How Gritty Are You? Take the Grit Test + Build Legend-Level Stamina

Angela Duckworth’s chapter “How Gritty Are You?” exposes the myth that life change comes from short-lived hustle and emotional highs; grit is about staying with a passion long enough for it to shape your entire life. It’s an invitation to look honestly at where your time, energy, and sacrifices are actually going—and to realign them with what matters most. Take the grit test now.

For me, that’s exactly how my introduction to church felt. It was the late 90s at Calvary Chapel in Salt Lake City. I was sitting in the crowd of the sanctuary one evening, waiting for Bible study to begin, when the pastor pointed straight at me and asked, “So, when are you going to volunteer for the children's ministry?” In that moment, I sensed God’s voice more clearly than I ever had, calling me into ministry. Later, when I told the pastor how significant that moment was for me, he just shook his head, with a smirk, and said, “Whoa—God.”

From that night on, I was hooked. It was never about building a social circle, padding a résumé, or landing a new job. It was about pursuing a life that actually meant something. And now, more than 27 years later, through detours, disappointments, excitement, joy, personal gain, and unexpected turns, I’ve come to understand service to Christ in a deeper, grittier way—one that demands staying power, not just enthusiasm.

Grit—this sustained passion and perseverance—isn’t a flash in the pan or a weekend retreat high. It’s a long obedience in the same direction, a slow-burning commitment to a God-given calling that you keep showing up for year after year. In a world addicted to quick wins and instant results, grit is the quiet, stubborn choice to keep saying “yes” to meaning, even when the feelings fade and the road gets hard. As Brené Brown warns, “Embracing failure without acknowledging the real hurt and fear that it can cause . . . is to scrub the concepts of grit and resilience of the very qualities that make them both so important—toughness, doggedness, and perseverance” (206). True grit honors the pain, leaning into it with faith-fueled tenacity.

The Grit Scale: Measure Your Stamina

Duckworth introduces the 12-item Grit Scale to quantify your perseverance and consistency of interest. Rate statements like "I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge" (perseverance) or "New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones" (reverse-scored for passion consistency).​

Score by assigning 5 points to "Very much like me" for positive items (1,4,6,9,10,12) and reverse for distractions (2,3,5,7,8,11), then average for a 1-5 total—5 means extremely gritty. People often score higher on perseverance than passion, highlighting why Duckworth dives deeper into building consistent direction.

Take the Grit Scale Now:

1. I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge.

   • Very much like me / Mostly like me / Somewhat like me / Not much like me / Not like me at all

2. New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones.*

(Continue with all 12; score as instructed above.)

Your score reveals current grit, but Duckworth stresses it's changeable—use it as a baseline for growth.​

Short Bursts vs. Lifelong Love

In chapter 4 of Grit, Angela Duckworth talks about once meeting a young entrepreneur who bragged about the sleepless nights and frantic hustle of his startup, mistaking burnout for true grit. She set him straight: real grit isn’t just falling in love with an idea—it’s staying in love, year after year, and intentionally designing your life around goals that endure. As in the Proverbs, the author reminds us, “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (NKJV Proverbs 16:9)—I say, a gritty reminder that our passion must align with divine direction, not just our own feverish momentum, in order for it to last the test.

A lesson I learned on the long road to Army chaplaincy. Over my ten years on active duty, I’d tell soldiers about it, and they’d be stunned at the marathon-like action and strategy the chaplain path demanded. It started with a four-year undergraduate degree, followed by a Master of Divinity—a deep dive into theology tailored for Protestant ministry that typically takes another four years. Then came the Army’s mandate: at least two years of hands-on church experience, complete with nuanced benchmarks like officiating a set number of funerals, weddings, baptisms, and counseling sessions. Step by step, it was a grueling gauntlet of preparation, persistence, and proving yourself—not a sprint, but a 10+ year commitment to one calling. Yes, that was just the beginning to become a chaplain candidate; the next level of testing came from the Army.

This level of testing mirrors Thomas Edison, who weathered 1,000 to 10,000 failed experiments before the lightbulb glowed, never abandoning his vision for practical electricity. Like Duckworth’s entrepreneur, too many chase intensity without a true north; Edison’s story, like my chaplaincy path, reveals grit as unwavering loyalty to a singular, long-haul purpose—not scattered short-term wins. It’s the big goal that grips your soul for 20+ years. As the Apostle Paul told his protégé Timothy, after a lifetime of gritty faithfulness, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (NKJV 2 Timothy 4:7). His Christ filled journey was grit filled: crossing the finish line, decades later, still locked on your God-ordained course and goal.

Passion as a Compass, Not Fireworks

Duckworth portrays passion as consistent direction, like a compass guiding Jeffrey Gettleman from Oxford uncertainty to Pulitzer-winning journalism in East Africa over a decade, from 2006 to 2017. He stuck to his Africa calling, adapting via reporting when paths shifted.​

Pete Carroll, Seahawks coach, built a life philosophy post-firing, inspired by John Wooden—aligning daily habits to higher visions like leadership excellence. The author of the book of Hebrews touches on this idea, "Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance..." (ESV Hebrews 10:35-36). Tom Seaver pitched daily at peak ability, structuring sleep and meals around that top goal.​

These stories parallel what's come to be known as Warren Buffett's "5/25 Rule" as a productivity strategy designed to maximize focus by forcing the ruthless prioritization of goals. Whether it actually is the Buffett rule or not, the advice given to the pilot works: list 25 goals, circle top 5, ignore the rest to avoid distraction. Gritty passion hierarchies channel energy and focus; without them, efforts scatter.​​

Building Hierarchies: Bob Mankoff's Stubborn Path

Consider Bob Mankoff, the legendary cartoon editor for The New Yorker, whose path to success reads like a masterclass in gritty perseverance. For years—decades, even—he poured his soul into submitting cartoons, racking up a staggering 2,000 rejections before that first exhilarating acceptance finally landed in 1977. That wasn't the finish line, though; it took another four years of relentless hustle before he secured a full-time contract in 1981. Mankoff didn't just endure the no’s, the flat out rejections—he thrived on them, ditching his earlier side gig as a stand-up comedian because it paled in comparison to his burning vision of becoming a world-class humorist through cartoons.

