Whatever our personality, psychological maturity requires a balanced, varied skillset, and that means working to develop your areas of weakness. From a personality perspective, that means developing the parts of us that are against the grain of our typical personality… Hence this personality-based self-development series.

The Big Five personality model favoured in psychology – also known as the OCEAN model – uses Conscientiousness as a category to describe folks who are diligent, persistent, and can delay gratification more easily for long-term goals. In a word, conscientious types are more disciplined.

Sounds like a trait everyone would want, right?

Indeed, conscientiousness is associated with higher income, better life satisfaction, and overall stability.

That said, there exist trade-offs with any trait.

Finding success in life will require improving one’s discipline, persistence, and organizational skills. It’s not always glamorous… but if you value success and stability, well, you’re in the right place.

This post will take a bit of a practical and empathetic approach to improving discipline, since shaming yourself into it probably isn’t going to work. If you find it valuable, share it with someone!

Recognize Your Strengths

It can be easy to beat yourself up when you lack conscientiousness. But remember this: personality is adaptation.

Think of personality like a mental pre-set. You come pre-programmed with particular mental and emotional adaptations that incline you towards a particular style of living.

Conscientiousness is a form of stability; it’s the inclination to sacrifice the present for the future, and assumes that this sacrifice will pay off.

It doesn’t always.

Low conscientiousness, on the other hand, might be thought of as high spontaneity and adaptability on the fly.

If you’re less conscientious, you’re probably pretty decent on your feet. You are probably spontaneous and fun-loving. Those are lovely, useful things, and it is your responsibility to properly manifest those things in the world to better the human race.

Once you have adopted – or have begun adopting – this healthier attitude towards yourself, you’ve got the room to grow without guilt. Whatever your situation, it does not pay to waste mental energy on shame.

Find the Right Tools

Alright, now for the less happy part of reality: Life requires being conscientious, especially if you want some measure of success. That means you have to change and adopt new skills, which will take work and sacrifice.

Skills and energy are the big issues when you’re fighting against the grain of your personality. Just like a bodybuilder trying to run long-distance, your brain will use up energy more quickly when trying to operate conscientiously if you’re more spontaneous. It will tire out doing the things it’s not predisposed to doing. That’s why it’s all the more important to have help.

Enter: tools.

I’ve talked about tools before so I’ll try not to drag on. In a nutshell, tools allow us to do things more efficiently. They save cognitive energy. They also compensate for us where we need them to. If you’re less wired for planning and remembering everything day-to-day, for example, a calendar will be your friend.

A to-do list, likewise, will help you keep track of all the stuff you should be doing.

Google Calendar is a good place to start, especially if timing and scheduling probably aren’t your strong suit. You can check out this blog post for a rundown of some tools I use.

When it comes to schedules, don’t see them as a ruling tyrant. See them as a servant – you are the master. Don’t be unrealistic – you won’t schedule every minute of every day. Put the important stuff in there first, and experiment with the rest.

Todoist is my favourite to-do list app. It has all the features you’d want: it syncs across devices, allows you to set deadlines, and organizes tasks by category. Work towards a daily check, and clean it up every once in a while.

Automate

Exactly how you improve your conscientiousness will look different for everyone, especially depending on your reasons for doing so and your own unique personal quirks or situation.

Nonetheless, one principle will always ring true: balancing your personality (i.e., building strength where you tend to be weak) will require a lot of cognitive energy. As I said above, managing that energy will be key to developing discipline and becoming more conscientious.

What better way to save mental energy than making things so automatic that you don’t even think about them?

Automate Focus: Get Ahead of Temptation

I can’t recommend James Clear’s Atomic Habits book enough to you. One of the reasons it’s so great is that it uses little psychological hacks to get habits building. He understands that if something is difficult, it’s much less likely you’ll stick to it.

So when it comes to improving discipline, consider how to make it easy. Alternatively, you can make laziness hard.

When I wanted to make myself get up at the same time every day, I began setting my phone’s alarm and charging it overnight on the opposite side of my room. This way, my lazy morning self that wanted to stay in that cozy bed had to get up anyways.

It’s not foolproof but it’s worked quite well.

Similarly, since focus is key to getting things done, so you’ll want to make focus easy and distraction hard.

I write a lot, but recognize that having my phone around is a bad idea when I’m working. So I get rid of it. I leave it in my bedroom or on another floor of the house.

When I wanted to develop a weekly planning habit, I decided to make it an enjoyable experience. I set a few hours aside every week to enjoy my favourite coffee shop (and my favourite pastry in the city) while I do it. It’s stuck, and I look forward to it every week now.

Automate Routines: Habit Stacking

James Clear also talks about habit stacking – combining particular habits so that they all come at once. Really, this is developing a routine. For example, many of us wash our face and brush our teeth in the evenings before bed.

As you work on one habit, especially if you reward yourself for it, try to throw another one in to hit two birds with one stone. My morning previews look at both my calendar and my to-do list. I’m already on my phone, thinking about my day. Might as well make both productive habits part of the same automation in my brain!

The key here (with respect to both automation and habit stacking) is minimizing the mental energy we spend on these daily behaviours. The more cognitive energy we save by automating, the more we can spend it on being disciplined elsewhere. This will prove essential for growth in conscientiousness.

Capitalize on Passion and Interest

It’s long been a debate whether or not you should wait til you’re passionate or motivated to do something or whether you should focus on willpower and determination.

The simple fact is that both are useful but insufficient.

Some super conscientious people have tons of willpower and can just push through whatever their task/goal is. But if you’re reading this post for takeaways, chances are that you are gonna need more than sheer tenacity.

Use passion and interest wherever you can. Bother less and less with those things that you aren’t truly gifted with or don’t enjoy.

Of course, you have to balance this with discipline. But as Mark Manson puts it, “If self-discipline is difficult, you’re doing it wrong.”

For me, writing will always be a part of my life. I’ve been doing it for more than ten years, and while there are days where I sit down and hate that I have to put pen to paper, it honestly feels worth it for me. It’s just been one of those hobbies that has worked well and that something inside me knows I’m meant for.

It’s a joy, and even though I won’t make every deadline I set, consistency is so much easier when you love something.

I’ll also say that sometimes you get a flood of motivation or passion, and it’s not a bad idea to try and ride that wave as it comes. Everyone harps on the January/February gym rush, and how resolutions aren’t helpful. Sure, it’s better to actually stick with something, and the resolution strategy doesn’t seem to always work. But the exercise you get is better than the exercise you don’t… if it’s motivating for you to hit the gym with thoughts of a new you in the new year, why not use that to get you started?

It’s easier to paddle in if you can ride the waves.

One final pro tip: as much as you can cause or find those waves, try and do so. If your habit is creative, like mine is, it might be a good idea to engage with the creativity of others for inspiration, for example. If you’re trying to get more consistent with the gym, following some fitness influencers on social media might motivate you, so go ahead and follow them.

Find what works and capitalize!