Macan's Playbook: How to Become More Conscientious!

[Macan]

What is conscientiousness?​

Conscientiousness is a personality trait that represents a tendency toward discipline, diligence, reliability, and consistency in getting things done properly. It's one of the 5 personality traits, alongside neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, and extraversion.

What interests us most here is diligence. We'll talk about it a lot, because it's very important for this text — how to reach the desired state of our body, so that it isn't averse to effort (we'll explain everything you need later). Diligence means performing a task with dedication and care, not just to get it over with, but consistently and with quality.

Why is diligence so important for this text?​

The answer: the theory of learned industriousness.

Learned industriousness is a theory according to which diligence, as a skill, can be learned through sustained high effort — which then starts to generalize to the other activities we do that require a certain amount of effort.

What this theory is really saying is that you can teach a person to put in effort and to value effort as a positive thing, rather than a negative one — as was sometimes believed in science.

Studies were done where they took two groups of people. Whoever was rewarded for effort would later choose harder tasks on their own, even though those tasks brought no reward. The value of effort is, in part, actually a learned thing.

Let's see how we know this. In one study, people were split into two groups while working on a demanding task. One group was rewarded for the effort they put in, the other randomly. Then everyone got to choose the difficulty of tasks on something completely different — and this time with no reward at all.

The result: those who had earlier been rewarded for effort now chose harder tasks on their own, even though they gained nothing from it. Those who had strained the most in the first part chose the hardest in the second. In the randomly rewarded group, there was no such connection.

The point is subtle but crucial: what drew them to difficulty wasn't the fact that they were solving a hard task — it's that they had learned that effort itself pays off. Effort became valuable in its own right. And one more important thing: greater effort didn't mean a better result — yet it still took hold as a value. So you don't build the habit of effort by succeeding, but by straining and having that reinforced.

What is effort?​

Effort is the intensifying of mental or physical activity in order to achieve some goal. Motivation is the desire; effort is what you can do with it.

Effort can be seen in yourself, and others can see it in you — through it you signal loyalty, consistency, and intent. Effort itself can be rewarding: a study was done in which they saw that, when a person puts in effort, certain reward-related parts of the brain light up.

Example: with charity campaigns, people will give more money to campaigns tied to some demanding activity than to a non-demanding one (e.g. a marathon will raise more money than, say, a picnic). Simply because of perceived effort relative to value.

It's also important how we perceive effort relative to reward.

What you can take from this:

Reward effort, not outcome. Reward something that's hard for you — but reward only the effort. If you reward the outcome, you risk linking a specific outcome with the reward — so if the reward stops, you'll lose motivation for that outcome. Effort itself will reinforce itself, because you kept your word. The more you reward yourself for effort, the more the brain starts to link effort with a positive thing. Then effort becomes reinforcement to itself.

Why is it important to be conscientious?​

Everyone defines success for themselves, but most people agree on a few things — career, health, relationships, stability. I take those as the measure.

Conscientiousness is the most consistent predictor of performance. What does that mean — more conscientious people naturally put in more effort around school, work, relationships, and life. They're more organized, more consistent, and more diligent. These skills are of essential importance for a successful life. People with low conscientiousness go to the gym less, go to the doctor less, study less, procrastinate more. We can see a pattern where increasing conscientiousness can actually contribute a lot to a person.

Let's say you want to do looksmaxxing — you have to go to the gym, buy creams, have a routine. If you're not conscientious, all of this will be harder for you and take much longer than for someone who is conscientious. So conscientiousness is a good predictor of your ascension success.

Unlike intelligence, which is hard to change, conscientiousness we can easily change for the better — with the tactics I'll write about below. Intelligence plays an equally important role in life's success, but without conscientiousness you'd only be compensating for something that, through concrete activities, you could actually build. That's the hidden edge on our journeys toward ascension: we live in an age where people generally aren't conscientious, so whoever is conscientious can capitalize a lot on that.

Here's how it goes: you go to the gym, you start a skincare routine. First, you'll be more consistent in these actions; second, you'll actually start these actions, while someone else keeps putting them off. Over time all these actions start to accumulate — today's decisions make for a clear future.

