Consistency Is Not Enough

As someone who has built his life around the idea of being as consistent as possible, who reads “The Compound Effect” once a quarter to reinforce my own dedication to being consistent myself, the reflection you’re about to hear is deeply personal.

Ask anyone who has achieved anything and they’ll tell you that you have to be consistent. There is nothing that replaces the compounding growth generated from reliable and repetitive action. 

Yet, consistency by itself isn’t enough.

If you think about the mechanics of consistency, it eventually leads to a plateau. With enough time the incremental gains you get from being consistent flatten out because you’ve maximized the capacity of the result. 

For example, if you do 50 push-ups every day, a month, your maximum amount of push-ups without rest will probably steadily increase. But if you do 50 push-ups every day for 10 years, it will no longer make you stronger. It will serve to maintain the upper limit you’ve established.

So for people who do the same thing, at the same interval, growth gets stagnant. If people take the same consistent action for long enough, they will eventually stop improving.

Don’t get me wrong, consistency is still a remarkable catalyst - and perhaps still the best one available to us! Most people don’t reach the “breaking point” I just described because they struggle to be consistent enough to reach it.

But it needs to be supplemented with increases in effectiveness, intensity, or frequency to truly become the exponential force we know it to be.

Effectiveness: 50 push-ups a day with better form will make you stronger. 

Intensity: 70 push-ups a day will make you stronger.

Frequency: 50 pushups twice a day will make you stronger.

That is until your life calibrates to the added demand, and your results acclimate to the level established by the new action plan.

Consistency is incredible. Increasing the quantity, quality, and leverage of the action you take consistently makes it exponential.

It’s the reason why routines eventually feel too routine. We’re meant to expand and push beyond our limits to discover our next.

If you want to see my personal process for how I maximize my consistency, and systematically fine-tune my action plans in the direction of never-ending, relentless growth, I have a video showing you my personal Self Improvement Scorecard in action. Click the link in the description if you want to check that out!

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