8 Years of Inconsistency — What I’ve Learned
Life is a chaotic mess, so it’s alright for you to be one, too
A wish for my future
I was 15 years old when I’ve decided that I am going to create a routine and stay consistent with my work to achieve my goals.
Over the years I failed miserably to be consistent in any sort of fashion and I messed up hundreds of daily routines that I’ve set up for myself.
At some point, I just gave up entirely and worked spontaneously but that didn’t work out as well.
We are not the type of beings that will just choose by the inner will to do hard work. Most of the time as humans we’ll just choose the easy way out.
1. Try whatever works
My first approach was to just try it out to be consistent, I mean how hard can it be, right?
It was extremely hard, I didn’t have any problems creating a morning routine for me, or being consistent with doing sport but working towards my goals things like studying, doing tests, creating, were almost impossible for me to do consistently.
At some point, I realized that I wasn’t a disciplined person, so I started to experiment with self-development courses, books, and videos. That helped a bit but not that much because I would have this rushes of motivation when I would watch something or read a motivational story, only to find myself working a few days then quitting again.
It wasn’t pointless, I probably read a dozen of books and I learned a great deal out of it. These books made me realize that I like psychology and I would probably be pretty good at it.
I gained an idea about what the best principles to stay disciplined are but I didn’t practice most of them.
One thing that remained with me, was the fact that if I were to summarize all my self-development knowledge in two words it would be this, just start.
One often just dreams about doing it, but it doesn’t take any action. Start doing it now, pathetic as your first work might be, you will have something to improve. Thoughts won’t lead to anything if they are not followed by action.
2. Health comes first
Something that I’ve observed very clearly over the years was the fact that my diet, sleep, and exercise performance was almost the key for me to have the drive to work.
I won’t get here into what and what not should you do, most of us know what good health practices are, you just need to realize that they matter and start implementing them.
You don’t need pristine health practices, but if you get some of the things right your quality of life and work will be improved significantly.
For me this meant getting at least 7 hours of sleep, exercising 4–5 times a week, and having a diet that was very low in processed foods and low in carbs.
I learned this the hard way by being hit like a train with a disease at 18 years old that left me almost completely incapacitated.
Incorporating these practices in my life gave me a strong base and led to better results in whatever I pursued.
3. Your life’s journey
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
I think this part is the most important because having meaning in your life gives you such resilience and determination that you can withstand almost anything.
You need to have a destination in mind, a problem to solve, a place to arrive in your life. Having a goal to reach, regardless of whatever you reach it or not will give you neurochemical rewards if you are getting close to it.
You will wake up more energized in the morning and you will sleep better at night, the problems that might arise in your life, will not create the tension that they might have if you wouldn’t have this goal.
Having a goal is very important but you need to consider more than the goal itself, the journey that will have to be made for you to get there.
There will be years, months, or days involved in getting where you want, and probably a very short of time to enjoy the results when you get there, so to frame this better, choose a journey that you would like not a goal.
Accepting the entropy of your existence
I am not a perfectionist by nature but I always wanted my days to go perfect. Wake up, do my routines, work 8 hours then relax and do my night routines. This rarely worked, life is chaotic, things don’t go as planned and you have to overcome all that to do your work.
Maybe for some people, things are more constant but for me, they weren’t. I had all sorts of issues to deal with it of internal or external nature.
Because I would want my days to be perfect I would get discouraged whenever I failed to meet my delusional standards, this would usually spiral into negative thoughts about myself, and my life in general.
I believe that wanting to always have the same performance is ridiculous, evolutionary we weren’t designed to work at the same rate every day, but to have sprints of performance and rest.
Finally, I realized that for me, consistency has never meant to work 8 hours every day but to show up every day and to do the best I can, 8 seconds, minutes, or hours.