One flaw of conscientiousness is perfectionism. Simply put, it's better to make a mistake than to never do something. Look at yourself from the third person. We are our own harshest critics; when we look at another person's problems, it's easier for us. So try to view your problem not as your own, but as if it were in another person. Step into the role of "how would I help him" — that's where you'll find the solution to your perfectionism.

What we can take from this:

A conscientious person has the best chance of succeeding in their pursuits, whether professional, academic, or looksmaxxing. That's why this guide is here to help us.

Why is it hard to be conscientious?​

We know what conscientiousness is and why it's important. So why isn't everyone conscientious, when there are so many benefits?

First, it can be because of mental disorders like depression, ADHD, or others. Second, simply — people are lazy and don't want to give it their all. There's also effort discounting and hyperbolic discounting.

Effort discounting. This is the tendency to devalue a reward relative to the effort that has to be put into it. In other words, the perceived value of a reward drops as the effort required for it rises.
Example: a reward is worth less once you see how much you have to strain for it.

Hyperbolic discounting. This is a cognitive bias toward choosing a smaller reward that arrives sooner, rather than a much larger reward that takes longer to arrive.
Example: you get 10 dollars now, or 15 dollars in two weeks.

Too much or too little self-confidence. This one is interesting — some suffer from too much, some from too little self-confidence. Too little is bad: opportunities pass them by because they don't believe in their own abilities. On the other hand, too much confidence can make you relax, so you don't take some obligations seriously. In a lot of cases it saves you, but one time it won't — because you believe in yourself so much that you don't do anything, and by then it'll be too late.

Abstract thinking. A big problem that few people catch. You talk about some goals — "I'll become a millionaire," "I'll get to 80 kg," "I'll get an A." But you rarely ask yourself what concretely you need to do. That's where the brain stalls, because setting a goal is only 10 percent of the finished task — the other 90 is the work itself. When people set a goal, they feel productive, not realizing they've just fallen into another loop of non-work that has to be broken.

In the tactics, I'll show you how we can change all these bad behaviors.

What tactics can we apply to become more conscientious?​

The first and main thing is learned industriousness (we'll go deeper into it now).

We know what learned industriousness is, but how can we apply it? We don't set goals based on direction/outcome, but based on tasks.

E.g. goals based on outcome/direction:

• I want to become a millionaire
• I want to graduate
• I want to pass the exam
• I want to have a great body

Here we already have a problem: these aren't goals, they're abstractions. Someone will set goals like these and achieve them, but that's rare. The average person has no sense of what these things mean — you set a goal and never chase it, because you don't know what action comes next to achieve it. These abstract things are directions, not goals.

A goal should look like this:

• I'll go to the gym and train (the muscle group for that day), on a specific day, for 1 hour
• I'll have a 25-minute block in which I'll write on some topic (any topic)
• I'll study 20 pages from the book for the exam I have

Now we see — these goals aren't abstract at all. They're clear and concise, and here we can practice effort. When we complete a block or workout like this, we positively affect learned industriousness. We should pause and praise ourselves for doing it. The more we do, the more the act of effort itself becomes rewarding.

The goal-gradient effect — what's the deal here? The closer you are to a goal, the more motivated you are to complete it. That's exactly what we need.

If we're heading toward a goal but don't know where we're going or what we've accomplished, we risk falling into discounting (effort, hyperbolic), like we talked about earlier. To solve these risks, I give two solutions:

1. We have to know why we're doing something — the reason. Simply, give yourself a reason: to achieve your dream, to secure your family, to find a woman, to make someone happy — but let the reason be noble, or simply to make yourself happy. When you have a reason, you know why you get up every day and why you put in effort.
2. When we make progress, recognize it. When you see how far you've already come, the goal seems closer — and the closer it is, the harder it pulls you. Every time we progress in anything, we look back a month or a week — where we were and where we are now — and take pride and joy in how far we've come. This is the secret of the goal-gradient effect: when we see we're not at the very start, the goal doesn't seem so distant and we get the motivation to finish it.

Find the things that motivate you — some are motivated by money, some by love, some by family, anything. This ties into the reason. If you find something that motivates you, all the work and effort won't be so grueling — and when you combine that with everything else, you'll be unstoppable.

