You too probably know a lot of people that make new years’ resolutions. The new year just feels like a reset and people have time to reflect. I do have the feeling that Covid-19 somehow works the same way for many people, as a reset, and that people are using it to set “Coronavirus resolutions”.

We may notice personality traits that we don’t like. And also missing skills that we want to work on. So we start setting goals. And what makes us set these goals? Ambition. However, ambition alone won't help us achieve these goals. Above all, intelligence and industriousness (i.e. diligence) are important factors if we want to achieve anything in life, whether it’s learning to program or to stop unwanted behaviors. But let's leave intelligence out for now and focus on industriousness. Because industriousness enhances discipline.

I want to introduce you to the idea of learned industriousness, which was researched by Eisenberger. This theory states that "if an individual is rewarded for putting a large amount of effort into an activity, the sensation of high effort takes on secondary reward properties that lessen effort’s general aversiveness. In accord with this view, research indicates that reward for high effort involving one or more activities increases the subsequent effort exerted in other activities."

So in other words, it seems that if we control and increase our industriousness in one activity, this industriousness generalizes and affects other areas of our lives because the high effort itself (and the achievement that hopefully comes with it), feels rewarding and therefore, being more disciplined in other activities becomes easier. This also fits the concept of neuroplasticity, which is the idea that your brain is able to alter its physical structure, to repair damaged regions, to grow new neurons and get rid of old ones. Relating to the idea of learned industriousness and the following generalization of discipline, this implies that our brain structure changes with that high effort → reward process. E.g. the area that is responsible for impulsive control (the Prefrontal Cortex), which is active when we force ourselves to resist the temptation of ice cream and Netflix to do something more productive, is growing and or restructuring itself.

In essence, because we train ourselves to be industrious in one life activity, it is easier for us to be disciplined in other life activities. Of course, this does not mean, that once one is putting high effort into one activity, everything else will automatically become as easy as a piece of cake.

When I first encountered the idea of learned industriousness something immediately clicked and I gained a new perspective on some of my thoughts. Let me give you an example. I know a lot of people that lift weights regularly and maintain a healthy diet. These people rarely do not achieve personal goals in various other life areas. And I always thought:" Well that makes sense, they are disciplined personalities so they manage to work out regularly and eat healthily and achieve other things." However, based on the idea above, discipline and achievement seem to have more of a feedback loop relationship. These personalities might also achieve things in other areas of life because they do lift weights regularly. The high effort and achievement in sports then reinforce discipline in them, which helps to be more successful in other areas of life as well. So to say, I found myself partly affected by the cause-effect bias.

But you too might think first:" Wait, do I not need to be disciplined first to get the cycle going?" Here comes the cool part. Being aware of this idea makes it easier to be disciplined from the start. Now, whenever I need to do something and feel resistance towards it, I tell myself that not alone the effort I put in this activity will give me a rewarding feeling, but also I am training my brain to help me achieve my goals in other life areas more easily.

Remember how I skipped intelligence at the beginning? Well, it is interesting to notice that even though industriousness can be learned and generalized, intelligence can not. We can’t increase our intelligence to be smarter in general. We might study and know more things, but we do not get more intelligent (at least until Elon Musk has figured out Computer-Brain interfaces with Neuralink).