What makes this story explode with grit? Mankoff practiced what Angela Duckworth preaches: ruthless prioritization. He audited his life, slashed distractions like stand-up gigs (smart as they seemed), and funneled every ounce of energy into his North Star—crafting cartoons that would one day grace the pages of The New Yorker. It's the ultimate hierarchy of goals in action: sacrifice the good to chase the great. Imagine the mental toughness required to stare down 2,000 "no's," shrug off the doubters, and keep sketching, submitting, improving. That's not blind optimism; it's dogged, faith-fueled commitment—the kind that turns dreamers into icons. Mankoff's journey reminds us: grit isn't about avoiding failure; it's about letting it forge you into someone unbreakable.

Walt Disney’s rags-to-riches saga is grit on steroids—a blistering testament to what happens when you ditch the distractions and double down on your unbreakable core vision. Picture this: a newspaper editor fires young Walt for “lacking imagination,” a soul-crushing verdict that would’ve flattened most dreamers. Undeterred, he pours everything into the Laugh-O-Gram studio, only to watch it crash into bankruptcy amid endless setbacks and unpaid bills. Does he fold? Hell no. Disney packs his sketches, hops a train to California, and pivots with laser focus to cartoons—chasing that singular, sky-high goal of magical storytelling that would birth an entertainment empire.

This is Angela Duckworth’s hierarchy of goals in raw, roaring action: ruthlessly abandon the inefficient sub-goals (like scrambling to save a sinking studio) while clinging like a vice to your top-level North Star. Disney didn’t scatter his energy across a dozen half-baked plans; he unified his life under one towering ambition, letting every failure forge him sharper. It’s the gritty alchemy of focus—slash the “good enough” to seize the great, and watch mediocrity burn away in the fire of obsession. Disney’s life screams the truth: when you stack your goals like a fortress around that one unshakeable purpose, no rejection or ruin can topple you.

Goal Level	Example (Mankoff)	Parallel Figure (Disney)
Top: Life Philosophy	Humor via cartoons	Magical storytelling
Mid: Key Habits	Daily submissions	Animation production
Low: Tactics	Quit stand-up	Bankruptcy recovery

History Proves It: Cox's Genius Study

Psychologist Catharine Cox conducted a landmark early-20th-century study, part of Lewis Terman’s Genetic Studies of Genius project, in which she pored over detailed biographical records of 301 historically eminent figures—think philosophers, scientists, artists, and leaders—from the past 400 years. Using rigorous methods, she estimated their childhood IQs and correlated those scores with adult achievements, aiming to settle the nature-versus-nurture debate on genius. The stunning finding? Childhood IQ had almost no predictive power for ultimate success; what separated the immortals was “persistence of motive and perseverance”—grit’s ancient ancestors—ranking as the top traits driving eminence.

High achievers like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the polymath who cranked out poetry, novels, and scientific breakthroughs over decades despite personal turmoil, or Charles Darwin, who doggedly refined his evolutionary theory through 20+ years of observation, self-doubt, and health struggles, didn’t just rely on brainpower—they outlasted everyone through sheer, sustained effort.​

This bombshell from the 1920s perfectly validates Angela Duckworth’s modern grit research: raw talent is overrated; legacies are forged by stamina. Fast-forward to today, and Ursula Burns embodies it—born in New York’s projects to a single Panamanian mom, she scraped her way from the Bronx to an NYU engineering degree, climbing Xerox’s ranks through relentless career drive to become its first Black female CEO in 2009. Grit isn’t era-bound; it’s the eternal edge that turns potential into legend.

Apply It: Grit for Your Gritty Life

Start with your Grit Scale score—it’s a mirror, not a sentence, spotlighting where passion or perseverance lags. Low on consistent direction? Run Warren Buffett’s famous exercise with his pilot: list your top 25 career/life goals, circle the vital 5, then banish the rest as distractions that dilute your focus.

Facing a wall of setbacks? Channel Jeffrey Gettleman’s inner compass—pivot paths but lock onto your Africa-sized calling—or Bob Mankoff’s submission ritual, turning 2,000 rejections into rocket fuel by showing up daily.

Grit isn’t a fixed trait carved in stone; it’s a muscle forged by aligning every action, habit, and sacrifice to abiding, God-ordained goals, just as Duckworth proves through these transformed lives. Take the scale today, audit your hierarchy ruthlessly, realign without apology, and outlast the quitters—your breakthrough isn’t luck; it’s reserved for the stubborn who stay the course.

Works Cited

Brown, Brené. Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution. Spiegel & Grau, 2015.

Cox, Catharine Morris. The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses. Stanford University

Press, 1926. Vol. 2 of Genetic Studies of Genius, edited by Lewis M. Terman.

Duckworth, Angela. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Scribner, 2016.

The Bible: The New King James Version. Thomas Nelson, 1982.