All progress has to be tracked through notes. Every week, write down what you did well, which bad patterns you need to fix, and the solutions. Then you have insight — you clear the fog from your eyes, you see measurable data. After that it moves to a monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and even annual level. That way you can track progress and at the same time fix your bad habits, until there's not a single one left.

Conclusion

Here we've gone through what conscientiousness is, its importance, why people aren't conscientious, and the tactics to become conscientious. The average person can benefit a lot from this — and this is, unlike intelligence, the one thing that can be upgraded. Conscientiousness is the hidden edge in the modern age: to beat the average person and achieve your goals. This knowledge should be used. I hope it helps you the way it helped me. It works from personal experience, and this guide is backed by studies. This is what works for me — experiment with what works for you. Use this as your cornerstone to build your own system and become a more conscientious person.

Studies​

Spoiler: Studies

https://homepages.se.edu/cvonbergen/files/2013/01/Learned-Industriousness.pdf

Rewarding cognitive effort increases the intrinsic value of mental labor - PMC

Many extraordinary human skills like reading, mastering an instrument, or programming require thousands of hours of practice and continued exertion of mental effort. However, the importance of mental effort often contrasts with currently dominant ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Checking your browser - reCAPTCHA

https://docs.iza.org/dp10283.pdf

https://home.uchicago.edu/ourminsky/Goal-Gradient_Illusionary_Goal_Progress.pdf

Predicting School Grades: Can Conscientiousness Compensate for Intelligence? - PubMed

Intelligence and noncognitive factors such as conscientiousness are strongly related to academic performance. As theory and research differ with respect to their interplay in predicting performance, the present study examines whether conscientiousness compensates for intelligence or enhances the...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

We're all gonna make it, bhai!

@Volpa
#Volpamogs
​

Spoiler: Tags

@Jason Voorhees @Volpa @Seth Walsh @Atra @enchanted_elixir @mcmentalonthemic @androgenic

 

[Macan]

It took me so long, to write this.

 

[enchanted_elixir]

What is conscientiousness?​

Conscientiousness is a personality trait that represents a tendency toward discipline, diligence, reliability, and consistency in getting things done properly. It's one of the 5 personality traits, alongside neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, and extraversion.

What interests us most here is diligence. We'll talk about it a lot, because it's very important for this text — how to reach the desired state of our body, so that it isn't averse to effort (we'll explain everything you need later). Diligence means performing a task with dedication and care, not just to get it over with, but consistently and with quality.

Why is diligence so important for this text?​

The answer: the theory of learned industriousness.

Learned industriousness is a theory according to which diligence, as a skill, can be learned through sustained high effort — which then starts to generalize to the other activities we do that require a certain amount of effort.

What this theory is really saying is that you can teach a person to put in effort and to value effort as a positive thing, rather than a negative one — as was sometimes believed in science.

Studies were done where they took two groups of people. Whoever was rewarded for effort would later choose harder tasks on their own, even though those tasks brought no reward. The value of effort is, in part, actually a learned thing.

Let's see how we know this. In one study, people were split into two groups while working on a demanding task. One group was rewarded for the effort they put in, the other randomly. Then everyone got to choose the difficulty of tasks on something completely different — and this time with no reward at all.

The result: those who had earlier been rewarded for effort now chose harder tasks on their own, even though they gained nothing from it. Those who had strained the most in the first part chose the hardest in the second. In the randomly rewarded group, there was no such connection.

The point is subtle but crucial: what drew them to difficulty wasn't the fact that they were solving a hard task — it's that they had learned that effort itself pays off. Effort became valuable in its own right. And one more important thing: greater effort didn't mean a better result — yet it still took hold as a value. So you don't build the habit of effort by succeeding, but by straining and having that reinforced.

What is effort?​

Effort is the intensifying of mental or physical activity in order to achieve some goal. Motivation is the desire; effort is what you can do with it.

Effort can be seen in yourself, and others can see it in you — through it you signal loyalty, consistency, and intent. Effort itself can be rewarding: a study was done in which they saw that, when a person puts in effort, certain reward-related parts of the brain light up.

Example: with charity campaigns, people will give more money to campaigns tied to some demanding activity than to a non-demanding one (e.g. a marathon will raise more money than, say, a picnic). Simply because of perceived effort relative to value.

