Consistency is key

There’s immense strength in being consistent. When looking at success, it’s one of the best predictors, regardless of the field we’re in. Consistency is key.

I’ve had some difficulty wrapping my head around what I do for a living for the past couple of weeks. It’s a really luxurious problem to have, because my income isn’t really dependant on me knowing. As a professional generalist, I do almost anything that’s being thrown my way.

I’ve been thinking about what some of the success factors could be, being a professional generalist. The most important one, as for most other professions, is being consistent.

Consistent in showing up for work, in communicating with my clients, in doing the work that’s worth doing behind the scenes and so on. Showing up every single day to do these things.

I’ve been very good at being consistent in the past. I’ve put out podcast episodes every week for large periods of time. I’ve published almost 500 posts on medium in the space of about 3 years. I even had a run of almost 200 episodes of my vlog, every single weekday.

I haven’t been as explicitly consistent in quite some time. I’ve done a bunch of things every day, or on a very regular basis, but it hasn’t been the same.

When I started running, I practiced with a group of mid range runners. We were running anywhere between 200 and 1500 meters, often in some sort of intervalls. In one of the exercises, we were supposed to run a 600m lap, 5 times, aiming at the same target time each and every time.

That’s immensely hard, because if you go out too hard on the first lap, you’re going to have problems keeping up with yourself on the others. But none of us wanted to slack either, keeping pressure on the group.

I lost, really bad, even though I won two of the laps. Not consistent, but very very competitive.

My intention is to become even more consistent. To do the things that I think are worth doing as regularly as possible. And to recognise consistency where I show it.