Ever Wonder if You Actually Are Gritty?

So back at you with more GRIT wisdom - the idea being that if you understand what the concept grit actually is and how it works in the world, my book's premise--what to do when grit's not enough--will make more sense.

Angela Duckworth's conception of grit, as captured in her book of the same name, is that it is comprised of two elements, passion and perseverance. Without going into too much detail, passion = your level of interest/love in a pursuit, while perseverance is your stick-to-a-tive-ness in pursuing that passion.

If you want to know about how gritty you are, have at it. Here's a shot of the handy Grit Scale self-assessment Duckworth created for use in her seminal research with West Point cadets and includes in her book (p. 65):

To calculate your score, add up all the numbers you checked and divide by 10. For comparison with a "large sample of American adults," a grit score of 2.5 puts you in the 10th percentile while a grit score of 4.9 puts you in the 99th percentile.

And yep, those highlighted scores are mine. :)

Odd numbers reflect your degree of passion. Even numbers reflect your perseverance. You can also add those up and divide by 5 to get a comparison.

Two points: It turns out that even the truly gritty tend to have more perseverance than passion (hmm, interesting!). And that your score can change over time--good news for those who want to increase their grit. If you want to learn more about how to do that, buy Angela Duckworth's book. Seriously. It's a game changer.

I take on both the concepts of passion and perseverance in my book, arguing that passion is too volatile a concept (and I dare say Duckworth rather agrees) to hang our hats on, and that perseverance - at some levels is so important, while at others, has created the conditions for a book like mine to make sense. Stay tuned.

So how gritty ARE you? And is that a good thing?