It's also important how we perceive effort relative to reward.

What you can take from this:

Reward effort, not outcome. Reward something that's hard for you — but reward only the effort. If you reward the outcome, you risk linking a specific outcome with the reward — so if the reward stops, you'll lose motivation for that outcome. Effort itself will reinforce itself, because you kept your word. The more you reward yourself for effort, the more the brain starts to link effort with a positive thing. Then effort becomes reinforcement to itself.

Why is it important to be conscientious?​

Everyone defines success for themselves, but most people agree on a few things — career, health, relationships, stability. I take those as the measure.

Conscientiousness is the most consistent predictor of performance. What does that mean — more conscientious people naturally put in more effort around school, work, relationships, and life. They're more organized, more consistent, and more diligent. These skills are of essential importance for a successful life. People with low conscientiousness go to the gym less, go to the doctor less, study less, procrastinate more. We can see a pattern where increasing conscientiousness can actually contribute a lot to a person.

Let's say you want to do looksmaxxing — you have to go to the gym, buy creams, have a routine. If you're not conscientious, all of this will be harder for you and take much longer than for someone who is conscientious. So conscientiousness is a good predictor of your ascension success.

Unlike intelligence, which is hard to change, conscientiousness we can easily change for the better — with the tactics I'll write about below. Intelligence plays an equally important role in life's success, but without conscientiousness you'd only be compensating for something that, through concrete activities, you could actually build. That's the hidden edge on our journeys toward ascension: we live in an age where people generally aren't conscientious, so whoever is conscientious can capitalize a lot on that.

Here's how it goes: you go to the gym, you start a skincare routine. First, you'll be more consistent in these actions; second, you'll actually start these actions, while someone else keeps putting them off. Over time all these actions start to accumulate — today's decisions make for a clear future.

One flaw of conscientiousness is perfectionism. Simply put, it's better to make a mistake than to never do something. Look at yourself from the third person. We are our own harshest critics; when we look at another person's problems, it's easier for us. So try to view your problem not as your own, but as if it were in another person. Step into the role of "how would I help him" — that's where you'll find the solution to your perfectionism.

What we can take from this:

A conscientious person has the best chance of succeeding in their pursuits, whether professional, academic, or looksmaxxing. That's why this guide is here to help us.

Why is it hard to be conscientious?​

We know what conscientiousness is and why it's important. So why isn't everyone conscientious, when there are so many benefits?

First, it can be because of mental disorders like depression, ADHD, or others. Second, simply — people are lazy and don't want to give it their all. There's also effort discounting and hyperbolic discounting.

Effort discounting. This is the tendency to devalue a reward relative to the effort that has to be put into it. In other words, the perceived value of a reward drops as the effort required for it rises.
Example: a reward is worth less once you see how much you have to strain for it.

Hyperbolic discounting. This is a cognitive bias toward choosing a smaller reward that arrives sooner, rather than a much larger reward that takes longer to arrive.
Example: you get 10 dollars now, or 15 dollars in two weeks.

Too much or too little self-confidence. This one is interesting — some suffer from too much, some from too little self-confidence. Too little is bad: opportunities pass them by because they don't believe in their own abilities. On the other hand, too much confidence can make you relax, so you don't take some obligations seriously. In a lot of cases it saves you, but one time it won't — because you believe in yourself so much that you don't do anything, and by then it'll be too late.

Abstract thinking. A big problem that few people catch. You talk about some goals — "I'll become a millionaire," "I'll get to 80 kg," "I'll get an A." But you rarely ask yourself what concretely you need to do. That's where the brain stalls, because setting a goal is only 10 percent of the finished task — the other 90 is the work itself. When people set a goal, they feel productive, not realizing they've just fallen into another loop of non-work that has to be broken.

In the tactics, I'll show you how we can change all these bad behaviors.

What tactics can we apply to become more conscientious?​

The first and main thing is learned industriousness (we'll go deeper into it now).

We know what learned industriousness is, but how can we apply it? We don't set goals based on direction/outcome, but based on tasks.

E.g. goals based on outcome/direction:

• I want to become a millionaire
• I want to graduate
• I want to pass the exam
• I want to have a great body

Here we already have a problem: these aren't goals, they're abstractions. Someone will set goals like these and achieve them, but that's rare. The average person has no sense of what these things mean — you set a goal and never chase it, because you don't know what action comes next to achieve it. These abstract things are directions, not goals.

