Consistency In Action Is The Key To Success

6 min readMay 17, 2020

“Show me someone sick and happy, in danger and happy, dying and happy, exiled and happy, disgraced and happy. Show me! By God, how much I’d like to see a Stoic. But since you can’t show me someone that perfectly formed, at least show me someone actively forming themselves so, inclined in this way. . . . Show me!” — EPICTETUS

Have you ever wondered how some people are able to achieve high levels of success, while others work just as hard but achieve very little?

Are achievers simply more intelligent than those who are not achievers?

Or maybe they’re more ambitious?

Or possibly just luckier?

These are of course all key factors that certainly can help people achieve their goals.

However, there is just one ingredient that goes into success that is more important than anything else.

And that ingredient comes in the form of consistency.

While we hear of success stories that happen overnight, most successful people will tell you that their success was a long journey in the making.

Their successes are not necessarily the result of blood, sweat, and tears, but the result of commitment and consistency in the pursuit of their goals.

Whether it’s writing that book for several years or going to repeated interviews for your dream job, it’s the consistency that kept them going and allowed them to succeed.

To be consistent means that you commit yourself to a sustained effort of action over the long-term, and never give up until the moment your goals are achieved.

Consistency allows you to focus on what you really want.

Focusing on a goal and working toward it every day allows you to utilize your talent and energy on what’s important for you.

Here are some tips to help you act on your project consistently and achieve your goals.

1. Clear Goals, Clear Tasks

You first need to get very clear about what you want to achieve.

Your goal has to be realistic and aligned with your core values, passions, and purpose in life.

If you’re not passionate about what you do, it’ll be hard to stay motivated.

Make sure that your goals are really worth your time and energy.

Once your goal is well defined, you need to break it in small tasks that you can successfully perform on a regular basis

For instance, if you want to run a marathon, a first step would be to find a workout program, then you’ll start by running 2 miles per day the first week, then 3 miles the second week, etc.

If you’re consistent, week after week, you’ll find yourself making incremental progress getting you closer to your ultimate goal.

2. Short-Term vs. Long-Term

The key reason why most people struggle with staying consistent over the long-term is that they only live for the short-term, and expect immediate results.

If they don’t get immediate results from their actions, they don’t see the point in continuing with those actions over the long-haul.

However, the habit of consistency isn’t about obtaining quick results.

It’s rather about making incremental progress and improvements over an extended period of time.

The sum of the incremental progress will lead to the achievement of the ultimate goal.

Consider for a moment a skill that you have developed over the years.

Maybe you’re a good writer or or can speak a foreign language very well.

No matter what skill you developed, you developed this skill over many weeks, months and years.

And when you started, you didn’t get big results from day one.

You applied yourself consistently toward learning that particular skill, and that’s how you developed it.

To be consistent means to focus on the present moment while maintaining a long-term view that helps you measure your results and the impact of your daily actions.

If we take the marathon example, you don’t need to worry about the ultimate result.

Just follow the workout program and make sure you achieve what’s planned today

If your goal today is to run 2 miles, then that’s what you should focus on.

Trust the process, and you’ll improve and will be amazed how you quickly progress when you persist.

3. Schedule

Goals are dreams with deadlines, and without those deadlines, your dreams are dead in the water.

If you don’t schedule your tasks in your calendar, it’ll be hard to work on them.

You have to plan and schedule recurring blocks of time and make sure to dedicate those blocks of times for the actions you want to perform.

If you want to run a marathon, you have to make sure that you respect the plan that you chose when you set your goals.

Don’t set yourself for failure.

If you don’t have time, simply don’t commit.

But if you truly wanted it, then find the time and make sure to practice on a regular basis.

By having the tasks in your schedule and performing them, you’ll gain feedback from these tasks and adjust them accordingly to help you stay on track as you work towards your goal.

For a marathon, one can use apps to measure the progress they’re making.

If they’re on track in terms of distance they’re running every week, then they celebrate and keep going.

If not, then they adjust by finding solutions (e.g., find a better diet, get advice from a coach, etc.)

4. Delegate

Many people quit their projects because they don’t feel that they are making progress, and they start procrastinating.

This typically happens in projects when someone wants to do everything by themselves.

For instance, let’s take a non-technical person who is passionate and wants to start a blog to write about a topic that they’re passionate about.

They create their plan and identify the following tasks: buy a domain name, find a website hosnt, create a website, create a facebook page, create a LinkedIn page, create content (for each blog post, do research, find the visuals, edit them, etc.), publish content on the website, share content on social media, reply to users’ comments, etc.

The worst thing that this person can do is to try to do everything by themselves.

They will be working on these tasks for weeks, and they won’t see progress.

They start feeling demotivated and might even say that this is not their passion, and they give up.

The reality is that writing content is their passion and can be rewarding, but instead of doing that, they spend most of their time on tasks that they don’t like or are not good at.

A solution is to delegate some tasks and automate others.

There are tons of freelancers online for as cheap as $5 per hour who can help with these tasks.

A smart way to be consistent, is to focus only on writing content and delegating all the other tasks.

5. Accountability Partner

If you find yourself demotivated or procrastinating, you can make yourself accountable by having someone that you will have to report back to.

Make sure to find someone who is also committed to consistency.

You share with them your plan and targets, and set up recurring meetings to check on your progress.

This person should be able to give constructive feedback on your progress and help you overcome obstacles when you face them.

They can be a professional coach, a friend, a colleague, a family member. Anyone who you trust, and believe that they are committed to help you.

Aristotle once said:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. ” — Aristotle

Every person is already applying consistency on a daily basis.

The question is not whether they’re consistent or not. The question is whether they’re applying it to actions that get them closer to their goals.

Consistency is what stands between you and achieving your goals.

Try these ideas out, and share your story below!

Your coach, Dr. Saïd

Live Your Passion

This article was originally published on my personal blog VitaFlip.com

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