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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
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Progress towards a goal is never a straight shot. There will be times when you progress rapidly, and there will be times where things go a lot slower, and forward movement towards your goal is a struggle.  Sometimes, you will completely lose forward momentum towards your goals and your activity level may come to a standstill.

Perhaps this standstill is simply because you needed a break, maybe you went on vacation, or maybe you engaged in a period of focused imbalance where you simply needed to let that goal slide for a short time.  Sometimes people stop progressing towards their goals because other goals get in the way, or simply because bad habits start to creep in and you end up taking the lazy way out.

It is when your progress is completely stopped, that is when you need to dig deep inside yourself. This is when your true character is revealed.  You have two options here: you can let your goals slide – essentially giving up – or you can dig deep and work to get things going again.

Just like a train locomotive, getting started after you have stopped is the hardest part.  You have created a “state” when you have stopped, and you need to move out of the stopped “state” into a “state of motion. The law of inertia says that a body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body in rest tends to stay in rest.  While inertia is true in physics, it is also true as you work towards meaningful life goals.  Thankfully there are steps you can take to get yourself going again and re-engage your goals.

1. Accept the Situation

The first step in getting yourself going again is to accept the situation.  When you have let your activity towards a goal slide you are likely disappointed with yourself and that can easily weigh you down.  So don’t beat yourself up.  It doesn’t help for you to feel bad about what you haven’t done, or to pile up blame on yourself. Even if you should not have let your activity level slide, and even if it is your fault that you are not progressing towards your goal, it doesn’t say anything about who you really are!

By accepting the situation you can learn from what has happened with a focus on the future.  Learn what caused you to stop moving towards your goal. Was it an unusual life event, or did the normal things of life get in your way?  What do you need to do to make sure that doesn’t happen again?  Look at your life’s habits.  Did you let some habits slide?  Are there new habits you need to create?  Analyze what has happened, but always with a focus on the future.  Discover how to not let it happen for you again.

2. Revisit your goals

Next, take some time to revisit your goals.  Think back to why you want to achieve the goal.  Deeply ingrain in yourself an understanding of this WHY.  Is the goal really important?  If so, you need to clarify this importance and use it to help you build momentum.

Perhaps the goal is not important for your life and in that case you should let it slide.  Likely, if you have been thinking about it and acknowledging the need to get back to it, the goal is important. Chances are that you forgot about the importance of this goal and that was part of why you got stalled.  If you have ingrained within yourself why a goal is important you will be less likely to quit.  For example, I’ve deeply ingrained in myself the importance of exercise and staying in shape.  Because of how clearly I see the importance of physical fitness, I’m much less likely to stop working out, even when I’m forced to give up other goals. As a result, even when I recently went through a period of focused imbalance, I was able to stick to my fitness commitment.

3. Start Small

When getting going again in movement towards your goal you need to be willing to start small.  You don’t need to, and shouldn’t expect to, jump in at the highest level of activity that you were maintaining before you stopped. You also don’t need to put that level of pressure on yourself.  Starting small is acceptable!

Say, for example, that when you are moving towards a certain goal, you used to make twenty sales calls a day. Don’t put that level of pressure on yourself to begin. Start small by simply making one call.  Often that first activity is the hardest.  Doing anything, even something very small, can help you create momentum and that can build and develop into inertia.

4. Move to Half-Way

After doing something to get started, the next step is to look for an opportunity to get back to your “half-way” activity level. This is where you make a firm commitment that you will do at least half of the activity that would have been considered your full activity level.

This is what I did to get back into the habit of writing.  At my full activity level I would write for one hour on four different days each week.  To get back into the flow after I stopped, I started by moving to the half way mark.  I did this by committing to write for thirty minutes a day for the first week.

Having a shorter time or activity level commitment can help you get started because it is less intimidating, feels easier to do, and gives you a sense of accomplishment. You should notice that I have used the world commitment several times.  When you move to half-way, you need to be committed.  You can’t simply plan on moving to half-way, or hope to get half-way.  If you do, that will never happen.  Instead, you need to commit to it, and follow through on your commitment, no matter what.  It is this kind of determination that is needed as you try to start moving again.

5. Increase to Full Out Effort

Now that you have moved to a half-way level of action, you can work to build momentum by continually adding in more activities and putting in more time.  Set a plan in place on how you will get back to your previous pace. Your plan may be involve a certain date where you move from half activity to full activity, or it may involve a more gradual increase.  The key is that you have a clear plan that fits that allows for an achievable way of reaching your previous effort level.  Of course, that plan can not sit idle.  You must follow the plan and do what it takes to get back to your full activity level.

