The next best predictor of lifetime success is conscientiousness, and of the two aspects of conscientiousness, which are orderliness and industriousness, the better predictor is industriousness

The question is, what can you do about your industriousness? The answer to that is kind of rough because there’s a strong genetic component, but you can work on micro habits with regard to your conscientiousness, and I think the best micro habits to practice with your conscientiousness is to set up some goals for yourself

Let this be to you a source of motivation

If you’re extroverted, you want friends

If you’re agreeable, you want an intimate relationship

If you’re disagreeable, you want to win competitions.

If you’re open, you want to engage in creative activity

If you’re high in neuroticism, you want security

So those are all sources of potential motivation that you could draw on that you could tailor to your own personality, but then there are dimensions that you want to consider in your life across.

If you could have your life the way you wanted it in three to five years, provided you are taking care of yourself properly, you know what you would want from your friendships, intimate relationships, how you would like to structure your family, what you want for your career, and how you are going to use your time outside of your job? What would your answer be?

How are you going to regulate your mental and physical health? So that you can develop a vision of what you would like your life goal to be

Once the goal is established, you break down the goal into micro processes that you can implement

The Micro process has to be rewarding in proportion to its causal association with the goal, and that tangles in your incentive reward system, you know, we talked about the dopaminergic incentive reward system, and that’s the thing that keeps you moving forward.

The way it works is that it produces positive emotion when it can see you moving towards a valued goal. The implication of that is that you are encouraged to have a valued goal.

The Question is, do you just sit there and do nothing? That’s really easy!

Why would you ever work? The answer to that has to be because you’ve determined by some means that it’s worthwhile, and then the next question might be, where should you look for worthwhile things? One would be well; you could consult your own temperament or look at what it is that people accrue that’s valuable across their lifespan

Once you set up that goal structure, it will help you to figure out who it is that you’re trying to be, and you aim at that and then use everything you learned as a means of building that person that you want to be. I am laying emphasis on “want to be” and not “should be”.

Specify your goals because you’re going to hit something

If you don’t know what it is that isn’t going to happen, you will not be able to tell if you succeeded or failed

Many people won’t specify their goals because they don’t like to specify conditions for failure, so if you keep yourself all vague and foggy, which is really easy because that’s just a matter of not doing as well, then you don’t know when you fail

People might say, ” Well, I really don’t want to know when I fail because that’s painful, so I’ll keep myself blind about when I fail, that’s fine, except you’ll fail all the time, and then you just won’t know it until you’ve failed so badly that you’re done, and that can easily happen by the time you’re 40.”

I would recommend that you don’t let that happen.

That’s wilful blindness. You could have known, but you chose not to

Maybe twenty percent of your day has to be responsibility and obligation or maybe it’s more than that, depending on how far behind you are but even that you can you can ask yourself, okay, well I’ve got these responsibilities. I have to schedule them in what’s the right ratio of responsibility to reward

You have to understand that you’re not your own servant, so to speak.

You are someone that you have to negotiate with

You are someone whom you want to present the opportunity of having a good life to

I know that it’s hard for many people because they don’t like themselves very much.

This is why they motivate themselves negatively by always cracking the whip and then procrastinating, and cracking the whip and then procrastinating, which ends up frustrating them and doesn’t help them to accomplish their goals

You can improve your conscientiousness

Outline a goal that you actually would like to hit

The goal could be anything, but it has to be a negotiation with yourself. You can say, “I want to have this discussion with my wife or husband, and I promise myself it will not degenerate into a fight.”

Aim for something

You might think, I’ve got this job. How much would I have to be paid so I’d be excited to go to work

You could at least know what that number is, and then you could go to your office and say to your boss, “If you’d like to have me around, I’ve been doing some thinking. I think if you paid me this amount of money, I’d be so thrilled to come to work.”

Your boss might think.

This guy is offering so much value, and I can’t afford to lose him.

He can then say “I can’t give you all of that but I’ll give you seventy-five percent. Maybe we can renegotiate it in a year.

Or you can be some weasely coward and go in there and snivel about how awful your life is, remain miserable and full of resentment because you refuse to do something about your condition

Social networking is another big deal; it’s one of the advantages that older people have over younger people.

For example, now that I’m in my forties, I know a bunch of other people who are relatively well-positioned in the dominance hierarchy, and they know all sorts of people, and so when I go to one of them and say you know, can you do X or do you know X?’ they say, ‘No, but I know someone who can,’ and that’s a huge advantage.

Another thing that you want to think about as you move through life is how you use your ability to build your social network properly

Try to surround yourself with people who are competent in multiple different dimensions and maintain your relationships with them, so that you can also be empowered to trade relationships.

It involves reciprocity, and it is a huge advantage

If you want to increase your probability of success, always take an opportunity that would provide you with a new skill

Learn to do it right, learn to program, learn to write, learn to read, read new things, learn to public speak, learn how to introduce yourself to people, learn how to social network, learn how to go talk to your boss in the right manner

This is the right way to go talk to someone who’s supervising you…

I see this problem, and here’s the solution, and so I’ve come to talk to you about the problem and the solution

That supervisor is going to want to talk to you a lot because the other people they’re talking to are going say “I’ve got a problem, can you do something about it?”

They don’t want to do something about it because they’ve got 50 other things to do

So if you’re the person who constantly brings forth a problem and offers the solution, they are going to want to have you around, than if you’re just another source of problem

Don’t be a problem for the people who want to give you money

If someone wants to give you money, then help them do that, and if they want to give you status and success, then help them do that.

You do that in part by bringing them solutions and by developing your skills

This is also a good way of evaluating if you should take an opportunity

Here’s the rule: Take the opportunity if it will teach you something that you can use for other opportunities, because then even if it fails, it doesn’t matter because you’ve accrued something of value that you can bring forward to the next situation, or you have acquired a skill that can be of value to you throughout your life