Recent evidence suggests conscientiousness is in free fall on a societal level. Here are first steps to help you and your family fight that trend.

It’s simultaneously sad and scary: conscientiousness of our population appears to be dipping.

The risks are manifold: less conscientiousness means less discipline, poorer life and health outcomes, and riskier behaviours that could destabilize lives, families, and society at large. It could mean the crumbling of meaning, too, as people seek short-term, expedient experiences rather than pursuing long-term fulfillment.

It means more divorce.

It means more violence.

It means less long-term success at work or school.

Basically, anything that has been a hallmark of a successful society will diminish if enough of us let conscientiousness as a virtue fall.

Opportunity Lurks: You Can Change Your Conscientiousness

But therein lies the good news, I think: it’s unclear whether or not this change is merely influenced by technology or culture or if there’s a lasting and irreversible physiological change happening.

Behaviours and culture that last for generations end up impacting the genome; if we act now, perhaps we save our ancestors from negative long-term impact. More urgently, those of us who may have “lost” some conscientiousness can get it back.

Already, parents are waking up. They’re taking screens out of their kids’ hands, not letting them have social media, keeping phones out of schools. Take even some small steps now, and your kids could end up much better off long term when they have to start making decisions for themselves.

On an individual level, especially if these changes are largely cultural and technological, we can start to make some helpful changes. Let’s start with four obvious ones.

EAT HEALTHIER

You may have heard the phrase, “you are what you eat.”

I’m not sure where it originated, and I’m not sure that it’s 100% true – it may have been a gimmick around poor food narratives from recent decades trying to get you to buy “low-fat” foods that were supposedly (but not actually) healthier. That said, there’s some truth to it. Perhaps a better phrase would be:

We are what we continually do.

And if you continually eat quick and easy foods that taste good in the short term but don’t actually satiate and nourish in the long term, you are re-wiring your nervous system to prefer expedient, high-dopamine, pleasure-focused behaviours rather than actually healthy ones. You’re making your brain one that cares about the short term, and that is basically the definition of shrinking conscientiousness and discipline. Say goodbye to your ability to delay gratification!

A better approach to eating would be to minimize treats and calorie-dense foods — especially processed ones that often include ingredients that just make you want more of them in a few minutes — and eat foods that will fill you and give you what your body needs. Such foods often take more prep time, and aren’t always as tasty (though this can depend, of course!). But eating them is not only healthier; this behaviour is setting the tone for the rest of our lives in helping us sacrifice short-term expedient pleasure for long-term health and wellness.

I know that eating healthier is an obvious one, and easier said than done. Why not start small, and see if you can’t make regular baby-steps in the right direction?

Choose one food you’ll replace this week. Don’t buy it when you grocery shop (and don’t grocery shop when you’re hungry!) and have that replacement food ready to go.

Next week, try the same thing.

My health journey honestly began when I stopped drinking pop every night at dinner and started to drink water instead.

I’m now a fitness coach who not only consistently exercises and eats well — it’s actually harder not to work out and not to eat well. It basically became habit and delight, but it all started with a small decision that snowballed.

LIMIT SMARTPHONE USE

Duh.

If it wasn’t clear in the introduction, the likely reason for this downfall in conscientiousness on such a wide population level appears to be (unsurprisingly) smartphones and social media.

They are distraction-based technology, designed to hold our attention and keep us scrolling. As such, they hijack our nervous system — specifically or largely the dopaminergic system — and keep us coming back for more hits.

They’re not crazy hits like heroine or other drugs (although porn use can be), but they’re incredibly easy dopamine, and that’s a major problem for us and our nervous system, particularly our ability to delay gratification and choose more challenging, productive, usually lower-dopamine behaviours.

Take, for example, reading. Books are entertaining, interesting, super useful technology that’s been around for some time. But they’re relatively unexciting compared to bright, flashy screens and whatever entertainment comes on them. Thus, if I’m given the option, it’s actually quite difficult to choose reading over said screens, particularly if I haven’t conditioned myself to make that choice regularly. Even worse, if I grew up on screens before pages, it’s hard to even consider the paper option.

For that reason, I recommend not only limiting smartphone use but finding other behaviours that you could (with some practice, perhaps) find entertaining and fun, even if they are low-dopamine. Perhaps ESPECIALLY if they are low dopamine.

And as much as you can have your phone/screens physically away from your person, do it. Take long walks outside while the phone’s at home. Play sports or other physical recreation. When you’re at the gym, leave your phone in the locker. Let your brain reset on a daily and weekly basis as you take time away from the high-dopamine stuff and give a bit of a “dopamine detox” as they say.

Pro-Tip: Limit smartphone use in the morning and later at night.

Why?

Your dopamine system resets a bit at night. If the first thing you do in your day is hit the easy dopamine, you’re making the rest of your day that much harder in comparison. So try to wait as long as you can, especially before social media or other quick and easy content (e.g. YouTube, especially shorts).

At night, the reason is a little more obvious: screen use later at night hurts sleep. Good sleep is foundational to good health, but it’s also essential for conscientiousness. A well-slept individual is one who has willpower reserves.

MAKE YOUR BED

Speaking of mornings, it’s good to get a disciplined start to the day with a quick win. The easy choice is making your bed.

It’s a small victory but one that multiplies with each day and trains the mind to be orderly and industrious by doing that small bit of work consistently.

Discipline is one of those things that spills from one area of life to another. Be consistent with keeping your room on the tidier side, and your brain starts to naturally work to be cleaner and more consistent in other areas.

It also creates momentum to start your day. After this win, who’s to say you can’t get a few more?

AVOID ADDICTIVE VIDEO GAMES (PLAY OTHER ONES)

I think games are great — an underrated art form, honestly. Some of my favourite stories, world building, characters, cinematography, and even music have come from games I’ve played over the years.

But some video games, just like social media, have been engineered to grab our attention and never let go. Some even go as far as to play some trickery and make us pay little bits of money over long periods of time to keep milking our wallets.

I’m not saying these games are bad games — they often require skill and have some cunning complexity to them, great production value, etc.

But much like what short videos are to movies, these fast-twitch, never-ending, high dopamine video games lack the morality, emotional engagement, and cognitive engagement that are more “real life” and healthy.

I’ll rag on Fortnite and Call of Duty here. The multiplayer of these games is about sheer excitement and non-stop action. There’s no real story, no real pauses or slowdowns in gameplay action (unlike real life which is dynamic, up and down, slow and fast).

Even worse in my opinion are mobile games on your phone. I’m a fan of dedicated gaming devices that can control your exposure to the option of gaming. Games on your phone, by contrast, not only come with you everywhere (and often these games can be played for minutes or seconds at a time for quick and easy dopamine), but also are on a device that is also a tool.

How many times have you opened up your phone to text a friend but ended up on Instagram or a video game instead?

Now you know what it’s like to have your nervous system hijacked and your focus disrupted.

It’s time to take control back.

All of this is just a start; in reality, it’s rarely a bad idea to work on being more disciplined or focused, and there’s no end to the small ways you could make big changes.

Best of luck to you and yours.

Keep working.