Why the invisible matters more than you think

We pretend reality is only what a camera can see and a sensor can log.

Convenient myth. The most decisive variables in your life are unseen states that still produce public, measurable effects: attention, trust, will, love, conscience, the elasticity of your shimjong. You cannot point a microscope at them, but you can watch their fingerprints in grades, health markers, bank accounts, and the quality of relationships.

Think about electricity. Nobody can see the electric current itself. We only see what it does: light bulbs glow, motors spin, rooms get warm. The cause is invisible, but the results are clear. Your inner life works the same way. When you have discipline and willpower, you study consistently. Consistent studying leads to better test scores. Better scores open doors to new opportunities. People see your résumé and your achievements. They don't see the inner strength that made it all possible.

Two common dodges keep people weak:

• “If I cannot see it, it is not real.” But in reality: gravity, fields, probability distributions. Unseen, relentlessly causal.

• “Immaterial means subjective, so it is optional.” No. Optional things do not change mortality risk, dropout rates, or team performance trends. Inner states do.

Here is the uncomfortable pattern: when love and conscience are trained, people cooperate longer, recover from setbacks faster, and sustain focus without external policing. When shimjong expands, empathy and meaning rise, which stabilizes motivation. Motivation stabilizes practice. Practice compounds into skill. Skill compounds into outcomes. The graph moves before the eyes ever notice why.

This section is a declaration of seriousness. Treat inner faculties as infrastructure, not vibes. Measure them by their outputs if you must, but do not pretend the grid does not exist because you cannot photograph a volt. From here on, we will define the core “invisible” capacities, map how they produce visible effects, and set up drills to train them like you would train for an exam—except this exam runs every day for the rest of your life.

If you are nerdy type of person as myself and would like to argue with philosophical aspect of this article, please, consider reading previous article before the argument: [link]

Evidence snapshot

• Childhood self-control predicts adult outcomes across health, wealth, and crime in a population cohort of ~1,000 followed from birth to age 32. Results held after adjusting for IQ and family background.[1]

• The same cohort shows that higher self-control is associated with slower biological and brain aging by midlife (age 45), using multimodal measures.[2][3]

• Personality meta-analyses aggregating 2000+ effects and 500k+ participants find that Conscientiousness (discipline, reliability) is the strongest Big Five predictor of performance, including academic outcomes. One synthesis covers 54 meta-analyses (k=2028, N=554,778). Another on academics alone synthesizes 267 samples (N=413,074). Small-to-moderate effects, but consistent across contexts.[4][5][6]

• Early-life non-cognitive skills (self-regulation, social-emotional) show positive effects on academic and psychosocial outcomes across studies in a systematic review and meta-analysis.[7]

• OECD reviews and city-scale surveys report that social-emotional skills relate to student well-being and success and are teachable at scale.[8][9]

Sources: PNAS (2011), Dunedin feature, Duke summary, Big Five → performance synthesis, Academic performance meta-analysis, Non-cognitive skills meta, OECD evidence

What counts as “immaterial” faculties

By "immaterial" we mean faculties that have no physical location you can cut apart, yet shape our behavior in repeatable, measurable ways. You cannot weigh love on a scale or photograph will under a microscope, but both leave traces in decision logs, cortisol curves, and task-completion rates. Here is the core list of examples:

• Love (shimjong) — the ability to care about someone else's well-being as much as your own, keeping relationships strong during hard times and enabling long-term teamwork.

• Empathy — understanding how others feel, which helps you avoid conflicts and work together more smoothly.

• Intelligence — how quickly you recognize patterns, think abstractly, and solve problems; partly inherited, partly improvable through practice.

• Will — the ability to do what you know you should do, even when it's hard; the force that closes the gap between wanting and doing.

• Discipline (self-regulation) — following your own rules and routines without needing someone to watch you; habits that keep going even when you don't feel motivated.

• Conscience — the inner signal that warns you when an action would break your principles or hurt someone; it speaks up before you act, and it scolding you when you do something that you know is wrong.

How they work

Each faculty works in a specific way. Love makes you feel closer to others, which makes cooperation easier and increases your willingness to share. Empathy helps you resolve conflicts faster by helping you understand what solutions work for everyone. Intelligence helps you learn faster: you need fewer tries to master something. Will helps you do what you know you should do, even when you're tired or distracted. Discipline makes good choices automatic, so you don't have to force yourself every time. Conscience warns you early when an action might damage trust or break your principles.

