Free Grit by Angela Duckworth

produce goods or services that are valuable to people. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
    He was listening, so I continued.
    “And here’s the really important thing. Grit is about working on something you care about so much that you’re willing to stay loyal to it.”
    “It’s doing what you love. I get that.”
    “Right, it’s doing what you love, but not just falling in love— staying in love.”
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    How gritty are you? Below is a version of theGrit Scale I developed for my study at West Point and which I used in other studies described in this book. Read each sentence and, on the right, check off the box that makes sense. Don’t overthink the questions. Instead, just ask yourself how you compare—not just to your coworkers, friends, or family—but to “most people.”
     
 
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 seehow your scores compare to a large sample of American adults. I
     
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-numbereditems 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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    While taking the Grit Scale, you might have noticed that none of the passion questions asked how intensely you’re committed to your goals. This may seem odd, because the word passion is often used to describe intense emotions. For a lot of people, passion is synonymous with infatuation or obsession. But in interviews about what it takes to succeed, high achievers often talk about commitment of a different kind. Rather than intensity, what