Consistency is Easier Than “Stop and Go”

Interesting people have many goals and interesting habits they wish to follow.

The challenge is that most worthwhile goals take long consistent effort and the nature of a habit is that it’s done with consistency.

The interesting fact that I realized recently with habits and consistency is that it is actually easier to do something consistently than to get yourself to do it just once in a while.

This may seem counterintuitive, but with anything that I’ve done with much consistency I’ve found it to be true.

This includes things like going to the gym, getting together with friends and even writing these blog posts or making YouTube videos.

When I’m doing something every single day or just six days a week it is easy to keep that momentum going. It almost feels harder to miss a day sometimes.

Sure the easiest thing off all would be to not do anything. Sit around being lazy, watch TV or maybe surf the internet.

The hardest thing is to get yourself to do something just once in a while.

Usually when you do something just once in a while it is because you’ve expanded your perceived view of its difficulty in your mind. If you perceived it as being simple you would do it every day. When you already do something consistently every day it doesn’t feel so hard. It becomes your default action and feels completely normal.

The more you do something, the better you get at it. This also makes it easier. You learn little ways to be more efficient. Your body and mind become more efficiently wired for doing it.

Your brain becomes wired to not miss days taking the right action. To miss a day feels weird and wrong.

It is when you start missing a day of your habit that you start to get messed up. You miss a day and you see that the world did not end. Missing that first day might feel kind of bad, but it also feels kind of good.

Then you miss a second day in a row and missing that day feels even less bad and more good.

Now the idea of resuming whatever action you were doing seems a bit challenging.

Each day after this gets worse and worse.

Once a good habit is broken it can be very tough to put it back in place.

The good news is that re-establishing old habits is easier than starting a completely new one from scratch. It’s like riding a bike where you have a sort of mental muscle memory to get you back into it.

The best part of this whole concept of consistency vs acting sporadically is that just knowing it is enough to work to your benefit.

Each day while building your interesting life and choosing which actions to take it is easier to follow the right habits by realizing the power of consistency.

It also helps when first getting started to realize that a habit will get easier over time.

If you can only get past that first day of the habit then the second day will be easier. The third day will be even easier than that and so on.

But what if I miss a day? Or two or three, etc…?

This is ok and definitely will happen. Don’t let it mess you up mentally. Sometimes when people miss a day or more they accept defeat and drop their good habit.

Realize that this is normal and just resume the habit as soon as you can. It can also help to find replacement actions or methods to continue your habit if some days you can’t follow your normal routine.

You can do push-ups, sit-ups and other calisthenics in lieu of missing the gym.

I usually write these blog posts from my laptop, but I am actually travelling while writing this and am writing it on my phone.

Replacement-actions can be a little less convenient and sometimes not as good as the regular action, but they are infinitely better than nothing.

I repeat: Anything is better than nothing. This is a real mathematical fact!

Watered down actions are also better than nothing.

A watered down actions could be something like going to the gym for just 15 minutes and speeding through a quick workout.

In the example of writing, a watered down action could be brainstorming on topics to write about for just 5-10 minutes.

Again any action is better than no action and you might find that 5, 10 or 15 minutes of something leads to doing hours of it.

It is said that our thoughts become actions. Our actions become habits, and that our habits create our lives and our destinies.

What habits have you been putting off? When have there been times that you’ve had the right habits, but lost them due to a lack of momentum?

When did taking just one day off become dropping the habit completely?

Realize the great power of consistency. Cultivate it and treasure it like a good friend once it’s in place. Realize that attempting sporadic occasional action is more difficult and can even feel torturous when compared to the nice paved road of consistency.