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In the last post, I shared about why it is important to stay consistent as you work towards your goals. That leads to the next question: how can you ensure that you stay consistency?

The struggle for consistency will look different in every person’s life based on their individual goals and lifestyles. The following are general tips which will be helpful to many of you.

1. Make a decision

Without making a conscious decision to pursue your goals consistently, week after week and day after day, you will not be able to do so. It takes a true effort on your part to be consistent so you must decide to do so. This can’t be a light decision where you say “I’ll try to be more consistent”, rather it must be a committed decision. You must be firm about your decision to pursue consistency.

2. Determine a realistic time commitment

Take some time and evaluate your life. Evaluate all the different roles you have in your life. You might be a mother, a husband, an employee. You might have roles with your church, with other organizations, or with a sports team. Determine how much time you realistically should be putting in to each role on a weekly basis, and if possible schedule in your committed times. Use this as a starting point to determine how much time you should realistically put towards your various goals every week. Whether that is two hours, four hours, ten hours or more; determine the appropriate amount of time that you can commit consistently – ever week! Make sure this commitment is realistic, so probably take your initial estimate and scale it down a little. If you set a commitment that is too high it will lead to burnout and you won’t follow through. You may want to use my weekly planning system as part of determining your time commitment.

3. Set specific times

The next step is to take your weekly calendar and mark in when you will actually be spending your time pursing your goal. Determine what days you are going to do activities, how much time each day, and when those hours fall. For example, one of my goals is to grow my blogs. That means taking the time to write good articles. To do that, I have set aside thirty minutes a day for writing. These thirty minutes occurs almost immediately after I get up in the morning. Because it is a specific time, it quickly develops into a habit. Another goal I am pursuing is growing my affiliate home business. Part of this goal involves phone meetings with business partners and potential clients. On my schedule, I have one time slot each day set aside for one of these phone meetings. I used to try to do as many as possible, and found that I would do a lot for a little while and quickly burn out. After burning out, I wouldn’t do any for a long time. That is NOT staying consistent. By scheduling only one time each day for a phone meeting I keep up a steady consistent pace.

4. Stick to it

To be consistent you need to stick to your plan. You likely will get off track from time to time. When you do, get right back on your plan and start moving forward again. You will need to refocus in this way from time to time. Also periodically revisit your time commitment and scheduled times and examine whether they are still appropriate. You will need to make revisions as you go along and move towards your goals. Also, at some points you will achieve a goal you are pursing. Take some time to celebrate and then determine what the next step or new goal that you would like to accomplish.

5. Try, try and try again

Staying consistent is a learning process. It takes time to learn how to build your life around consistent action. Certainly some people find this comes naturally, but for most of us it consistency does not come easy. That may be true even if you are excited and passionate about what you do. It is easy to burn out on your passions by spending too much time in those areas. As you continue to work towards consistency, you will get better. If you have made a firm decision to make consistent progress towards your goals, you will get there. Work your plan each day and each week. If you find yourself losing consistency, recognize it and refocus yourself. Over time you will get more and more consistent.

The great thing about consistency is that as you pursue it, you will see results. You will see yourself moving towards your goals step by step. You will find yourself breaking through the difficult inertia of the early stages and building momentum. Whether your goal is losing a few extra pounds, getting out of debt, building a part-time business, or learning a language, consistency will help you succeed.

Written by:

Danny Gamache – The Success Professor
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One of the biggest problems that most people face as they work towards a goal is the ability to put in consistent effort. Staying consistent in your activities and effort is one of the keys to success.

Consistency is even more important than simple mathematics may make it seem. By this I mean that consistently putting in 5 hours each week over the course of a month towards building business, growing a blog, or achieving a goal, is more valuable than putting in 30 hours one week and nothing for the next three weeks. Yes, the 5 hour a week plan only puts in 20 hours for the month while the other plan has 30 hours, the 5 hour a week plan is still more effective. The same applies on a month-by-month basis. You need to be consistent month after month, not work for a month, and then take a month off. Being consistent will help you reach your goals much more quickly than a sprint-and-stop plan.

You can see this idea really clearly when you think of exercising. Having a big long work out once a month is not nearly as effective as having a smaller workout every day, or even every second day. Similarly, working out every day for a week and then taking the rest of the month off is not as effective as working three times each week across the entire month. Being consistent is more effective. This same principle applies to other goals you are pursuing.

Consistency like this is important for a few reasons:

1. Inertia

The hardest part of any accomplishment is getting started. If you work in spurts you are spending a lot of energy getting started. You will work hard to get started and then before you know it you are stopped again. The law of inertia says that “a body at rest tends to stay at rest.” If you then take a significant amount of time off from pursuing your goal, things will have stopped completely and you will need to use all of that energy again. If instead, you do a little bit every day, you will be able to carry over some of that energy. Think of the exercise program again. The first workout is the hardest, because you have negative inertia. Your body doesn’t react the same, and you mentally aren’t as in to it. After a while your daily workout becomes routine and you carry forward from one day to the next. If you only exercise once a week, it feels like you are starting over each time. Both mentally and physically it requires more effort to get started again.

2. Momentum

Moving past the initial steps of negative inertia allows you to build momentum. Momentum is when the activities you do start to snowball in their effects. The work you are doing starts to build up speed because everything you are doing is building on itself. The efforts of today are building smoothly on the efforts of tomorrow. Momentum is positive inertia. The positive side of inertia is that “a body in motion tends to stay in motion.” Momentum is clearly seen in many areas of life. In politics, momentum is a powerful force for a candidate in an election campaign. In sports, many games are filled with momentum swings where one team has all the energy and everything seems to go just right. In business, momentum helps companies grow more quickly than they have before. As you work consistently towards your goal you will develop momentum that makes things happen more quickly and with less effort than before.

3. Power of Mental Focus

In life people consistently move towards the things that they focus their minds on. If you work in spurts, your mind will be focused on your goal for a short period of time. After that time you forget about it, or at least it is not part of your focus. By consistently focusing on your goal, even just a little bit each day or week, will keep your mind engaged in the process. If you mind is engaged and focused on your goal, you will notice when other things come along that might help you achieve your goal. For example, if you are growing a part time home business, you may find potential clients while doing other things. If you are consistently working on your business, you will make those connections. If you are not, you might miss out on that opportunity. Being consistent keeps your goal in your mind and helps you move towards it more quickly.

4. Keeping your life in balance

You need to allow all the areas of your life, family, work, business, spiritual etc. have some level of balance. That means you need to spend an appropriate amount of each aspect of your life. If you pursue your goals with quick spurts where you put in a huge amount of time in for one week, then during that week everything else in your life will be out of balance. Of course the opposite is also true. If you take three weeks off from pursing your goal, you will be out of balance in that area. Take exercise as an example. If you go overboard one week, then you will have taken time away from other things you should be doing; you will be out of balance. If you then stop working out for the next three weeks, you are equally out of balance, this time short on the physical activity side of life.

Consistency in life is vital. In almost every situation in my life where I haven’t achieved my goal, or where I am unsatisfied with my progress towards a goal it is because I have been inconsistent in my efforts. Being consistent allows you to use inertia instead of working against it, it allows you to build momentum, use the power of mental focus, and keep your life in balance. The next post will discuss HOW to improve your consistency.

Written by:
Danny Gamache – The Success Professor
If you liked this article, leave a comment below, or subscribe by RSS!
I’m looking for partners, if you are looking for a way to earn extra money, click here!