6. Consider a Period of Massive Action

Often times after a period where you have stopped working or progressing towards your goals, a period of massive action can make a huge difference.  This is especially true in many businesses, and in any sorts of sales or marketing.  In this situation, you can still take a short while to ramp up your activity level, but instead of stopping at your previous activity level, go beyond!  In fact, go significantly beyond and create momentum.

Sometimes a period of massive action will help you make up for lost time and propel you to more rapid success. You may find that this higher level of activity is something you can maintain and that the efforts are really worth it; alternatively, you may find that you need to go back to your previous activity level.  Either way you’ll have created more rapid growth and momentum because of your period of massive action.

Remember, just because you’ve let your activity towards your goal slide doesn’t mean that you have any less chance of achieving your goal. Sure you may need to adjust your deadlines if you’ve sat back for too long, but your goal can stay.  Readjust your deadline, ramp up your activity and see the success you’ve dreamed about.

Written by:
The Success Professor – Danny Gamache
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Last week, I wrote about momentum, and how it can be a leader’s best friend.  The focus in that article was creating momentum.  In that article you learned about creating forward progress, having a vision, applying the principle of massive action, and about following up one success immediately with another.  You can read the full article here.

In this article, you will learn how to maintain momentum.  While creating momentum takes the largest amount of effort, its benefits will be short lived if you don’t take some deliberate steps to maintain it.  All your hard work will be in vain and your momentum will disappear – much more quickly than it came about.

The good news is that maintaining momentum is much easier than creating it in the first place.

STEPS TO MAINTAIN MOMENTUM

1. Keep the vision and goals out front.

You need to have a burning vision, a reason why you are going to work your business, a reason why you are going to make the next approach and a reason why you will place that next ad for your web site or product.  Take this vision and keep it out front.  Keep it where you will see it every day, where it will always beyond your mind.  Write it down, visualize it and gather photos that remind you of your vision.

2. Remind team members about the vision.

Don’t just keep the vision in front of yourself, keep the vision out front of your whole team, so that everyone knows where they are going, and every knows WHY they are going in that direction.  Continually recasting the vision for your team will be an important part of your maintaining momentum.

3. Develop consistency in your efforts.

You need to be continuously moving.  Don’t get some momentum going and then think you can stop and your business will grow on its own.  You’ve clearly been doing something right to create momentum – so don’t stop doing those things.  Set your self a pace that you can keep consistently.  Determine what activities you need to do to reach your goals and commit to daily action on those activities.

If you are calling potential customers, determine a number of approach calls that you can make each day and determine a number of follow up calls you can make each day.  Then follow through on that commitment.  How often will you post to your blog?  How often will you work out?  Whatever area you have momentum in, determine the activities you need to do on a daily basis; Then don’t stop.  You won’t need to work as hard as you did when you were creating the momentum, but you will have to work much more consistently.

4. Beware of the sprint/stop syndrome.

One problem people often face when they create momentum is that they fall into the sprint/stop syndrome. This is when people go break neck speed towards their goals for short time and then stop.  This is acting like the hare from the “Tortoise and the Hare fable”.  In that fable the Tortoise wins the race by continually moving forward, beating out the Hare who does a sprint/stop style of race.

There are many motivations for this sort of attitude.  People may stop because they want to reward themselves, so they take a week off or go on a vacation; they may stop because they get stressed out and need a break; they may collapse from exhaustion; or they may get so many sales they have to spend a week catching up on paperwork that got behind.  All of these are equally dangerous.  In each case you have broken the consistency of action and put your momentum in jeopardy.  Sure it may seem like you are still acting, that paperwork needed to be done after all, right?  Even in this case you are moving away from action that moves your business forward and are focusing on action that only maintains the current position.

5. Creating balance in your life.

Working hard and consistent at your business, but don’t burn yourself out.  Creating balance will allow you to maintain your energy. Allow time for personal development; allow time for spiritual growth, and make sure you stay physically active.   Develop a pace to life, one that is aggressive and forward moving, but one that you can maintain for long periods of time without needing to collapse or take a significant rest.  It is good to rest, but take short rests,  take a little time here and there, at most a day here and a day there, but you shouldn’t need to be taking days off to recover from you pace – if you do, you’ve been working too hard.

Momentum can be your best friend as you work towards personal or business goals.  There are deliberate steps you can take towards building momentum and maintaining it.   Now get started!

