Consistency
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
Today, is my 200th Sunday Starter. That’s 3.5 years of consistently sending something out on Sunday mornings. Now, if you’ve been reading this entire time, then you know that some weeks were better than others.
Some weeks, I was barely crawling (Crawling).
Some weeks, I took breaks (Rest) or ran reruns (Vacation Mode).
And some weeks, I wrote something I was very proud of (The History of Pink).
I love that the 200th happens to coincide with the New Year. It is a time when many people are setting resolutions and the reason most people don’t follow through on those resolutions is because they forget to factor in consistency. When they're excited about their future self, they set an aspirational daily target. This is good. Unfortunately, the first day they can't hit the target, they count the whole endeavor as a total failure and give up. This is bad. They forget that being consistent is more important than being perfect.
The secret to hitting aspirational goals is to stay in the game and the best way to stay in the game is to give yourself an easy button.
It's progress over perfection. It's something over nothing. Let me explain…
Research shows that if we make a plan to achieve a goal then we are more likely to complete that goal. Most people know this, which is why we make plans. A person that says they are going to work out 5 days a week is more likely to work out at least 3 days, whereas a person that makes no plan but just says "I'm going to work out more" is more likely to work out less than two days. The trick though, is to make the plan and be okay with missing a day, which is easier said than done. Once we break the streak, it can be very difficult to stick with it. We focus on the two days we missed rather than the three days when we succeeded. This is why I like to add an easy button to every plan I make.
If I, for example, set a goal to write every day, I'm going to make it specific by saying I'm going to write for 60 minutes. To add in my easy button, I'll still allow myself to check the "write everyday box" as long as I do at least 10 minutes. You may think that this is cheating, but that's only because far too many people mix up the metric with the goal. The 60 minutes is an arbitrary number I picked out of thin air; the real goal is to just write more. We choose numbers so we have a target to work with, but the number is the metric not the goal. The metric we set is usually our version of 100% success, but some days we can only have 10% success, and that's okay. The easy button may not meet your desired metric, but it keeps you in the game and focused on your goal.
Being consistent with your goals doesn’t mean you have to do your best every day, it just means you have to show up every day.
If you are thinking about setting a resolution this year, then set one. Set a big one - reach for the stars! Just remember that the metric is not the goal. Give yourself an easy button you can press on the tough days so you can stay in the game long enough to build new habits and become that future self that got you excited to set the goal in the first place.
