Being Consistent is more Important than being Effective

The goal to learning any new skill or developing a positive habit is to do it well. That’s ultimately the end goal. However, it’s a mistake to try to do it well right off the bat. I’m not saying to intentionally hold back on performing your habit well, but to keep in mind that it’s temporarily, secondary. Consistency is first.

Productivity is Second to Consistency

This may sound counterintuitive because we work on developing new, positive habits to BE more productive in our lives so how can this be? Well remember that habits are things that we do without having to think about it. No one has to remind you to wipe your ass when you’re done using the bathroom or to look behind you when you reverse in a car. These are habits that you’ve established over the years. You do them consistently every time without having to think about them.

The two parts to developing habits are, doing them without thinking about them and doing them consistently. When we first start learning a habit or behavior, we need to think about it otherwise we will forget to do it. So we can’t execute the “doing it without thinking part yet”. That’s something that will develop over time. We can make it easier by creating reminders for ourself, but that’s just to train remembering it. Over time, it’ll be something we don’t have to think about anymore.

Consistency however is what we need to really focus on because we can control that well. We can set aside a time to do something often at a predictable time. This will do a few things. Once you do something over and over again at the same time of day or after the same triggering behavior, it’ll start to happen without you having to remember doing it.

Make it Stick before trying to make it Better

The first part of making something worthwhile stick is to focus on JUST making it stick. It’s important not to multitask here because once you multitask, you split your mental processing power in between the tasks that you’re trying to juggle. Essentially, you are dividing your resources between both tasks when they don’t quite hold the same importance at the moment.

To make something stick, it’s better to make it easy to do and maintain. You don’t want to complicate it by having it take up too much time or make it mentally draining. Just practice doing the bare minimum until it’s something you don’t have to use any energy remembering. Then when it becomes second nature, you can focus on making it better.

The Secret to Making it Stick Easily

For example, lets say you’re trying to implement meditation into your life. If you try and meditate whenever the Hell you want during the day, it’ll be hard to maintain. However, if you decide to meditate first thing in the morning, it’ll make things easier for you because the TIME of day is consistent and measurable. You’re basically meditating as the first thing after waking up.
The next thing is to make sure it isn’t difficult to do so that you don’t feel like you want to skip doing it. So instead of trying to do meditation as effectively as possible, its best to make it as easy as possible to do. If your goal is for 10 minutes of deep meditation in the morning, start with one minute. You can even just sit still for 1 minute in a designated spot without trying meditation techniques.
This way you get into the habit of going to that spot first thing every morning and sitting. Eventually you can try sitting for two minutes. Maybe even closing your eyes and following your breathing.

Comfort and Accessibility

The point is, comfort and accessibility are the anchors of consistency. These are things that matter most to developing habits. Afterwards, when it becomes a habit, they don’t matter to practice anymore because you’ve accomplished what practicing them will do.
After that, you can focus on skill. This way you can clearly use 100% of your resources on practicing skill now. So if you have established your meditation time and place into habit, next is to research and practice great meditation techniques.

It’s not that productivity of efficiency of a habit aren’t as important, they’re just not as important as consistency early on. They do become more important later on because practicing consistency becomes less relevant since it’s already established. Maintaining it is a lot easier than developing it and uses just a tiny bit of thought if any at all.

Go out there and practice making it happen first, then when you don’t have to think about it happening anymore, practice doing it well!

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