The Power of Consistency

This Week’s Tip: Consistency Beats All Tricks

The single, biggest secret to accomplishing anything is to be consistent. It doesn’t matter what it is - learning a musical instrument, creating a company, software programming, science, Candy Crush or anything else. If you can be consistent over a long enough time period, you will get good. The hard part for most of us is finding that consistency. Read on for why consistency is important and some simple tricks you can use to become more consistent.

Why Consistency Matters?

Learning compounds with consistency. We often underestimate the value of consistency. As an analogy, take investing. If you invest $500 every month for 30 years, you will have nearly a $1mn dollars. The power of consistency compounded the principal of $180k that you invested and made it $1mn dollars.

The same principle applies with learning. If we can keep showing up consistently, we will be able to be achieve our goals. Like my meditation teacher told me, “Showing up is 90% of the game”.

When I was quite a bit younger, I had a voracious appetite to learn. Any topic that caught my fancy, I would start learning obsessively for a few weeks. The initial enthusiasm would wear off and I would be onto the next thing. This went on for many years. I picked up musical instruments (violin), martial arts (Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu), physics and so many more. It was shallow learning. I never went past the beginner stage. Just scratching the surface is exciting, but often not fulfilling.

In contrast, when I want to l accomplish something now, the first thing I do is set up a schedule based on the rest of my time commitments. It may only be 15 minutes or half hour a day. But doing that regularly over a long enough period has helped me master diverse fields like machine learning, meditation and so much more.

Becoming More Consistent

Ultimately, becoming more consistent is about a process mindset. Showing up every day whether you feel like it or not. Inspiration is fickle, discipline is steadfast. Here are some tips that will help.

1. Come up with a manageable routine and stick to it. It is better to commit to less in the beginning. For example, let’s say you want to learn the guitar. Commit to practicing 15m every day.

2. Eliminate any friction that will prevent you from sticking to your routine. For our future guitar maestro, this could mean keeping the instrument easily accessible.

3. There may be days, where sh** hits the fan and you can’t stick to your committed time. On such days, avoid the temptation to not do anything at all. Instead work on the goal for at least a few minutes. The key is to keep building momentum towards the goal.

4. At the beginning of every day, reconnect with your motivation for the goal. This could be as simple as repeating an affirmation. For example, let’s say our guitar learner is motivated by the thought of playing like Jimi Hendrix. At the beginning of every day, they could visualize themself playing like Jimi Hendrix.

5. Try to set aside expectations and just enjoy the process. Anything work accomplishing takes time, so enjoy the process instead of being impatient to get to the finish line.