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>> I've had more success than many colleagues due to me spending time every day to improve myself

Conscientiousness is ~44% heritable.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8776880

Are you saying that each individual person cannot decide to and then become more conscientious?

56% -- the majority of conscientiousness, it seems -- is not heritable. They can decide to, and be, but it sounds like a decent chunk of that is due to genetic predisposition.

Genetically I'm not much of a runner compared to my brother, but I work hard at it 3-4 times a week. But if he got around to hitting a treadmill as much as I do I'm sure he'd outperform me.

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