Written by:
The Success Professor – Danny Gamache

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No matter what type of organization you lead, business you run, or what kind of personal goals you are pursuing, one of the keys that will determine the level of your success is momentum.  Momentum is defined as “the force of movement”.  It can help decide how high you will go and how quickly you will get there.  At the same time, momentum can often prove illusive; something that seems to be here today and yet is gone tomorrow.

WHAT DOES MOMENTUM LOOK LIKE

John Maxwell calls momentum “the big mo”.   In his book “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”, he says that “Momentum is really a leader’s best friend.  Sometimes it’s the only difference between winning and losing.”

You know you have momentum when you run over obstacles in your path like they were nothing.  Momentum is when things happen with ease, one success follows another and forward growth comes quickly.  Momentum allows leaders to move past mistakes quickly, and any kind of change is possible.  People throughout the organization are motivated to achieve more, and at a higher level. Momentum makes the leader look good, because success seems to happen easily.

If you’re in sales, momentum is when sales come easy, one after another.  In fact you are confident going into the next sales call that you will make the sale.  In your personal life momentum is when you are meeting your goals one after another.  It is when your life is in balance and everything is going right.  You get the idea – it’s like dominos once one thing falls, the rest follow suit.

HOW TO ACHIEVE MOMENTUM

1. Achieving momentum starts with creating forward progress.

Getting started is the most difficult part.  It’s like the law of inertia:  an object in motion tends to stay in motion, and an object at rest tends to stay at rest.  Momentum is what happens when you get moving.  Whatever your goal is take a step towards it now.  This is why I suggest starting your day with a power hour. Your power hour allows you to do something first off in the morning that gives you progress towards your goals right away.  You create success within the first hour of the day, helping you gain momentum.  Once you are in motion for the day you are more likely to stay in motion and continue on towards your goals.

2. You are responsible for the momentum of your team.

Momentum starts with the leader, and then moves outwards and impacts the entire team.  If you lead a team of people in any form then you are responsible for the momentum of your team, you can’t place the responsibility on anyone else. Team momentum starts with your personal momentum.  You need to be motivated yourself and moving forward, before you can motivate others.  Understanding this will allow you to help your team to follow these steps towards momentum.

3. Have a clear vision and goals for your future.

Develop a vision for where you want to go and keep that vision out front.  Continually remind yourself and your team about the vision you are pursing.  Your vision should be important, not just to yourself but some way of contributing to the world and the well being of others.  This kind of vision will inspire. Then starting from your vision set your goals.  Make your goals clear, concise and dated.  Develop ways to remind yourself about your goals and vision.  Review your goals list daily, and put photos around your workspace and home that remind you of your goals.  Use these reminders to inspire you to move forward.

4. Apply the principle of massive action.

In the Olympic 100m sprint, the most important part of the race is leaving the starting blocks.  Sprinters that have a quick reaction time and are able to leave the start with power are often able to get so much momentum that they can’t be caught later in the race.  In your business you need to leave the starting blocks fast.  Even if your business is established you can get out fast by restarting your business – do that today and go!  If you are looking for customers, make a massive amount of prospecting calls bringing in a large amount of new customers; if you’re promoting your web site, do massive amounts of promotion – whatever you do to grow your business or to achieve your personal goals, start creating momentum by doing massive amounts of what it takes to succeed.

5. Follow one success immediately with another.

When is the best time to try to set an appointment with a prospect?  The best time to make a new prospecting call is immediately after you just set an appointment.  When is the best time to do a sales presentation? It is immediately after you just made a sale.  Far too often people will stop and take a break after they meet some goal or objective.  They think they deserve a reward and they take a break.  I’m all in favor of rewarding yourself for success but if you do it immediately after a small success, you’re limiting the momentum you can achieve.  If you’ve just had success in a particular goal, whether its making a sale or meeting a deadline you have gained a tremendous amount of energy and confidence from that action – so take advantage of it and make the next step.  You are most motivated immediately following a success, make use of that motivation to continue the forward motion you’ve started.  Reward yourself later, keep moving forward now!

6. Create Wins for Your Team

Having seen your success, the motivation of your teammates will be rising.  You can capitalize on this by putting them in situations that allow them to see some wins in what they are doing.  Look for any way you can of helping them succeed.  The more wins they can have, the more confidence they will have and the more momentum they will be build.  Make sure you are not neglecting the massive personal action at this time as well.  You need to maintain personal activity while working with your team members at the same time.
Following these steps will help you create “the big mo”.  Hold on tight, because momentum can propel you and your business further towards your goals in a short time than you might even imagine.

The Success Professor – Danny Gamache
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