These mechanisms are not magical. They are mental shortcuts, behavior patterns, and social signals that other people can see and respond to. When you strengthen one, positive effects spread to your health, income, relationships, and how long you live. The fact that you can't see them doesn't matter. The results are real.

What you can change, and what you cannot

Some of these traits come from your genes and childhood. Intelligence is partly inherited (research shows 50–80%, depending on age), but you can still improve it through practice, good nutrition, and mental challenges. Conscientiousness (being organized and reliable) is also partly inherited (about 40%), but building routines and tracking your behavior can change it. Love, empathy, and conscience are strongly shaped by your early relationships and culture, but you can grow them as an adult through deliberate practice, reflection, and feedback.

The key point is: even if you start with certain traits, you can still improve. Small, steady improvements over years add up and can dramatically change your life path.

How to train each of this things

Training immaterial faculties requires the same consistency and hard work you would apply to preparing for finals or learning a technical skill: scheduled practice, measurable metrics, and honest feedback loops. Below are concrete protocols for each faculty, designed to fit into a weekly routine without requiring belief, only consistent execution.

Love (shimjong)

Weekly drill: Choose one person in your life—family, friend, or colleague—and perform three acts of service without announcing them or expecting something in return. Examples: prepare a meal, send a resource they need, cover a task they dislike. Track the person's name and the three acts in a log.

Why it works: Love grows through repeated, costly investment in another's well-being. The silence removes performative motivation; the cost makes it real. Over 8–12 weeks, you will notice reduced friction in the relationship and increased willingness to cooperate under stress.

Measurable metric: Relationship quality score (1–10 self-rating each week) and number of spontaneous positive interactions initiated by the other person.

Empathy

Weekly drill: During one conversation per day, pause before responding and mentally articulate the other person's internal state in one sentence: "They feel X because Y." Do not say it aloud unless asked. Write the sentence in a notebook later. Aim for 7 entries per week.

Why it works: Empathy is your ability to understand how others feel. The more you practice guessing what someone else is thinking or feeling, the better you get at it. When you check if your guess was right (by asking them), you learn from your mistakes and become more accurate over time.

Measurable metric: Reduction in misunderstandings or conflicts; faster resolution time when conflicts do occur; subjective report from others that you "get" them.

Intelligence

Weekly drill: Spend 3 hours each week practicing something intellectually difficult: math, coding, chess, learning a new language, or writing. Pick tasks that challenge you—things you can finish in 10–20 minutes if you focus, not things you can do easily in 2 minutes.

Why it works: Intelligence is partly inherited, but you can improve your memory, ability to spot patterns, and thinking speed through regular mental exercise. The important thing is to find the right level of difficulty: if it's too easy, you won't improve; if it's too hard, you'll give up.

Measurable metric: How fast you solve practice problems; how many new words you learn; how well you can teach a difficult topic to someone who knows nothing about it.

Will

Weekly drill: Each morning, choose one task you have been avoiding and complete it before 10 AM—no negotiation, no warm-up tasks. Log the task and completion time. Repeat 6 days per week.

Why it works: Will is like a muscle—it gets tired when you use it, but it also gets stronger over time. Doing hard tasks in the morning works best because that's when you have the most mental energy and fewer distractions. When you do this consistently, the hard task becomes easier and takes less effort to start.

Measurable metric: How many days in a row you completed the task; how hard it felt each week (rate 1–10); how much less you procrastinated on other things.

Discipline (self-regulation)

Weekly drill: Pick one simple habit and do it every day for 8 weeks without skipping. Examples: take a 20-minute walk in the morning, don't look at your phone for the first hour after you wake up, read for 10 minutes before bed. Use a calendar, app, or paper chart to mark each day you complete it.

Why it works: Discipline grows when you make small promises to yourself and keep them. The specific habit doesn't matter as much as doing it consistently. Once it becomes automatic, you'll have more mental energy for harder choices.

Measurable metric: How many days in a row you completed the habit; how in control you feel; improvements in other areas of your life without extra effort.

