Consistency Is the First Step: It’s the Beginning of Your Journey, Not the Destination

Consistency is the means goal, not the end goal.

Photo by Olha Ruskykh: https://www.pexels.com/photo/topless-man-in-black-shorts-running-on-the-brown-sand-6280358/

I bought a car — it’s a nice, comfortable vehicle.

But if I keep the car in the parking lot and do not drive it around, it will slowly deteriorate.

So much money was invested into buying this car, if I don’t drive around and enjoy the view what’s the point of having the vehicle.

Many people achieve consistency but have no idea how to leverage it. Consistency is the vehicle that drives you towards your goals.

Utilize this momentum to get more done — so much more that no one can ignore you. We will talk about writing in this article, but you can apply this idea in almost any aspect of your life.

This is how you can do it.

1/ Things happen on auto-pilot

Have you ever imagined how life would be if certain things just happened on auto-pilot?

I started running every morning a couple of years back.

In the beginning, it was a task. I used to slog through every step to reach my goal of 2 miles every single day. After a year, I realized that running 2 miles happened on auto-pilot, so the new goal became working out for 15–20 minutes after my run.

That’s the thing about being consistent — you turn that task into a habit, and now it’s not a problem anymore; achieving it on a daily basis has become a habit.

But you need to learn to leverage that habit by stacking tougher goals.

All human beings crave comfort. I thought the same way when I started my running habit.

And if I tell you after two years of achieving the goal of running, you need to level up and do more (work out for 20 minutes), you might feel tired just listening to it.

Here’s the difference between someone standing at the beginning of those two years and one standing at a point after two years — the latter doesn’t look at running 2 miles daily as a task that happens on auto-pilot.

Now, the task is working out for 15–20 minutes and soon, that will become a habit as well, and more tasks will be added.

You know, when we look at certain people, how does he/ she do it? They do it by turning the task into a habit and automating it.

Similar is the case with writing. I started writing every day on LinkedIn last year in February. When I realized it’s become a habit, I pushed myself to write on Medium in March.

And then, once both these platforms became a habit, I started writing on Twitter (X), but that was simple (writing on X is simple, not growing — that’s another ball game). And when all this became a habit, I started a newsletter.

2/ Consistency helps you evolve

If you’re a writer who’s been writing for a long time “consistently,” you must have realized at some point that the interpretation of an idea you have on a particular day would be something you’d have only on that day.

We are consuming so much content on a daily basis (subconsciously, too).

Our minds are changing at a pace faster than the speed of light. One day, I was writing about an idea and came up with a personal story to convey that idea.

For some reason, I had to attend an unavoidable meeting, and after that, I couldn’t get back to finishing that article.

The next day, when I returned to that article, the interpretation didn’t work for me. So, I rewrote the thing and published it.

The new perspective worked much better.

That doesn’t mean the older interpretation of the idea was bad/ wrong. What did I do with the rejected interpretation of that idea? I wrote another article using that material. There are two lessons you learn by doing this:

• your writing material will never go to waste; you can utilize it by making a few adjustments.

• write every day so you can learn about yourself and how you interpret an idea on that particular day.

Consistency also gives you massive data points about the topics you are naturally good at.

It’s not about brainlessly writing every day and then forgetting about it.

The goal is to learn about your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. But you need to be careful about not judging yourself based on 20–30 odd articles.

Give yourself a chance to write at least a hundred articles to get clarity on what works and what doesn’t.

Evolution as a writer happens when you’re assessing your progress correctly and giving yourself time — be harsh with your creativity, and it might not show up when you need it.

3/ Consistency helps in skill stacking

Do you know the difference between an experienced writer and an inexperienced writer?

An amateur writer wants the results and is prone to getting stuck. Now, getting stuck is not a problem, but giving up when you get stuck is a trait of an amateur.

An experienced writer has been through the drills multiple times and they know that if things are not working right now, it’s okay, they will work if they give it some more time.

Just like in life, experience teaches you that some problems appear big in our minds, but if you keep at it — soon, you’ll be able to solve them.

This experience also helps in stacking new skills. I mentioned about running at the beginning of this article.

Running every day helped me add a workout routine where I do a bunch of exercises for 20 minutes.

On days I don’t feel like working out, I’m reminded of the days when I didn’t feel like running and the things I told myself to get over it.

Having an experience of gaining consistency in running helps me gain consistency in working out.

You can apply the experience of learning something in a completely different aspect of life to another skill — sometimes, it works like magic; other times, you must improvise a bit.

Learning one skill will help you develop a mindset that can help you learn more skills, and that’s how skill stacking works.

Last

When you climb a mountain, you realize it’s just the beginning and that there are more mountains to climb.

The game of consistency started for me when I downloaded the Duolingo app. I started learning French on that app, and my only daily goal was to spend 3–5 minutes learning French on the app.

I loved the part that showed me the continuous streak I could create.

So, I tagged this small habit with my morning run. After finishing the French lesson, I go for a run, and now that I’ve become comfortable with running two miles every day, I’ve started working out for 20 minutes.

Use this habit of consistency and learn to compound it so that you can experience the extent of how valuable this skill is.

The most important lesson to understand here is that — being consistent is the first step, but it is the most crucial step, and that’s the reason why everyone keeps talking about it.

It’s okay to focus on being consistent at the beginning. Sure, consistency is not enough, but that doesn’t mean you weigh yourself down with all the other things you need to achieve after becoming consistent.

Take the first step. Learn the first skill. That will set you up to gain more skills and help you fight the distractions on the way.

Embrace the delayed gratification.

If I had run for 20 miles in the first week, I would have never been able to gain the consistency of running for two years.

Until next time,

Ciao!