Hey guys, it’s been a while hasn’t it? I completely forgot we had a blog, but now that the new year is here, I thought I’d get started on one of my new years resolutions and write a post. I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t really know what to write about, so here’s a short one on a life lesson I learnt last year – hopefully it will suffice for now. Enjoy!
So you want to become good at anything. Sounds hard, but it really isn’t. There’s a simple way to do it, which revolves around one very important thing. That thing is consistency. Okay, I may have exaggerated a little. It’s not that easy to be consistent. But trust me, once you can do something consistently, everything becomes so much easier.
Consistency
What do I mean by being consistent? Being consistent just means showing up on a regular basis, regardless of how big or small the progress you make is. It’s much better than making huge leaps with long, irregular intervals of time in between.
You see, making a huge leap is definitely very satisfying, but can be very draining, and will ultimately burn you out. Now as time goes by, you start to lose the progress that you made, and the next time around, you have to spend more time repeating something you did last time to get that progress back. We tend to do this because we often have big, unrealistic expectations that we need to satisfy, but with this kind of mindset we are not playing the long game.
Compounding
Being consistent means that you benefit from something called compounding, that is, improving on top of the improvements you already made (think compound interest). When you are consistent, you lose less progress in between sessions and spend less time repeating/reinforcing what you did last time. This means more time improving on top of the progress made last time out.
James Clear puts it very nicely in numbers: if you were to improve 1% everyday for a year (1.01365), you would be almost 38 times better at that thing from when you first started. This model depends on consistency because it relies on improving by 1% on top of the 1% improvement yesterday. If you lose that 1% in between, it just doesn’t work.
Make It A Habit
So how do you become consistent at something? Honestly, I’m still figuring this out as well. What I can say is that it really is a mindset more than anything.
If you are passionate about something, turn that drive and motivation into doing/practising that thing consistently, rather than trying to achieve an unrealistic expectation. Forget about whether you have made enough progress or not and just show up. Try and make it a habit rather than a chore.
My tip is to start with something manageable (e.g. 1 hour every week) and then gradually increase it from there. The important thing is to keep it consistent. Everything in life, from studying to playing the piano, can benefit from consistency and compounding, so go implement them!
Well, that’s all from me for now. What are you going to become good at?
Good luck!
– Verrel
Photo credit: Elijah M. Henderson on Unsplash
