Self-Discipline

The ability to sustain effort is the part of Conscientiousness that best predicts outcomes.

High scorers begin and persist. Low scorers put things off and stall midway.

This, not Orderliness, is the facet that carries most of the domain’s predictive power.

Four public-domain statements, answered on a five-point scale. Items marked − are reverse keyed: agreeing with them counts against the trait, which is what stops agreeing with everything from producing a high score.

• +Am always prepared
• +Carry out my plans
• -Waste my time
• -Have difficulty starting tasks

Four items is not many. A facet measured this way carries real uncertainty, which is why every score on this site is reported as a range rather than a single number.