Simple Takeaway:
The key to accomplishing big goals is seasonal consistency: long-term consistency with planned ebbs and flows for seasonal ups and downs. To make sure you don’t quit, write down a plan, tell someone you admire, then make a seasonal consistency plan with pre-determined levels of intensity and maximum time limits for each level. This helps you avoid all-or-nothing thinking and keep your mind out of the failure doom loop.
One of the most valuable assets we have is our reputation.
Saying something is one thing, but sticking to what you say when it stops being fun or comfortable is another thing entirely.
The people around us learn to trust us based on how well we stick with what we commit to.
That’s why consistency isn’t just nice to have – it’s absolutely essential.
Most people aren’t good at consistently sticking to goals.
Statistically, over 90% of people who set New Year’s goals give up on them before they achieve them.
The key to accomplishing big goals is seasonal consistency: long-term consistency with planned ebbs and flows for seasonal ups and downs.
Author Malcolm Gladwell’s research found that 10,000 hours of doing something consistently is how you achieve mastery of a skill.
To put that into perspective: if you did something for 4 hours per day, it would take you just under 7 years to master it.
So how do we do that? Is there a way to learn how to be consistent even when it feels impossible?
Here are a few tips to help you stay consistent:
Write down a plan.
This should go without saying, but most people don’t make plans for the things they want to do. DHM Research found that only 33% of Americans have a life plan that they have committed to in writing and use to help guide them.
Studies have shown that simply having a plan has been shown to increase follow-through on a wide range of beneficial behaviors.
Use this tool to discover your mission, vision, and core values.
Then use this tool to help you set goals.
Then write it down in a place you can easily get back to. Keep it handy for when you feel yourself starting to deviate.
Then do this…
Tell someone you admire.
Research has found that telling someone with a perceived higher status than you’re own (i.e., a mentor) about a goal you have increases your commitment and performance.
When you have someone you look up to who knows what you’ve committed to, you’re much more likely to follow through.
We’ll let ourselves down, but we hate letting other people down – especially the people we aspire to be like. Use that to your advantage.
Once you have your plan written down and you have someone you’ve told to keep you accountable, next…
Make a seasonal consistency plan
The number one reason people quit is because they have an all-or-nothing mentality.
They believe that if they drop the ball once, they’re done – the fight is over.
To overcome this, we need seasonal consistency.
Seasonal consistency involves creating pre-determined levels of intensity that allow us to ebb and flow depending on the seasonal ups and downs.
Consistency is seasonal, just like every other aspect of nature. So in your written plan, write down what you’ll do when the season you’re in requires the intensity to be dialed back.
On a scale of 1-3, write down what “level 3” intensity looks like vs “level 1”.
For exercising, level 3 might be training hard 6 days a week. Level 1 might be going for a walk around the block with your family in the afternoons and doing stretches at night before bed.
The key is to make a plan and use your pre-determined levels of intensity to maintain consistency when life tries to change your plans (because it usually tries).
Then make a plan for how long, at maximum, you can stay in each of the intensity levels.
Seasons are approximately 3 months long, so start by setting your intensity levels at 3 month maximums. In other words, don’t allow yourself to scale to level 1 and stay there forever. And don’t allow yourself to go to level 3 and stay there for too long, either, which causes burnout.
The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is how tolerant they are of themselves when they aren’t meeting their own expectations. Set your expectations realistically ahead of time, and plan to scale them up and down as needed so your mind can’t trick you into thinking you’re a failure.
This is why tracking the number of days in a row you’ve done something isn’t the most productive thing you can do. As soon as you fail once and break the streak, the clock “starts over” and it feels like it was all a waste.
You don’t have to be perfect to accomplish a plan, you just need to be persistent.
Giving yourself grace takes the pressure off to be perfect, and it removes the “pass or fail” grade we all try to place on ourselves. We’re much less likely to quit if we don’t see ourselves as a failure.
If you really want to quit, give yourself a two week notice. We give notices to jobs before we leave them because we had made a prior commitment to them and we owe it to them to make the proper adjustments with our leaving. So why don’t we do that with ourselves?
Next time you’re on the verge of quitting something, tell yourself you’ll quit in two weeks. Then, at the end of those two weeks, if you still feel like quitting, then by all means follow through with it.
Otherwise, stick to the process and keep putting the next foot in front of the other.