Conscience

Weekly drill: At the end of each day, write down one thing you did that you wouldn't want others to know about, and one thing you're proud of. Be specific. Every Sunday, read through the week's notes and look for patterns.

Why it works: Conscience gets stronger when you pay attention to it. Writing about your actions each day helps you notice when you're about to do something wrong, before it's too late. Looking back each week helps you spot problems that keep coming up so you can fix them.

Measurable metric: Fewer actions you want to hide; more actions you're proud to share; feeling like your behavior matches your values.

Common Disagreements (and answers)

"These traits don't change after you grow up." Research tracking people over many years shows that being organized, managing emotions, and even intelligence can improve with regular practice, even after age 40. Change happens more slowly as you get older, but you can still control the direction.

"I don't have time for this." The exercises above take 4–6 hours per week—less time than watching one Netflix series. The real question is not whether you have time, but whether you think these skills are as important as your job or physical health.

"You can't measure love or conscience." Measuring something doesn't make it less real—it just gives you feedback. You can't improve what you don't track. The measurements don't capture everything, but they show whether what you're doing is working.

"This sounds like self-help nonsense." Self-help books often promise quick transformations without evidence or clear methods. The protocols here are different: they are based on longitudinal research (studies that follow people for decades), they require consistent work, and they give you measurable feedback. You can verify the results yourself by tracking your data over 8–12 weeks.

"I tried something like this before and it didn't work." Most attempts fail because they lack three things: specificity (vague goals like "be more empathetic"), measurement (no way to know if you're improving), and duration (quitting after 2–3 weeks). The drills above give you exact tasks, clear metrics, and an 8-week minimum. If you follow the protocol exactly and see no change, then you have useful data—but most people never run the full experiment.

"Some people are just born better at these things." True. Starting points differ. But starting point is not destiny. Two people can start at different levels of conscientiousness or empathy, but the person who trains consistently for five years will surpass someone with better genes who does nothing. The question is not whether you start behind, but whether you are willing to close the gap.

"This takes the joy out of relationships and personal growth." Measuring something does not make it mechanical. Athletes measure their performance, but they still love their sport. Musicians practice scales, but they still feel music deeply. The tracking is not the relationship itself—it is the feedback loop that helps you grow faster. Once the skill becomes automatic, you can reduce the explicit tracking, but you still need it during the learning phase.

"What if I fail at keeping up with these drills?" Failure is data. If you skip three days in a row, that tells you something: the drill was too hard, your schedule was unrealistic, or you don't actually care about that faculty right now. Adjust the difficulty, change the time slot, or switch to a different faculty. The goal is not to perform perfectly, but to iterate until you find a protocol you can sustain for months.

"These are Western/Eastern/religious/secular concepts—they don't apply to me." The specific words (shimjong, conscience, will) come from different traditions, but the underlying faculties appear across all cultures: every society values the ability to cooperate, resist impulses, and regulate behavior. You can rename them to fit your worldview, but the training protocols remain the same because the mechanisms—habit formation, deliberate practice, feedback loops—are universal.

What to track each week

Set up a simple spreadsheet or notebook with seven columns: Love (relationship quality 1–10), Empathy (daily entries logged), Intelligence (hours of deliberate practice), Will (tasks completed before 10 AM), Discipline (habit streak days), Conscience (daily reflection completed), and Notes. Every Sunday evening, spend 10 minutes filling in the week's data and calculating your totals. This takes less time than checking social media and gives you a clear signal: which faculties are you actually training, and which are you only talking about?

These exercises are not something you do once and forget—they're habits you keep forever. Start with two: pick one you're already good at (to build confidence) and one you've been ignoring (to improve a weak spot). Schedule the time right now: 30 minutes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the first one; 20 minutes on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday for the second. After 8 weeks, check which exercises actually helped and make changes. The goal isn't to be perfect—it's to practice regularly, just like you do with your job or fitness.

Conclusion — start now

These immaterial qualities are not extras—they are the foundation. You can't pay someone else to love for you, buy discipline from an app, or absorb conscience from your culture without doing the work yourself. The drills above are simple, can be measured, and need no special tools, but they require the same effort you put into studying for tests or getting your job. Start with two this week. Set aside the time. Write down your progress. In eight weeks, you'll see that these immaterial things improve with the same hard work as anything else you care about—and you'll wish you had started sooner.