Some people seem to be able to fulfill their objectives more consistently than others, according to scientists from the University of Oregon, but it remained uncertain whether personality traits promote individuals to attain long-term objectives in their daily life.
Conscientiousness has long been tied with healthy behaviours.
Researchers Rita M. Ludwig and colleagues Sanjay Srivastava and Elliot T. Berkman focused on "planning," focusing on psychological procedures such as mental flexibility, and the capacity of a person to make short-term sacrifices in pursuit of future achievement that directly contributes to attaining long-term goals.
"There indeed appears to be a certain way of thinking about goals that correlates with long-term progress," said Ludwig.
"What's new in this study is that we used an objective measure of goal progress that could be recorded as participants naturally went about their lives: their check-ins at a local gym".
The findings, published in the journal Psychological Science, suggest that self-reported levels of the trait called 'planfulness' may translate into real world differences in behaviour.
The team analyzed gym attendance of 282 participants over a 20-week period.
The participants, many of whom were students, provided a written description of their exercise plans and completed measures of self-control and grit.
While all participants experienced a similar decline in gym attendance over the course of each semester, individuals who rated themselves high on "planfulness" items such as "developing a clear plan when I have a goal is important to me" went to the gym more throughout both semesters compared to those who ranked themselves lower on "planfulness".
"Planfulness" was only significantly associated with the frequency of participants' gym attendance during the winter semester, possibly due to participants completing their physical activity plan later in the year, the researchers noted.
While there was a small, but significant relationship between participant planfulness and the level of detail in their physical activity plans, descriptiveness was unexpectedly found to have no relationship with gym attendance, Ludwig and colleagues noted.
"It seems logical that people who are successful with their goals would be able to write in detail about their planning process," said Ludwig.
"We were surprised, then, to find no relationship between people's goal pursuit behavior and how they wrote about their goals."
( With inputs from IANS )