I’ve been thinking about consistent action, and as I did I remembered the fable of the tortoise and the hare. The moral of the story is “slow and steady wins the race.” People will often give the same advice in different ways:
- If you want to get something done, break it down into smaller actionable steps.
- If you want to improve your life, make one change to your day and do it every day.
- Consistency will get you the results you’re looking for.
This idea—”slow and steady wins the race”—is used for explaining how to accomplish virtually anything, from building new habits to achieving complex goals. You make more progress when you focus on consistent, sustainable action, rather than doing things in overextended spurts.
And I agree with this sentiment, for the most part. Consistent action is generally easy to sustain for the long term. Committing to something long-term helps us achieve most goals we set for ourselves. It’s not flashy or exciting or hyped up, which I find more convincing than anything that promises quick fixes or instant results.
But even though I agree with this type of advice, I still find it really difficult to put into practice. I even find myself thinking in ways that contradict this advice. So I’ve been reflecting on my own thought patterns, why I think the way I do, and what I might do differently moving forward. I hope that sharing my insights into my own behavior and habits will help you overcome any obstacles you have so that you can be more consistent in working towards your own goals.
Proof of my consistent action, past and present
Now, I would say that I’ve already worked on my own ability to be consistent and I’ve had some success. Some things I’ve done that require me to put in pretty consistent effort—
- I’ve finished writing a novel. Actually not just one, but a couple, of varying degrees of quality. But even writing a bad or mediocre novel requires a lot of consistent effort.
- I maintain a vegetable garden. While my dedication to my garden waxes and wanes, I still generally put in consistent effort to start seeds, transplant seedlings, water the garden, pull weeds, and so on.
- In the past, I’ve been able to maintain both a regular meditation practice and a regular exercise schedule, sometimes even at the same time.
I’m not saying this to brag. What I’m saying is that I’ve been consistent before, and I know that it pays off. Even so, I find myself lapsing into less beneficial patterns of inaction followed by huge bursts of action. And then I get really down on myself, because I know better, and yet I don’t do better.
Sometimes, before you can apply your commitment to consistency to a new area, it helps to look back on other times you were consistent. Maybe it was related to your health, creative or personal projects, or your relationships with others.
Sometimes I find myself convinced that I can’t stick to a routine, but that is not supported by the evidence. I have been able to stick to routines, to develop new habits, and I’ve enjoyed the benefits of these efforts. This means that I can do the same for whatever new thing I’m hoping to accomplish.
So after reminding myself that I can, in fact, be consistent and dedicated, it’s time to consider how to approach the effort itself so that I’m most likely to sustain it.
Frequency vs. duration
When it comes to doing something more, you could think of it two ways.
- Frequency, or how often you do something
- Duration, or how much time you spend doing something
I’m going to use “writing a novel” as my example, but I think that this applies to just about any goal we set for ourselves.
It’s possible to marathon-write a novel. It’s possible to sit down and churn out thousands of words without a break. I don’t mean like a “writing a novel in a month” challenge. I mean “writing a novel in one sitting for however long it takes until the novel is done.”
While it is possible to write a novel in one sitting, it’s an unrealistic approach. Most people wouldn’t try to write a whole novel at once, but they often come up with arbitrary rules. “I must write X amount of words or for X amount of time.” These rules sound reasonable, and they’re meant to be motivating and make your next steps concrete. However, they could be sabotaging your efforts, especially if you find yourself thinking this way:
- I said I would write for thirty minutes, but I only have ten minutes. That means I can’t write.
- I said I would write a thousand words, but I’ve only written a hundred words. If I can’t write a thousand words, I’m better off not writing at all.
These rules focus on the duration of the activity, how long you do it or how much you accomplish. And there’s a time and place to set these types of concrete rules to help you monitor your progress. But for some people, focusing on the duration causes negative limiting thoughts like the ones above. These thoughts convince you that doing “less” of what you intended is worse than doing nothing at all. As a result, you don’t do anything. Then you’re frustrated by your lack of progress, and you know your lack of progress is because you haven’t put in the consistent action needed to achieve your goals.
For me, focusing on frequency instead of duration is the first step towards making progress. Rather than setting a goal for a time or a word count, I just think, “Did I work on my novel today?” and if the answer is yes, then it was a success. When I focus more on showing up, when I use frequency as the metric instead of duration, then it’s easier for me to feel that sense of daily small success that helps maintain the momentum of consistent action.