A goal should look like this:

• I'll go to the gym and train (the muscle group for that day), on a specific day, for 1 hour
• I'll have a 25-minute block in which I'll write on some topic (any topic)
• I'll study 20 pages from the book for the exam I have

Now we see — these goals aren't abstract at all. They're clear and concise, and here we can practice effort. When we complete a block or workout like this, we positively affect learned industriousness. We should pause and praise ourselves for doing it. The more we do, the more the act of effort itself becomes rewarding.

The goal-gradient effect — what's the deal here? The closer you are to a goal, the more motivated you are to complete it. That's exactly what we need.

If we're heading toward a goal but don't know where we're going or what we've accomplished, we risk falling into discounting (effort, hyperbolic), like we talked about earlier. To solve these risks, I give two solutions:

1. We have to know why we're doing something — the reason. Simply, give yourself a reason: to achieve your dream, to secure your family, to find a woman, to make someone happy — but let the reason be noble, or simply to make yourself happy. When you have a reason, you know why you get up every day and why you put in effort.
2. When we make progress, recognize it. When you see how far you've already come, the goal seems closer — and the closer it is, the harder it pulls you. Every time we progress in anything, we look back a month or a week — where we were and where we are now — and take pride and joy in how far we've come. This is the secret of the goal-gradient effect: when we see we're not at the very start, the goal doesn't seem so distant and we get the motivation to finish it.

Find the things that motivate you — some are motivated by money, some by love, some by family, anything. This ties into the reason. If you find something that motivates you, all the work and effort won't be so grueling — and when you combine that with everything else, you'll be unstoppable.

All progress has to be tracked through notes. Every week, write down what you did well, which bad patterns you need to fix, and the solutions. Then you have insight — you clear the fog from your eyes, you see measurable data. After that it moves to a monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and even annual level. That way you can track progress and at the same time fix your bad habits, until there's not a single one left.

Conclusion

Here we've gone through what conscientiousness is, its importance, why people aren't conscientious, and the tactics to become conscientious. The average person can benefit a lot from this — and this is, unlike intelligence, the one thing that can be upgraded. Conscientiousness is the hidden edge in the modern age: to beat the average person and achieve your goals. This knowledge should be used. I hope it helps you the way it helped me. It works from personal experience, and this guide is backed by studies. This is what works for me — experiment with what works for you. Use this as your cornerstone to build your own system and become a more conscientious person.

Studies​

Spoiler: Studies

https://homepages.se.edu/cvonbergen/files/2013/01/Learned-Industriousness.pdf

Rewarding cognitive effort increases the intrinsic value of mental labor - PMC

Many extraordinary human skills like reading, mastering an instrument, or programming require thousands of hours of practice and continued exertion of mental effort. However, the importance of mental effort often contrasts with currently dominant ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Checking your browser - reCAPTCHA

https://docs.iza.org/dp10283.pdf

https://home.uchicago.edu/ourminsky/Goal-Gradient_Illusionary_Goal_Progress.pdf

Predicting School Grades: Can Conscientiousness Compensate for Intelligence? - PubMed

Intelligence and noncognitive factors such as conscientiousness are strongly related to academic performance. As theory and research differ with respect to their interplay in predicting performance, the present study examines whether conscientiousness compensates for intelligence or enhances the...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

We're all gonna make it, bhai!

@Volpa
#Volpamogs
​

Spoiler: Tags

@Jason Voorhees @Volpa @Seth Walsh @Atra @enchanted_elixir @mcmentalonthemic @androgenic

I remember that back when I was a teenager, I considered effort a very cheap cost for desired results, and would not mind if I spent lots of effort on something that didn't go through since effort was such a cheap resource to expend.

 

[Macan]

I remember that back when I was a teenager, I considered effort a very cheap cost for desired results, and would not mind if I spent lots of effort on something that didn't go through since effort was such a cheap resource to expend.

Yeah, that's good mentality to look at it, like that. Sadly average person doesn't. That's why a lot of people look to avoid effort, when they can, even when it is valuable in this day and age.