If remarkable success would take you five solid years of persistence, would you stay consistent on one single thing like writing, reading or pushing on a new skill? What about for one year?
We like success. We like watching the stars and the ones that have made it. Getting to what we see takes an immense amount of work and day in and day out consistency.
I have noticed that most people don’t want to pay the price. They are looking for shortcuts or focusing only on short-term gain. And it’s so wasteful. You have to start over repeatedly when you could be investing your time into something foundational with long-term payoff.
Maybe the social media generation or continual marketing messaging we get bombarded with conditions us to be tempted towards immediate gratification. Maybe that squeezes the attention and staying power we need for staying with something for a long time.
It’s really too bad. But if you are a person that can commit to consistency, imagine how you can differentiate yourself from the vast amount of people that quit early or get disillusioned from having to push through a little adversity.
Think about the people or companies you admire. Look closely at the ingredients that make them remarkable. I think you would be hard pressed to miss the consistency of their work when you look at their history. The passion, determination and grit to show up and put something of yourself into the work has to be there. It’s unavoidable.
While we have all this noise, you can stand out. You can stop wasting your efforts flitting from one thing to another hoping it will work. Do two things:
- Think long and hard on what work you seem to really enjoy and get lost in.
- Do that work daily forever and become the best at it.
I don’t think you will land in a desperate place. I think you will find depth that you can operate from and surprise a tribe of people with from you mastery.
What would you want to be consistent at?
