Why is consistency important?
Are you talented?
Do you work hard?
Even if you say ‘yes’ to those two above questions, you will fail without consistency.
Even if you say ‘no’ to those above questions, you will succeed with consistency.
Hard work beats talent. And consistency beats hard work.
I once came across a post on social media; it said `If you improve yourself 1% each day, at the end of the year, you will be 365% better than you were on day 1’.
The point is, consistent development works as miracles.
Consistency makes you attractive
I often ask people if they are talented; they say ‘no’. But they are also not willing to improve. They might start working after being motivated, and they might start with enthusiasm, but they often lose that mindset. From the previous chapter, you now know that when you have genuine interest in something, you will be self-motivated to achieve your goals.
An example of consistency is Master-Blaster Sachin Tendulkar. Sachin and Vinod Kambli were both students of coach Ramakant Achrekar. Kambli is considered to be more talented than Sachin. But he lacked discipline. Sachin practised, practised and practised. He learned sustainably.
I got my first job in 2016 in Ericsson. I had a hard time understanding the tasks given to me. I struggled daily. My manager was not very fond of me. But one day, he told me something useful. “You have to practise until you forget”.
I was too dumb to understand that at that time. Maybe now I can interpret it. When you practise, you improve yourself. The chance of you making an error keeps reducing. But you should not be too proud about it and stop practising, because then you will forget it.
There are thousands of examples to prove that when you stop practising, you lose skills. A simple example can be gym. You start working out, lose fat, get shredded, then stop going to gym, enjoy life. After a few months, you feel that those abs are not looking the same as before. Your girlfriend compliments your blooming man-boobs saying they are ‘cute’. You lost that achievement when you stopped working out.
Be consistent with your destination, but feel free to change the path
Sometimes, it happens that you are not getting enough results even after being consistent. In that case, you need to change the process. Suppose you are doing social media marketing; you start with posting regularly on social media. A few followers visit and like your posts; not much improvements. You research and input better quality pictures, music and contents. If that does not work, you can try backlinking, showing ads, engaging with others to increase your chance to get more likes.
Here, you are being consistent with social media posting. You are passionate about becoming an influencer. Just, the process you are trying with, is changing. And that is ok. Consistent development towards the vision WILL give you success.
Toyota is a famous car manufacturer. They have two major principles. The first one is respecting people and the second one is ‘KAIZEN’. Kaizen means ’continuous improvement’ and Toyota uses it to improve the product quality, believing that that is always a better way.
Using this philosophy, Toyota improved its efficiency. They can assemble a car in under 3 minutes.
When you are consistent, you are more likely to do hard work easily. It basically means, when you are consistent, you become a smart worker. You build up routines and things which you thought to be harder before, you become fluent in those now.
When you are consistent, you don’t give excuses. You put your routine first. Humans are slave of routines, once you create your routine, it will be harder for you to change it. Think of it like sticking to your favourite brand. The routine becomes your favourite brand.
To start habits, you have to make commitments. Make a promise to someone you love. It can be yourself, your family or God too. And then don’t turn back from that promise.
And if you stop for some reason, restart. No one will tell you anything. Only your inner-self will tell you “Maybe you should not have stopped”. Take it as self-motivation.
When you make a routine, you also get out of your comfort zone. After some time, the routine becomes your comfort zone. Make sure that the routine is adding to your development.
How long does it take to be consistent?
Consistency is a journey. Not a destination.
It is said that if you do the same thing for 30 days, it will become a habit. It was 21 days previously, but new research says that you should do it for 30 days. Some researchers also say that it should be done for 66 days.
And it is ok to take breaks, but that break should not be too long. Otherwise, you will become too comfortable.
How long does it take to break consistency?
When you are doing something regularly, you are actually programming your brain. When you stop doing that for more than 3 days, your brain will start reverse programming and that gained cognition will atrophy.
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