Building Consistency - Finding Something And Sticking To It
Everyone struggles with being consistent.
It is no easy task. Staying consistent doesn’t only entail starting something but requires exactly what it says: consistency. Some sort of rhythm or routine which allows us to perform an action on a regular basis.
While consistency is hard to cultivate and even harder to maintain, there are some ways which I talk about below, that can make this process easier for ourselves in the long term.
Before we get into discussing a more hands-on approach for how you can build your consistency through any activity that you want to pursue, I wanted to first also briefly touch upon how we can benefit from staying consistent with something in the long run and what actually are the main reasons for why we fall out of being consistent with something.
I hope you find something useful and worthwhile in today’s post :)
Today’s intention: Realize how a steady-paced consistency can benefit you in the long run and practical tested advice for how to keep consistent with something.
WHY IS CONSISTENCY IMPORTANT ANYWAYS?
Here it is important to firstly clarify, that you do not have to be consistent with every single activity that you do, but rather to focus your consistent energy and intention on an activity or set of activities which you would like to build consistency with in the long run.
What you decide that you want to become more consistent at will depend entirely on your personal goals and passions.
For example, if your goal is to improve your endurance and perhaps one day be able to run a marathon, a useful activity to become consistent at would be going on a daily run.
Similarly, if you have always dreamt of publishing some sort of written text or book, then adopting a daily routine of writing or scripting can directly benefit you towards getting closer to your goal.
Consistency or in other words, having a set yet functional routine when it comes to performing an activity (whatever that may be), is extremely impactful in the long run because over time instead of purely relying on motivation or willpower to get to doing that activity, it will bit by bit become a habit of common practice. Over time, the activity will be easier to perform and you will face less friction when it comes to getting started with it.
Now why is this useful?
By building consistency and discipline with a certain activity, you are able to become a prolific goal achiever.
You are able to grow and improve in your areas of weakness and with consistent practice, get closer to your goals in whatever area of your life they may lie in, whether it be health, finances, education, career, relationships or personal interests. With consistent practice you are able to sharpen your skills and expand your knowledge of something to new dimensions, while adopting strong and healthy habits to support you in the process.
In short, consistency is important because by being consistent you can improve at anything you wish to work on and reach the goals you set yourself at a much faster yet reliable rate. And best part is, it can be applied to any area of your life that you would like to work on.
SO WHY IS BEING CONSISTENT SO DIFFICULT THEN?
That's a good question.
A critical study within social psychology from 2009 found that on average, it took the participants of the study between 18 and 245 days to develop a daily habit of doing an activity in relation to eating, drinking or movement.
While this range is certainly quite large, suggesting that the different kinds of habits that we want to form will require different levels of input and consistency. For example, the goal of starting to drink at least 2 liters of water a day will most likely require a different level of effort and technique than when it comes to wanting to adopt a habit of exercising each day for 30 minutes.
This is one reason for why we often fail at being consistent with something.
The other reason is that before an activity becomes of habitual nature to us, it takes a lot of willpower and energy for us to motivate ourselves to perform the activity and this accumulated over a long spread of time can be energetically demanding, not to mention demanding of our attention span which at its best on average can hold between 10-15 minutes focus (Bradbury, 2016).
Biologically, our brain is built to prefer the path of least resistance which translates to performing the activity that requires least effort. Therefore if we really want to develop a steady routine at an activity, we have to do some careful planning to ensure that the process will be an enjoyable one for us, since the consistency itself will at least initially, require quite a lot of our energy.
Therefore to sum up, being consistent at something is difficult because some activities naturally take more effort and time for us to make them into a consistent habit and secondly, before we turn an activity into a habit, it requires of us a considerable energetic investment to get us to perform the activity.
HOW TO BUILD CONSISTENCY
Now let's talk about some practical advice on how we can become more consistent at something.
Here are some things which have worked well in my experience:
Decide your what and why: The first step is to determine which activity you want to become more consistent and also fundamentally consider why you are choosing to focus on this activity in the first place. You want to make sure that this activity that you want to pursue in the long run is aligned with your goals, priorities as well as your values since this will at your core, be your main source of motivation for performing an activity, especially during the times when it might get hard to keep up the consistency.
Building routines that work: To help with your transition from using willpower to building a functional habit, it is useful to build routines that will make this transition more effortless. For example, if you want to become more consistent with wearing sunscreen especially in the summer months, it can be useful to keep your sunscreen in a visible place in the bathroom and to apply it during your morning skincare routine. Similarly, if you would like to adopt the habit of reading each day, you can tie it to an activity which you currently already do such as reading during your morning breakfast or coffee.
Find how to boost your motivation: In the initial stages before something becomes a habit, it is useful to look into ways to keep yourself motivated. One way of doing this is to measure your progress of performing the activity to show yourself that you can build consistency at something and to boost your esteem in a healthy encouraging way. A way to measure your progress could be to build a simple table like progress tracker or to have a calendar printed on your wall where you cross off a day or week of completing something.
Create accountability: To further help you in keeping consistent with something, it is critical to also build a system of accountability to further keep yourself on check and to ensure you are moving in the right direction when it comes to building consistency. Ask a close friend or family member if they would be willing to be your accountability partner to remind you to do your stated activity and to check up on your progress. Alternatively, you can get a similar effect from various apps that allow you to digitally track your progress while offering you access to a wide community of users that can provide you with the needed accountability.
Perfection isn't the aim: One last note which I wanted to emphasize is that in this process of habit and consistency building, we are not striving for perfection, meaning that if we occasionally miss a day or slightly fall off track, it is of no use to beat ourselves up about it. Instead, it is much more useful if we consider why we fell off track in the first place and to simply just pick ourselves up and start again. Not doing something for a day won't cause the world to end, so just give it another go. Doing your best is already enough.
REFERENCES
Lally, P., Van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2009). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674
Bradbury, N. A. (2016). Attention span during lectures: 8 seconds, 10 minutes, or more? AJP Advances in Physiology Education, 40(4), 509–513. https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00109.2016
