Part of Listed's 100 Day Writing Challenge.

Consistency in Small Steps

Ever wanted to learn something, or make a lifestyle change but keep failing to do so? One of the biggest problem which many people face is consistency.

Consistency is the ability to do a task or action regularly. For example, going to gym once a week, comitting 1 hour to studying or regularly contributing to your personal project few times a week. Note that consistency is not correlated to motivation, consistency is about showing up to the task even when your not motivated, having a bad day, or you feel like doing something else (as long as your not sick).

Common Issue

The most common issue with maintaining consistency is that, after a while, it becomes tough, mentally challenge and unmotivating. Thing is, most cases of trying to be consistent starts off with motivation. Sudden motivation to stay healthy or be good at something. The motivation keeps you going for the first few days. After that, what then? Nothing keeps you going on to continue that task. Thats the issue many face.

Small Steps

One way to achieve consistency, is to do it in small steps. What I meant is, ensure your effort spent on task is small first, small enough that it felt like you spent nothing doing that task, even if you felt like you gained nothing from it. For example, instead of 1 hours of exercise everday, you could start off with 1 minute of exercise. It gives you the mental illusion that "well, its just a small, minor thing that costs almost nothing, I can do it", then slowly you add more time to your exercise. Maybe on each new week, the time spend on your exercise increases by 1 minute. By week 60, each of your exercise session would have become 1 hour long, with it integrated with your lifestyle fully. Its kind of like doing a "Foot in the door" technique on yourself.