Unlocking Consistency: The Power of Non-Linear Progress
Consistency doesn't have to mean checking boxes off your daily to do list. Challenge the myth of linear progress and explore how flexibility and flow states lead to sustained success.
Search online through any of the usual suspects (YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, etc.) for productivity advice, and you’ll be inundated with people telling you to become more consistent with your efforts. No doubt, consistency is an important facet of long-term productivity, but sometimes there is a perception that this means you won’t have off days, that you eventually reach some nirvana where you nail your to-do list every single day without fail. This is the concept I want to challenge today: the perception that consistency and progress are linear.
When we set long-term goals for ourselves, many of us first attempt to build a roadmap for these aspirations. This often includes a set amount of daily execution, whether it be studying, practicing, or something else. This is a great practice and is key to making aspirations a reality, but it is not the whole picture, nor is it a steadfast rule. Daily practice helps us build habits and patterns that carry us through to the finish line and into the life we want. However, there are some obvious imperfections in this approach:
1. When building out plans for our new life, we overestimate the amount of discipline we have for these life changes.
2. We fail to prepare for life to continue happening, having no recourse when we have a wedding to travel to, a family get-together one weekend, or whatever else may come in the way of our daily rituals.
So what, if anything, is the problem with the 'daily practice' approach? Isn’t there just something wrong with me if I can’t keep a daily schedule?
As mentioned before, consistency is an absolute necessity if we want to reach our long-term goals. Things get a bit grey when we examine what people generally believe consistency looks like. Checking boxes off a daily to-do list or closing the rings on our fitness app are just a couple of common examples. Make no mistake, there is ample evidence that breaking our goals into smaller chunks and chipping away is incredibly effective at helping us reach our goals. But there is more than one way to skin a cat(fish). Daily practice remains the main driver of personal change for most people, but it isn’t always the answer. Take, for example, an author who sets a goal to write 10 pages every day until their book is finished. Writing, however, depends on inspiration, and certainly, it is not a linear task to write a book. More likely, the author could write 20 or 30 pages on good days and none on days when inspiration doesn’t strike. All this is to say, if the author beat themselves up for failing to hit their page count for a day or two, they could derail their whole book. So, are daily page counts a recipe for success or the quickest way to feel like a failure on a daily basis? The author is likely better off taking advantage of their ‘Flow State’ and writing for many hours at a time on some days, and not beating themselves up on less productive days. If they can manage two 4-hour writing sessions a week versus 1-hour sessions every day, it will amount to more overall work, and they’ll likely struggle less with the transition in and out of flow.
If you’ve read this far, the image I am attempting to portray is that progress can be non-linear. Consistency doesn’t have to mean being on team #nodaysoff. Sustained progress over time is the goal, and the perceptions we create will determine our happiness throughout the voyage. When we craft our roadmap at the beginning of our journey, it’s key that we don’t build out too-specific expectations for how things are supposed to look, lest we set ourselves up for disappointment when our realities don’t match the presumptions in our head. Once we realize we aren’t living up to our idea of ourselves, that’s when we fall off the horse.
To wrap up, consistency is all about sustained progress towards long-term goals, not just daily task completion. In fact, for many goals, non-linear approaches can be more effective, allowing flexibility and increasing chances of success. In many cases, deep work sessions will yield much more significant results than more frequent but shorter efforts. All this can help prevent the dreaded ‘burnout’ and that, in the end, is the key to building consistency.
Till next time,
- Wes