The role of consistency in lasting change

For long periods of my life I believed that making big efforts was the answer to creating the best future. Whether studying for a test (which I always left until the last minute), training for a sport really intensely for a month and then giving up, or going full force into a hobby before crashing out leaving a wake of equipment behind me never to be touched again, I told myself that next time would be different. Next time, I would be able to break the cycle and the big effort would last.

This isn't how life works (for most people). For most, the work continues days, weeks and even years after the start point. I noticed this most when I started going to the gym. After a week I felt stronger (and a lot sorer!). After a month I felt slightly bigger. But after a year, the change was obvious for everyone to see. In the past I may have gone for a week, not noticed much of a change and given up, but the truth is that each time I stepped into the gym, there was progress. Incredibly minute progress, but progress all the same. James Clear says "if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you'll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you're done." 1 percent! That's hardly anything. To put it into weightlifting terms, if you're currently lifting a 10kg dumbbell, a 1 percent improvement means tomorrow you need to lift a dumbbell which weighs 10.1kg. Obviously, I wasn't going into the gym and searching for the 0.1kg plates to ensure my lifts were increasing in this way but the idea of small changes over a long period of time made each session seem so much more achievable.

The reason this works is due to compounding. For anyone who can't remember doing maths back in secondary school the idea of compounding is that you have a number and increase it by a certain percentage. The new number you have is increased by the same percentage. And so on and so on. This is most commonly found in finance with interest rates. As an example, if you take a credit card and pay for something, over time the money owed grows due to interest, but next month (unless you pay the card off) the amount owed grows again by the same interest rate. What you end up getting is an increase in value similar to the graph below. There's a lot of small increases but eventually they all add up and the line goes through the roof.

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When people think of change, they see the line being more direct. They think they make a change and the line stretches directly from bottom left to top right. The caveat here is that although the growth is "quicker" when plotted against the imagined line, the upside (the end value of the line) isn't normally as high. As [[James Sinclair]] puts it "people overestimate what is possible in a year, but underestimate what is possible in 10 years". James is a serial entrepreneur and is currently (August 2024) registered as a Director in 15 businesses in the UK. (I'm giving you this context to prove that consistency isn't only important in health and fitness but does relate to other aspects of life too). The trick to seeing the real potential from consistency is breaking through the Plateau of Latent Potential.

The Plateau of Latent Potential is the section of the graph which exists below the line of expected progress. At the start of anything, the progress is going to be slower than expected (in most cases, unless you have an incredibly pessimistic outlook from the start). But, if you can break through this area, the upside is so vast you couldn't possibly imagine the outcome. You need to make your habit (or intended habit) last longer than the plateu. One method of doing this is breaking your goal down.

When you break down a big goal into smaller chunks and focus on hitting those small chunks consistently, you move towards the goal without even realising. If you constantly focus on climbing the mountain, every step seems to be too small to make a difference, but if you focus on every 10 steps, not only do you forget that there are still 9,000 steps left to take, you also hit a goal more frequently. "Slow, consistent progress is better for maintaining the feeling of accomplishment over a longer period of time" - Dan Bilzerian

It's important to say that you can't fool yourself into thinking minuscule efforts are worthwhile because of consistency. At the end of the day, the smaller the effort, the longer it will take to achieve the same outcome. But on the days where you feeling particularly challenged, when you don't want to get out of bed, when running in the rain sounds like the worst idea in the world, just remember to hit your 1 percent improvement.

David Goggins talks about how he got through hell week and ultra marathons by describing an internal conversation where you question what you have left and by changing the perspective from "can I finish this race" to "can I take one more step", suddenly you're able to overcome the greatest of challenges. It's easy to take one more step, then ask yourself again. And as you continue to ask yourself again and again you build a pattern. You focus on what you can do rather than what the challenge entails.

As you start to make changes in your life the question changes to "what next?" This is where you really start to see compounding interest on your consistency. A lot of people pick arbitrary points in time and select them as their time to make big changes, "new year, new me" and all that. But the truth is that changing your whole life in one go isn't sustainable. To go from nothing to going to the gym every day, cooking fresh whole foods for most meals, biking instead of driving to work. Each of these things on their own are big movements but together they're enough to break anyone down. So why does it happen every year? Why are our newsfeeds filled with people claiming "this is my year". It's because big positive change is sexy. Telling the end story is so appealing that we forget to write the beginning and the middle first. So what's the answer?

Small, consistent, compounded efforts. Perhaps for the first month you aim to start going to the gym with the goal to "feel comfortable completing a session". What does it take to achieve that? Well, you could go to the gym twice a week for three weeks, trying out the different machines. You could speak to one of the trainers and ask for the "best" exercise for gaining bicep strength. After a few weeks, you start to enjoy the sessions and realise that you could go a couple more times. Suddenly you're going to the gym three/four times a week and you've been going (consistently) for two months. It is said that it takes about 10 weeks to form a habit (based on daily repetition), but after two months of attending the gym 2-4 times a week not only will you be well on the way to cementing the habit, you'll be feeling a lot healthier and (based on my own experiences) a lot more confident too. At this point, you can start micro-dosing other habits in. Starting small, just as we did with the gym, you start a meditation practice. 5 minutes, twice a week. You're going to the gym Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday and now you're also meditating on Tuesday and Saturday. What a week you're having! And the meditation can ramp up with time too.

Ultimately, the examples I'm giving can be swapped out for anything you're wishing to work towards. Maybe you're learning a new skill such as coding or playing a new sport, the principle remains the same; start small, build up and then add.