right now. How gritty you are at this point in your life might be different from how gritty you were when you were younger. And if you take the Grit Scale again later, you might get a different score. As this book will continue to show, there is every reason to believe that grit can change.
Grit has two components: passion and perseverance. If you want to dig a little deeper, you can calculate separate scores for each component: For your passion score, add up your points for the odd-numbered items and divide by 5. For your perseverance score, add up your points for the even-numbered items and divide by 5.
If you scored high on passion, you probably scored high on perseverance, too. And vice versa. Still, I’ll take a guess that your perseverance score is a wee bit higher than your passion score. This isn’t true for all people, but it’s true for most people I’ve studied. For instance, I took the scale while writing this chapter, and I scored 4.6 overall. My perseverance score was 5.0, and my passion score was only 4.2. Strange as it sounds, staying focused on consistent goals over time is more of a struggle for me than working hard and bouncing back from setbacks.
This consistent pattern—perseverance scores more often topping passion scores—is a clue that passion and perseverance aren’t exactly the same thing. In the rest of this chapter, I’ll explain how they differ and show how to understand them as two parts of a whole.
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