Interest trumps discipline

How to achieve ambitious goals?

How can you achieve ambitious goals in life? There is no simple answer, otherwise, everyone would achieve them. Most people don't. Maybe because they don't actually aim that high, but another reason is those ambitious goals are hard.

They take a lot of time - often many, many years. They demand continuous and intense effort. A few things increase your chances for success though. High intelligence and talent in your field.

Not really helpful, I'm afraid. You can't change your intelligence or natural talent much. So how can you sustain long-term effort in pursuit of something?

The case for discipline

One way is with discipline. Discipline is clearly helpful. Iron-clad discipline will allow for hard work and effort. It can keep you going during hard times. It is the reason you get up in the morning and drag yourself to the gym even if you don't feel like it.

Discipline is related to personality. The personality trait of conscientiousness correlates highly with discipline. Conscientiousness is all about order, getting things done, and inhibitory control. And that is the core of discipline.

Inhibitory control is costly though. It costs our frontal cortex a lot of energy to constantly control and inhibit other parts of our brain¹.

Interest trumps discipline

The truth is: not everyone has a lot of discipline. I do believe you can build discipline but that takes time, probably years. In that sense relying on your discipline to achieve ambitious long-term goals can be difficult. Especially if you are not conscientious.

You don't want to fight your limbic system. It is too energy intensive. Even worse, during hard times your discipline might fail you. It might not be resilient enough.

What is the alternative? Follow your interest. Let your interests pull you forward. This approach is more energy efficient neurologically. It's also more fun.

One caveat: If you a very high in Openness and very low in Conscientiousness you might flip-flop between new ideas and projects. Your interest in things drops off quickly after a while. In that case, you need to build your discipline first.

The Neuroscience of motivation

Why do certain things motivate us? The answer lies in the evolution of emotions. Charles Darwin was among the first to argue for a biological basis for our emotions². Our emotions are designed, by evolution, to drive behavior.

Your behavior will change depending on whether you feel fear or anger. Each of our core emotions seems to have a distinct neural system in the brain³. Our personalities reflect how these systems were tuned by our genes and the environment^4,5.

A more sensitive fear system in the brain leads to a person with higher Neuroticism. A more easily activated reward system leads to a person with higher Extraversion. A lower threshold for empathy and you will score higher on trait agreeableness.

3 steps to a new career

There are only three steps to take charge of your career path.

1. Take the personality career test
2. Unlock your career matches
3. Find a meaningful career

Your interests reveal your character

Let's go back to interests. Why are some things more interesting to us than others? Why does a certain topic, idea, or person resonate with us on a deeper level? What is this deeper level anyways? This resonance and by extension your interests reveal your character.

By paying close attention to what you find interesting and what things bore you, you can discover your own mind. Personally, I'm drawn to intellectual discussions, figuring things out, and teaching people. I don't know why but those things resonate with me.

You don't pick your interests

A corollary to all of this: You don't choose your interests. If anything you have to discover them like an archeologist uncovers a dig site. Think of it like this: You don't pick your genes, your prenatal environment, or your early life experiences.

Your interests are a reflection of your mind and you weren't asked in the design process. Just like intelligence and personality, interests are highly heritable⁶.

How to succeed in your professional life?

Follow a path based on what interests you and then stick to that path with discipline. The emotional pull of your interest will increase your chances of success over the long term. It will make you more resilient. Life is more fun this way.