5 Lessons from 3 Years of Writing Every Single Day

(If you are interested in the topic of consistency, you can read my two previous essays from Consistency series: How Consistency Saved My Life and The Missing Link For Developing Consistency)

Today marks 3 years that I’ve been writing every single day. I want to share 5 lessons on consistency that I’ve learned in these 3 years.

To be fair, I’ve been consistent with my reading and physical training for a longer time (missed less than 10 days per year for the last 5 years), but those two activities are significantly easier for me than writing is. So I feel like writing is something that allows me to talk about developing consistency with an activity that you don’t find easy or enjoyable at the beginning.

If numbers like 3 years mean nothing to you, which I would understand, and you are wondering why you should listen to me when it comes to consistency, you can read How Consistency Saved My Life.

1. It’s not quality over quantity. It’s not quantity over quality. It’s consistency over everything.

Sure, you should strive for quality in any activity that you are doing.

However, quantity precedes quality. Quality cannot be achieved on its own.

It is by putting in the reps, hours, or however you measure the quantity of your activity that you develop quality over time.

Quality might be better than quantity, but it cannot exist without it.

But there is still something missing here. Not all quantity is equal.

You can accumulate a fair amount of quantity, maybe even plenty of it, and still never reach quality or make any significant progress towards your goals. And that’s actually what happens with a lot of people.

This happens when you are inconsistent, when your quantity is scattered around. When you go days or even weeks without doing what you were supposed to be doing every day. And then you think you can make up for it by doing extra work in a short period of time.

When your quantity is not consistent and is produced in an irregular way, it will never lead to quality.

Without consistency, quantity isn’t worth anything, and quality cannot be achieved.

I explain this in detail in The Missing Link For Developing Consistency.

2. You have to optimize for consistency

It seems like all of us somehow fell for this idea that you can just suck it up and be consistent with something that you don’t enjoy or even absolutely hate doing.

And just to be clear, I’m all for sucking it up and simply doing the thing that needs to be done. However, that’s not a sustainable approach for something that you want to be consistent in over a period of years, maybe even decades, and hopefully excel at. That strategy of relying purely on your willpower should be saved for those days when you have legitimate excuses not to do the work, but you know you should. But this is not how every day of your consistency journey should look.

What you need to do is optimize for consistency. And I am confident that every activity can be optimized for it.

Things like physical training can be fully optimized for consistency. If you are not a professional athlete and your goal is to be physically active and train regularly, you are free to do any type of training that will help you become consistent. I’ve been consistent with my minimalistic style of training for the past 5 years. And you could say that I would’ve gotten better results by going to the gym all this time. In theory, that is true. But in reality, it couldn’t be further from the truth. The very fact that I’m doing the type of training that I enjoy is the reason why I’ve been consistent for the last 5 years. I personally prefer doing a workout with a single kettlebell on my rooftop to going to the gym. So it's pointless to speculate on what kind of results I would have achieved if I had gone to the gym because I most likely wouldn't have been this consistent. I optimized my training for consistency.

But there are activities that you cannot completely change and optimize for consistency. Maybe you are learning to play an instrument, or you are learning a new language, or you are trying to develop a habit of meditation.

If the activity in which you want to be consistent cannot be changed significantly, there are other ways to optimize for consistency. Change the time of day when you do the activity so that you do it when you are in the best mood for it or have the most energy. Maybe instead of doing your Spanish lesson later in the day, when you are more likely to be tired or low on motivation, you start doing it in the first half of the day. Change the setting in which you do the activity so that you find it more enjoyable. Maybe instead of meditating in your room, you start meditating on the balcony, on the rooftop, or in the park.

3. No perfect days

We overlook the fact that the conditions and circumstances we find ourselves in are often unpredictable.

There are obvious ones, such as a lack of time or energy, a change in your daily schedule that alters the usual setting of your activities, etc.

And there are those non-obvious ones that we so often overlook, such as lack of motivation, feeling depressed or anxious, being emotionally drained, or simply feeling a bit under the weather.

The problem is that, on any given day when conditions for their activity are not perfect, people decide to wait for the next day because they somehow believe conditions will be perfect tomorrow.

People think, "Today I don’t have enough time, but tomorrow I will," or "Today I don’t have the motivation, but tomorrow I will."

Who says that you will? Who guarantees that?

The thing is that, even if you knew that tomorrow all the obvious conditions would be perfect, you could never be certain that the non-obvious ones would be as well.

There is no such thing as a perfect day.

One day the non-obvious circumstances will be perfect. You will feel great and enthusiastic about life, but there will be so many things that you need to do that day that it will seem like there is no time for you to do that thing that you want to do.

Another day, all the obvious circumstances will be perfect, but for some reason you woke up feeling depressed, and you cannot get yourself to fully engage in that thing that you want to do.

And okay, perfect days do exist. They do happen once in a while. But consistency cannot be built by waiting for perfect days and relying on the idea that they will be frequent.

Consistency is built by adapting to circumstances and doing what you can based on them. And, if you stay consistent, those perfect days become rewards along the way that boost your performance instead of the only occasions when you get some work done.

4. Be flexible

This one relates to the previous point and explains how to deal with the unpredictability of our lives.

In the last 3 years of writing every single day, there were days where I wrote a single paragraph, and there were days where I wrote 30 pages.

I counted those days as equally valuable because, for the reasons explained in the first lesson of this text, consistency is my priority.

"Start small" is a great piece of advice. But it’s incomplete.

I would add two things:

-Start so small that it seems like it’s too small for it to matter.

-Starting small shouldn’t mean that you need to keep it small for an extended period of time. Be flexible from the very start.

The idea is for you to start so small that it’s ridiculous and that you always have that as an option that prevents you from falling off track. However, whenever possible, go big or medium on your chosen activity. Be flexible. Just because you begin by reading 1 page per day does not mean you should wait until you have developed consistency before beginning to read more. Read more whenever you can, but keep that 1 page per day as a safety net that ensures you keep the momentum.

5. Consistency helps with mental health

We know that consistency is the key to getting good or even great at something.

But one "side benefit" of consistency that I don’t see talked about often enough is how much it can help with your mental health.

When you are not in a good place mentally, what is the last thing you need? Unpredictability, mess, and chaos.

And one of the things that can help you immensely is structure. If you have at least one thing that you know you can do every single day, you are able to secure that one win. No matter how small, it’s still a win, and it can turn your day around for the better, or at the very least make it less miserable than it would be. Being able to secure that small win no matter what gives you a sense of structure and order.

Besides giving you structure, consistency improves self-esteem, which is a major part of your mental health. When you are able to follow through on the commitment(s) that you've made and move closer to your goals, you feel a sense of accomplishment and justified pride. Having real-world proof of your qualities is one of the best things for your self-esteem and, thus, for your mental health.

Although this aspect of consistency is the least obvious and can easily be overlooked, I believe it to be extremely important because I’m talking from personal experience when I'm listing all these benefits. When everything appears to be falling apart, consistency acts as a pillar, preventing the ceiling from collapsing and allowing you to fight another day.

So if you are someone who doesn't particularly care about moving toward a specific goal in life or you don't have a certain activity that you want to be consistent in, give consistency a try for the sake of feeling better about yourself and your life.

I am writing an ebook where I go in depth on everything that I've learned on my journey of developing consistency and lay out a clear plan for how you can do the same. If you are interested in it, I will be sharing free parts of the book here on Existential Espresso, so make sure to subscribe if you already haven't. You can also read two parts that I've already shared: How Consistency Saved My Life and The Missing Link For Developing Consistency

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