Is it possible to change your personality in two weeks?

Want to read more? Work less? Lose weight? Join the bloody club. Changing our habits, and by association, our personality is hard. Not so says the University of Zurich. Researchers found that people who wanted to become more self-disciplined in two weeks could by using an app they had built prompting them to be better.

The computer says: be happier 🖥️

Researchers have known for a while that your personality isn't fixed throughout your life, explains psychologist, author, and personality expert Benjamin Hardy, in a Psychology Today post.

Instead, he says, it's useful to see personality as points along a spectrum, where you may be more or less extraverted, or more or less agreeable, for example, and that these traits may change over depending on your experiences. And, he says personality is a skill that can be learned.

Back in Zurich, scientists tested this theory on 255 subjects and split them up: one group wanted to be more self-disciplined, and the other more open to new experiences. All researchers did is send each group two messages a day: the first sent in the morning encouraged them to keep going and reminded them of how far they'd come. The evening message asked them to answer a few questions about how the day went.

I different now 🥸

After two weeks, subjects all felt like they'd nudged the needle towards the goal they had set out on in the beginning. Whether or not the participants will stick to the new found skill isn't clear. But if you can feel less like you're stuck in a pit of despair where you never seem to get dressed or get washed (just me? oh, ok), this is game-changing.