A line I’ve heard for ten years
I first heard my pastor, Craig Groeschel, say it on his leadership podcast, back when it was new: “Successful people do consistently what other people do occasionally.”
He’s come back to it again and again since, and I believe it. But this year I ran an experiment on that sentence without meaning to, and it taught me the sentence leaves out a question.
300 posts later
At the start of this year I set a goal to blog every day. I’ve kept it. I’m well past 300 posts.
Here’s what that bought me: my writing is much better than it was in January. Here’s what it didn’t: the readers I was hoping for. That number hasn’t taken off.
So I was consistent, and I got half of what I wanted. I’m not sorry I did it. But I showed up every day without adjusting much along the way. I kept the streak and stopped asking whether the streak was the right shape.
So I’m changing the shape. [Starting date], I’m moving to [X] posts a week, built for readers, not for the streak, with room for the other things I’m building.
Consistency did the job I gave it, which was “publish daily,” not “reach people.”
Compounding versus repeating
Plenty of people show up every day and stay about where they were. So what’s the difference?
I think it comes down to a simple check. Where am I now, where do I want to be, and can I see this habit moving me from one to the other? If I’m applying steady effort and nothing is improving, one of two things is true. Either the way I’m practicing needs to change, or the thing itself isn’t worth the practice and needs to go. I started circling this in “Further In” earlier this month. Getting a lot done doesn’t mean you moved anything.
I’ve seen the good kind. I came into data without a degree in it. The first two years, I was just finding my footing. Then I realized how much I didn’t know, about the craft and about the industry I was in, and I’ve pushed to learn something every year since. No single year looks like much. Seventeen of them stacked up look like a career.
Same with reading my Bible. I’ve done it consistently for several years, and the longer I do, the sharper my judgment gets. I notice patterns in history and in people, especially the unhelpful ones that keep repeating. I can offer advice rooted in something older than my own opinion.
I aimed both of those at something.
Where I’m only occasional
Now the uncomfortable part. I’ve given speeches for years and I love a prepared talk. Put me on camera, though, and I’ve found a weak spot.
I post video occasionally. It feels foreign because I haven’t done it enough for it to feel like anything else. I know the technology. I’m just not as at home in it as people half my age. And yet every time I do hit record, the ideas start to flow.
The quote would tell me to get in front of the camera every day and get over myself. But a daily video streak with no aim is the same mistake I just made with the blog. Before I schedule anything, I need to know who the videos are for and what they’re supposed to do for them.
What it costs
Consistency isn’t free. At work it cost me my excuses.
My degrees aren’t in IT or data. My undergrad is a Bachelor of Arts and my master’s came from a business school. Everything technical I know, I learned on the job. For a long time that was a ready-made reason to believe I wasn’t really capable, and I had to give it up. I still have to give it up.
That’s the real price. To get good at anything, you have to let go of the picture of yourself you’ve been carrying. That picture is comfortable. It’s how you’ve always seen yourself. The new one may be better for you and for the people who depend on you, but you can’t hold both.
For me this is a matter of faith. We’re called to be good stewards of what we’ve been given: our health, our minds, our families, even the ideas God gives us. Be faithful with little and you’ll be trusted with more (Luke 16:10). Consistency is how faithfulness with little actually happens.
The question for Monday
I still agree with my pastor. I need consistency in my life. But I need to be honest about where, and I need to make sure I’m aiming it.
So Monday morning I’m asking myself two things. What am I being consistent at right now? And where does my life need more of it?
I already know my answer to the first one. It’s more than three hundred blog posts.
