Consistency is the critical success that almost nobody likes to talk about.
And I think because it’s not a sexy topic. All you have to do is work every day, put out that work every single time you promise you do, show your work, and do it day by day.
It’s easy but hard at the same time.
After I was fired from a job where I worked two weeks in an online marketing agency, I knew I wanted to work in marketing. So I went to a bookstore and bought all the marketing books I found with the money I made in those two weeks.
The first book that I read about marketing was Purple Cow by Seth Godin. Then I searched him on the internet, found his blog, subscribed to his blog, and followed him since then. Read almost every article he published. Read nearly every book he published and listened to almost every podcast episode he published. I said “almost” because I know there were days or weeks when I didn’t have the time to consume every piece of content he created and published.
That’s why I respect Seth Godin because he is creating and consistently publishing his work.
That’s why Seth Godin was and still is one of the most successful marketers on the planet because he is constantly creating. Because he is showing up every day.
Do you want to make a change around yourself?
Show up every day and create something for people like you.
Do you want to be successful in your industry?
Be consistent with your work and improve it every day you have the chance.
I was thinking about this topic lately and I’ve done some research. And while I did so, I was thinking of writing down my ideas and my own experience with consistency.
Because I believe that everyone (from the marketing industry) heard about Seth Godin, or everyone from the podcasting industry heard about Tim Ferriss, or everyone from the Youtube industry heard about Casey Neistat (when he did his daily vlogging project).
I didn’t read James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” book, but I subscribed to his newsletter; I listened to a few podcast episodes where he was invited and read almost all his blog articles. James used consistency to start going on his path. He explained how in November 2021, he began writing articles on his blog. He committed to a writing schedule that helped him publish two articles per week, Monday and Thursday.
After three years of consistency (exactly, three years of publishing every week), he was offered a massive book deal for Atomic Habits – that’s when he changed his mindset and focus from posting articles to writing his book.
Today James is one of the thought leaders on habit building and productivity and has already sold over 2 million copies of his book.
How did he get here? By being consistent with his work.
“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.”
Dwayne Johnson.
The best way to learn from each other is to be transparent and vulnerable with ourselves.
I saw the impact of consistency in day-by-day work and week-by-week work.
Today I can say that I’m a proud creator who created and published over 111 podcast episodes in 3 years, over 390 articles in the last six years on this blog, and many guest posts, Instagram carousels, and other pieces of content.
I love creating content, different formats, different ideas, and approaching different angles. My friends know me as the one person who loves to create content and being so passionate about it that he can influence an entire local industry.
I’m proud not because of the numbers; I’m proud not because I’m working on what I love to do day by day, but I’m pleased because I still love to create content after all these years.
Consistency brought me so many advantages in my life. Consistent work gave me this excellent job I have now at Creatopy. Consistent work allowed me to connect with other people I admire and respect because of their work.
Consistency didn’t make me a particular person but made me keep my promise – delivering high-quality content and being passionate about my work.
But consistency it’s not only about the numbers. It’s not only about the fact that we’ve done something great – I believe that consistency it’s about progress.
It’s the progress on keeping your morale high, keeps our enthusiasm brimming, and increases our investment in that specific project.
If you are consistent with your work and publish the same content every day, let me tell you that you won’t see any significant results in a few days. It’s like going to the gym and working the same exercises. You want to work your entire body. You want to be healthy 100%. That’s why you will start with one kind of exercise, but you will want to see some progress with time, and you will want to work on every muscle you have.
So if you are still asking yourself what’s the secret to success, the answer is simple: be consistent with your work and improve it every time you have the opportunity to do it.
Let’s change the question and put it in a more personal way – why are you not consistent?
Let’s think about this for a moment. What are the things you promised yourself that you would do regularly, but you skip one or two and then just let it go because you forgot about it?
And to be honest with you. I’m in the same position and still fighting to create a daily habit with a straightforward thing to do a 5-minute workout every morning. It’s not something hard to do, and it’s not very complicated. The first three days were fantastic – every day, I had my morning routine with 5 minutes of exercise. I even wrote it down in my Notion and created a page just for this – Daily exercises. But then the weekend came, and Saturday morning, I said to myself that I would continue on Monday to do the exercise. And guess what, I forgot about it and remembered after two weeks while I’m writing this article.