The fantasy of the finish line
One reason we don’t work towards our goals is the self-defeating thinking that because we can’t do something perfectly, there’s no point doing it at all. But I think another culprit for our inaction is this fantasy of what it will be like to be finished, instead of thinking about the daily reality of working towards the goal. I’m calling this the fantasy of the finish line.
For better or worse, I think we’re obsessed with the idea of achievement. We want the glamor of a finish line, some clear sign that we have “made it” or accomplished something. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to achieve, exclusively fantasizing about the finish line ignores that the finish line is a brief moment. Marathon runners spend months training before the marathon, and the marathon itself takes several hours to complete. But crossing the finish line takes seconds. I often find myself forgetting that for most accomplishments, there is a lot of work and dedication that happens before the moment of external success. And it is just that—one moment, compared to hours, months, years of effort.
Because we’re obsessed with the end result, and because we just want to get to that end as quickly as possible, we’ll skimp on developing good habits: we’ll cram studying into a single night, or we’ll fall for outlandish advice for a quick fix. Instead of fantasizing about the finish line, I think we need to shift our focus to the reality of doing.
When we focus on the reality of doing, rather than the fantasy of the finish line, we recognize that success doesn’t happen overnight. We remember that huge success is the result of smaller “micro” successes, such as the success of showing up for yourself day after day. And it’s easier to embrace the idea that consistent action, however small, helps us make progress towards our goals.
When it’s right to focus on duration
There are times when focusing on duration is helpful, and I’m going to share how I think of duration so that it’s more beneficial to me. Since it can be hard to stay motivated when you don’t see your efforts paying off, focusing on duration can help.
When we set a concrete goal, it can help us internally validate our own success. I still think you should focus on frequency first, but I’m guessing most people will want to combine frequency and duration. So I think that setting a really small, manageable goal is the way to start. You can then slowly work on building your ability to be consistent.
If we go back to the novel writing example, instead of setting your goal for an hour, set your goal for five minutes. Instead of saying you’ll write a thousand words, say you’ll write fifty words. I think starting out really small, small enough where you’re almost guaranteed success, is the way to go.
Using duration in this way, and then building up the duration of your efforts over time based on what is reasonable for you, can help you “see” your efforts paying off. And that can help you experience the positive mental feedback needed to practice consistent action.
Consistent action and trusting the process
As tempting as it is to want to do everything all at once (and I am super guilty of this type of thinking) trying to speedrun all your goals won’t help you. We fool ourselves because sometimes it works out—you cram for the test and end up acing it, for example. But to make the sort of meaningful progress that could potentially change your life? You’ll have to put in the effort.
I want to talk about one last challenge to being consistent, or at least, I find it very challenging. It’s the challenge of trusting the process. Because despite my best efforts, I have an extremely cynical inner critic who likes to undermine those efforts. These thoughts go something like this:
- So what if you made some progress? You’ll never achieve what you set out to do, so the effort doesn’t matter.
- Even if you accomplish what you set out to do, who is going to care? And if no one else cares, then the effort doesn’t matter.
I wanted to challenge these thoughts here in case you have trouble with them too.
- To the first point, if I’m making progress, then I will eventually achieve what I set out to do.
- And to the second, if I care, then the effort does matter.
When you’re making incremental progress, the change is so gradual that it sometimes doesn’t feel like change at all. And yet it is. If I had believed all my thoughts, I would never have finished a novel or started a garden.
The same can be said for a lot of other goals, like meditation or exercise. It takes several weeks for the benefits of regular meditation to be felt, and in the meantime, you just have to trust that it will help. But it’s hard for me to have faith that things are eventually going to work out and change. And the inner cynic can be very persuasive, so sometimes it feels like foolishly having hope even though you only half-believe it.
And to be fair, developing a consistent habit or effort in one area of your life makes it easier to develop consistency in other areas. When you are consistent in one area and see the results pay off, it’s easier to be consistent in another area. For me, it started with meditation, and then exercise, and then gardening. Developing the ability to be consistent in these areas and feeling the benefits of meditation and exercise, or eating the literal fruits of my labor from gardening, made it easier to tell myself, “Ok. You can finish a novel.” And I did.
Again, this isn’t something I do perfectly. I still very much struggle with all of the above challenges, but I also know it’s possible to overcome them. So I wanted to remind myself of these things, and hopefully, remind you of your own capabilities.