"Why and How to Be Consistent?"
Consistency is a great characteristic to build and implement in your life. It is extremely important in every aspect of life, including personal relationships, professional settings, and personal development. It is the key to success, whether professional or personal. However, knowing something in theory and succeeding at it in practice is very different. When our daily lives are filled with distractions and different priorities, it can be difficult to stay on top of things and remain consistent.
The key to consistency is setting and achieving specific goals. Start by determining how you want to be more consistent in your life and aim for these small goals. Over time, as you become more consistent, keep yourself motivated and accountable. This may require some change in thinking so that you stay optimistic and productive throughout the process.
Strategy to Become More Consistent
1. Set Clear Goals
To become more consistent, you have to set clear goals that you want to work on.
Start planning by listing all of them either in soft (phone or laptop) or in a notebook.
Evaluate those goals and formulate a plan on how best to achieve them.
Try one of the various goal-setting methods and techniques out there.
One of the best tools is, setting SMART goals – commonly used for personal development, learning, preparing for exams, in business and project management. With this tool, we can set clear goals and plan accordingly to achieve them successfully.
How to use the SMART goals tool?
Specific – Set a specific goal that is both well-defined and focused.
Measurable – Make sure that the goal you set can be measurable. There must be certain criteria to track progress.
Achievable – You have to ensure that the goal you have set is achievable. Keep a reality check. Consider all of your resources, skills, and limitations.
Relevant – The goal you are trying to accomplish should be meaningful, relevant, and aligned with your core values and objectives.
Time-bound – To ensure your consistency, set a specific deadline for completing your goal. This will create a sense of urgency and will help you stay on track.
2. Prioritizing
Most of the time, when we fail to be consistent, it is because of our inability to prioritize. While juggling multiple tasks personal or professional obligations simultaneously, it becomes difficult to prioritise the goal over other things. One needs to learn prioritisation to attain peace of mind.
There are several ways and methods for prioritization. You can start with a simple to-do list, where you write down all of your tasks and obligations and start ticking them off one by one. Likewise, a list of not-very-important things can be made. We can use the Eisenhower method to sort things.
To start with, you should arrange all of your tasks into four separate categories based on their importance and urgency:
Category 1 – Urgent and Important. Complete these tasks as soon as possible.
Category 2 – Not urgent but important. Such tasks can be scheduled for a later time.
Category 3 – Urgent but not important. These tasks can be delegated to someone else, find the person.
Category 4 – Not urgent and not important. Don’t bother doing these. Either leave them or postpone them indefinitely.
Another commonly used method for prioritizing that you could try is called the ABCDE technique. Here’s how it works:
Make a list of all of your tasks;
Set letters to each of your tasks in the order of priority (A is the highest, B is an average priority, C is low, and so on);
Start working on your tasks based on the letter grades you’ve assigned (first deal with the A’s, then the B’s, and so forth).
3. Eliminate Distractions
Distractions (digital, social, or any other) can become a big impediment to your commitment towards being consistent. That’s why it is important to actively work on eliminating or limiting distractions. And how you can do that:
Make a schedule or planner of your work
Dedicate a proper neat, tidy and noise-free workplace for yourself
Turn off the notifications on your devices to avoid distraction
Turn off your phone or keep it on silent while working
Limit the amount of time you spend browsing the web or social media sites
Focus more on apps or different digital tools that can help you stay engaged more constantly
Try time-management techniques like setting timers, alarms, or other digital tools for time-keeping
4. Keep track of your time and progress
When you want to stay consistent, be careful of your time usage. We are aware of where and how you spend your time. Create a schedule for yourself, that will help you plan your day so that you get everything done on time. It will also help you understand what commitments you do and do not have time for.
At the same time keep track of your actions and progress concerning your tasks, goals etc. For this, you can maintain a diary, excel sheet or Google document.
The above tracking methods will give you an idea about how long it takes you to complete tasks, you can evaluate it to figure out what’s stopping you from being consistent.
Try to analyse:
What is the speed of my task completion?
Am I lacking in skills or are the tasks difficult?
How much time should be used to finish particular jobs and the ways to speed up?
What are the methods and tools I can use to streamline the process of completing certain tasks?
5. Remind yourself
Sometimes, we tend to forget our new goals, habits, commitments, or promises, especially when we make them to ourselves. To remind yourself throughout the day, put messages to yourself in visible areas.
Place reminders around your home, phone, laptop, workspace, and belongings.
6. Embrace your failures
When we resolve to become more consistent, we will inevitably encounter failure. Failures in the form of being unable to perform the tasks competently or missing deadlines for completion of tasks.
In either case, it’s important not to give up, but to give yourself enough time to work on another solution, forgive yourself, be patient, and change your mindset about failure.
To succeed in life, do not get demoralised by your failures. Make a shift in your mindset, and develop a growth mindset. As Carol Dweck writes in her book “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success”:
“In the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail—or if you’re not the best—it’s all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of the outcome.
7. Celebrate your small achievements
If you do complete your goals, reward yourself. Even small goals deserve small rewards to help keep you motivated throughout the process.
For example, if you complete your work by 5 pm every day for a week as you had planned, take an evening off. Go see a movie treat yourself to a special dinner or reward yourself with something.
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***** I am a life coach and help people lead a happy life by making a shift in their mindset. DM me to lead a meaningful life.***
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