Over the past few years I’ve learned a new language, built muscle, run marathons, taught myself to build apps, and learned to play the piano.
I have no particular talent for any of these things. But I have one killer advantage in my favour – which I wouldn’t swap for any level of genius or natural aptitude.
I’m consistent.
And if you have consistency, you don’t need anything else.
The “just show up” plan
When I asked a language tutor some stupid question about exactly how I should format my flashcards, he said something that stuck with me:
“It’s pretty hard to try for an hour every day and not end up learning the language”
Uhh.. yeah. Kind of obvious when you put it like that. But nobody ever had before.
I stopped obsessing about the “most efficient” method, and spent the next year learning in whichever way seemed fun to me on any given day. The only constraint: I did it for an hour. EVERY day.
And it worked.
Against complexity
That same insight put an end to my Googling of which bench press variation builds the most muscle, and watching Instagram reels about “long-length partials” (still not sure what those are).
I channeled that language tutor and told myself: “It’s pretty hard to show up at the gym 4 times a week, put the effort in, and not build muscle”.
And that worked too.
Same goes for anything:
- If you film a YouTube video every week, in a year you’ll be a good presenter
- If you sketch something every day, in a year you’ll be able to draw better than 95% of people
- If you write 500 words a day, in a year you’ll have written a book
It really is that simple
It’s hard to believe, because the world is constantly trying to bury you in complexity.
But this complexity usually has one of three reasons behind it – none of which is helpful:
- It’s relevant to people at the highest level, who are trying to optimise for that final 1% of gains
- It’s being talked about by people who don’t want to be consistent, and are looking for a magic shortcut
- It’s being talked about by someone who’s trying to sell a magic shortcut to that group
For the rest of us, “just show up and do the thing” is far as we need to go. But how?
How to be consistent
I don’t think I’m genetically wired for consistency, because for years I was a total disaster. These are the 4 things that made the difference:
Input goals, not output goals
Your goal should not be “get the result”, but “do the thing that leads to results”.
That way, it’s completely within your control.
Track everything
Once you have your input goal, track it: are you doing the thing every day?
I use a simple iPhone app to check off my activities each day, until I build up a chain that would be truly painful to break. There are many days when I don’t feel like (yes, I actually do this) studying flashcards of world flags and capitals. To be honest, I don’t much care about knowing world flags or capitals any more. But I’ve got such a long streak, it’d hurt to break it.
It’s much easier if you can turn your goal into a habit that you can do every day. When the aim is “3 times per week”, it’s dangerously easy to tell yourself that you can just do it tomorrow: when it’s daily, there’s nothing to fall back on.
(When it comes to the gym, “every day” would probably be overtraining – so my particular goal is to do something physical every day, of which four must be strength training sessions.)
Start tiny
Standard advice, but the way to build momentum is to start by racking up tiny wins. My first language-learning goal was 10 minutes per day, and I only built up to an hour over time.
Going in too hard too soon is a surefire way to blow yourself up – and that’s a disaster for consistency. If you injure yourself at the gym and miss the next three months, you’re right back to square one. If Warren Buffett had lost his money on a risky investment back in the 1970s, he’d have missed out on the 50+ years of consistent compounding that followed. You get the idea.
No tolerance for failure
The one thing I have in my favour is that I take promises I make to myself very seriously.
It’s easy to tell yourself a story about why you couldn’t do something that day: if you want a reason to let yourself off the hook, your brain will always invent one.
So you need to have zero tolerance for self-generated excuses. I’ve stayed on track through all manner of circumstances (ill children, work drama, travel…), which has sometimes involved doing mad things like waking up at 4am to study.
Is this less than ideally psychologically healthy behaviour? Probably. But it’s also not healthy to teach yourself that it’s OK to break promises to yourself – so you can probably find a more sane middle ground than I have, but the principle is important.
Actually…
I lied earlier. I would rather be talented. But I’m not – and if you’re not either, I strongly recommend compensating by being relentlessly (perhaps borderline psychotically) consistent.
Pick one thing. Do it every day for a year. See what happens.