This article is the start of a new series. They sum up the skills that I consider most important to achieve what you plan. I start with consistency being the one with the most powerful long-term impact. As with all skills consistency can be learned. And it must be trained. The ultimate training for me has been the altMBA course.
What is Consistency?
You will find this skill described in books like “The Practice” by Seth Godin, “Atomic Habits” by James Clear or „theWARofART“ by Steven Pressfield. It is the ability to show up when you don’t like to. It involves the creeping feeling of fear or boredom when it comes down to the work you promised to do. It is the dividing factor between amateurs and professionals. Professionals find no excuses. They just do what they said they’ll do. On-time. Every single time. That’s consistency. You can choose to be a professional. Not only can you do so in your career but also in your private life.
Be Professional Even in Your Private Life
I, for example, chose years ago to be a professional when it comes to my health. I read as much as I can, try many theories out and keep my body and mind fit all year round. Of course, there are slumps. But I have chosen health to be my north star, my guiding principle. This is what helps me in challenging times.
The hard part of doing the work is doing the work.
Seth Godin
How To Train Consistency
I cannot give you any specific tips on your own career and life. You must find out what works best for you. What I can do is help you with some general guidance on this topic:
- Start your day with the High-Five-Habit: give it a try for a week and see what happens.
- Always start small if you want to incorporate a new habit or routine (read: change). You want to be healthier? Start your day off with a glass of water. Eat one more salad during the week. Do 5 squats every day. You can always level up.
- If you don’t feel like doing the work, the habit, the work-out, whatever: do it anyway this time. If the same resistance is coming back tomorrow, skip it once. Just once. Never skip twice.
- Try reframing the situation if something feels too hard to do at the moment. And then do it with this new mindset.
- Do not rely on motivation in the long term as the driving factor. It won’t be here for long. Just do the work and find joy in the process. How to find joy in the process? Do the work and embrace the feeling of achievement afterwards. The work is the reward. Appreciate what is working.
- If you are in any sort of customer-related business: treat every customer as she would be coming to you the first time. Every single time. Swap customer for collegue, employee or client.
- Journal about your feelings and thoughts when you have a good run. Think about why it is good now. Read your notes when you are facing a dip.
- Stop complaining. It does not bring you any positive emotion.
- Make it simple and don’t overthink. It is easy to get lost in a 10-step-approach to success. Just do the task at hand in the best possible way. And then repeat.
- Don’t fall into the trap of multitasking. It doesn’t work. Focus on one thing at a time.
- Put the task you want to repeat into your calendar (and on a post-it where you can see it, e. g. on the bathroom mirror).
- Prioritize just a few important things. For me, these are my health, quality time with my girlfriend and doing my work as close to my standards as I can. The more you want to take care of the less you will be able to achieve.
- We all have good and bad times. That is perfectly normal. Listen to this to cheer you up a little in tough times.
Try some of the guidelines out if you like to be more consistent. See, how it works. Thank you for reading. I wish you the best of luck.
Blog post photo by Clay LeConey on Unsplash.