But on the other hand, I look at myself doing three carousels every week and putting content out there regularly. So what’s the difference? Why can’t I create a morning routine with my exercises, but I can be consistent with my content creation?
Because there is instant gratification, I see results after I publish the content. I can see some likes, some comments, some page views, and some replies from others. And this helped me continue with another piece of content and another one and another one.
Sometimes we need some instant gratification to keep going on and on. Not relying on them, but just seeing that something it’s happening.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that you should do everything in your life just if you get that instant gratification. It is helpful for me, and now I’m looking to find those instant gratification rewards for my 5 minutes of daily exercise.
What are other reasons we are not consistent with our work, personal tasks, or even life projects?
It’s hard to work on something if we don’t know when we will get to that specific result.
If you want to lose weight, it’s hard to put in the work every day because you don’t know exactly when you will lose that weight you want to lose. So thinking about going to the gym every day, putting in the work, eating healthy, and making sure you stick to a routine, it’s not a simple thing.
That’s why after a few couples of days, you start losing hope in this strategy, and you are at the end of your patience.
While working on this article, I asked my wife (she’s an excellent psychologist) that what she thinks is another reason people are not consistent with their work. Her answer somehow made me feel about myself – we don’t have intrinsic motivation.
For example, if I’m working on a blog post, I have two motivations: interior and exterior. The external motivation is that I want to keep going with my blog, reach new audiences and get unique page views to get new consulting gigs. But the interior reason is that I’m writing that blog post because it makes me feel good, better, and somehow I’m giving the world my idea.
We can somehow manipulate the external motivation, but we can’t manipulate our internal motivation.
Everything starts from internal motivation. Everyone is having a reason, interior or exterior, with different goals and different contexts. It depends on us if we want to achieve that goal or not.
If I can say somehow, the intrinsic motivation is the real “WHY” behind our projects.
I love how James Clear put it in his own words “it’s straightforward to confuse being consistent with being perfect. And that is a problem because there is no safety margin for errors, mistakes, and emergencies.”
And I look at myself. Sometimes while I’m working on a new project and I’m very obsessed with it, I’m putting all my energy, resources, and time into that project. I’m so excited about it that I’m speeding up the process just to get to the number of results I want to achieve. And I’m going at high speed. But after a while, after I’m losing my resources, my energy, and other projects come along to finish them, I’m starting to give up on this specific project.
And I’m starting to miss one day and another day to work on that specific project. So I start to feel unmotivated and will “park the idea” of this project somewhere to find it when I have the result.
The same happens with my 5 minutes daily workout. I started very positive, with a lot of energy and confidence, but I forgot about it; I changed the priorities, and now I’m not doing it anymore.
But James Clear writes it so clear – daily failures are like red lights during a road trip.
Even if you come to a red light every now and when on your road trip, you have a purpose, and you have an average speed to get to the finish line. All you have to do is stop at the red light and move forward when the green light is happening. Eventually, you will get to the destination.
And I think it also depends on the speed you start your project. Some people can create their project at high speed, work very hard and finish it, and some people start their project at a low rate, work not so hard but being consistent with it can finish it.
That speed of work is somehow essential to find it out on your own. What’s your rate work? How do you deal with your projects? You can work it at high speed, or you need a medium speed?
There should be an average speed of your work.
And James Clear (it looks like I’m reading a lot of Jame’s article lately) recommends habit graduation of your speed.
“Habit graduation is about considering your goals and your current average speed and thinking about how you can increase your output by just a little bit consistently.”
Look at your average speed of work and think about how you can graduate your habits to improve your work.
This graduated habit in your speed work can help you maintain a consistent effort every time your position on that specific project.
I’m still struggling to find out my best way to do these 5 minutes workouts and then graduate to 10 minutes and so on. I know it’s a habit I must include in my life, but I have to find the right way that it’s helping me to be consistent even with these 5 minutes of workout.
What’s your struggle to be consistent with your projects?
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