The above charts — taken from a recent Financial Times article by John Burn-Murdoch called "The troubling decline in conscientiousness" — should be viewed as alarming. For some of our key personality traits, it is showing a decline in extroversion for all age groups, a decline in agreeableness (except for the 60+ crowd), a spike in neuroticism (again, except for the 60+ crowd), and a massive decline in conscientiousness, particularly for young people aged 16-39.

Why does this matter?

Well, according to Burn-Murdoch's article (tweet summary here), the two strongest predictors for overall life success are conscientiousness and neuroticism. These traits are more important than a person's socio-economic background and raw cognitive abilities. They predict career success, the likelihood of getting a divorce, health and life expectancy, financial stability, and more.

Conscientiousness is defined as "the quality of wishing to do one's work or duty well and thoroughly." But simply speaking, conscientious people tend to dependable, disciplined, and committed. They are careful and deliberate, rather than careless and impulsive.

Neuroticism, on the other hand, is generally defined around emotional reactivity. Psychologists define it in terms of the degree that someone is prone to things like anxiety, self-doubt, and sadness. Someone with high neuroticism might, for example, feel easily stressed, worry excessively, and/or dwell on past mistakes. This trait predicts outcomes that run in the opposite direction of conscientiousness: lower career satisfaction, higher divorce rates, reduced life expectancy, and so on. It can also heighten risk perception, which makes neurotic people more likely to overlook potential opportunities.

So once again, it is alarming that these two traits are shifting meaningfully in the wrong directions for young people. Burn-Murdoch puts at least part of the blame on our hyper-connected and high-distraction digital lives. He also hypothesizes that AI could exacerbate this problem. If you're a high conscientious person you might use LLMs to supercharge your abilities; whereas if you're a low conscientious person you might use them to further check out.

The good news is that these traits can be trained. We are all products of our habits and environments. And I'm finding it personally helpful to even just write about these findings. It is also reminding me of a good friend of mine from grad school who used to always espouse something that he liked to call "casual intensity." His thinking was that you need to be on top of things and get shit done. But don't stress about it. Be confident in your abilities.

I think that's a good way to try and approach things.

A few weeks ago I accidentally sparked, via this tweet, an entertaining debate about what it takes to be called a developer. This led to my post "Do you even develop, bro?", where I explained my view on when it might be appropriate. (Spoiler: It's a broad term.) But my friend Brendan Whitsitt of Imprint Development has just published an even better post on the topic. It's called "Developer vs. Dirt-Flipper" and you should give it a read.

In it, he says this:

So if we tried to sketch a Platonic ideal for what a developer is, we might say that the ideal developer would have a solid understanding of, and experience in, all phases of development, including construction. This person will have a holistic perspective that attempts to optimize across all phases of a project rather than just one part.

This doesn't relate directly to the debate of who should be called a developer, but I think it's an insightful comment. Developers have very specific skillsets, but they also tend to be generalists. Our job is to stitch together lots of different disciplines and elements to ultimately produce a space that people can live, work, play, and/or do other things inside. The more you know about the entire process, the better you can be at any one part.

I even think this transcends just the development process. The more you know and understand about cities, market trends, human behavior and countless other things, the more thoughtful you can be about formulating new developments. It's never ending and it makes for an interesting line of work. But I do think this raises the question of: When is it valuable to specialize?