How to Show Up Every Single Day: The Ultimate Consistency Method
This is part 5 from my essay series where I share parts of the book I am writing on consistency. If you haven’t already, you can read previous 4 parts here:
How Consistency Saved My Life
The Missing Link For Developing Consistency
5 Lessons from 3 Years of Writing Every Single Day
Why You Shouldn't Care About Peak Performance
This part 5 of the consistency series is also the final part I will share from my upcoming book.
So before I get to the point, please allow me to lay out what I will try to accomplish with this essay and why.
So far, we've talked about changing perspective around consistency, figuring out the real, overlooked reasons for why you should develop consistency, as well as the proper mindset that will help you on the way.
But there is still one thing missing: the actual strategy for developing consistency. That’s what most of you actually care about: practical and actionable advice. You want a structured approach that will help you stop falling off track and finally become consistent.
And I will give you all of that here.
What I want to do in this essay is explain my method for developing consistency. The idea is that, after reading this along with the previous parts, you don’t actually need my upcoming book in order to become consistent in all aspects of your life.
Why would I do that if I intend on selling my book?
I wouldn’t like someone talking to me about a specific topic for months and sharing their insights on it, but then saying how they have a secret method that if you want to know about, you’ll have to purchase their book, product, or service. So if I did that to you, I would be a hypocrite. Further, the overwhelming support and interest in my work that I’ve been receiving from you makes giving out free value incredibly rewarding on its own.
By reading all the essays in this series, you will have everything you need to develop consistency. The "only" thing left is going to be you actually applying what you’ve learned. This is not to say that I won’t provide any additional value in the book. In it, I will expand on the method I’m about to give you here as well as give ways to adjust the method based on where you are in your consistency journey. Also, the book will contain lessons from my personal consistency journey and additional insights I’ve collected and found useful along the way. But I want you to receive most of the value here and be able to start your consistency journey right away.
So let’s get into it.
We’ve already established that you have to start small. There are plenty of reasons why you should do that. One of the biggest reasons for this is the fact that there are no perfect days, as we discussed previously.
However, starting small is not enough. Why? Just as it is true that there are no perfect days, it is also true that not every day is going to be filled with obstacles. You will have great days along the way. In fact, you will most certainly have some days where everything aligns so that you can perform your chosen activity at an objectively high level. And it would be a shame if you stuck to going small on those days.
"Start small" on its own is a limiting strategy. It suggests that you are going to put a minimal amount of time and effort into something for an extended period of time. Then, at some point, you will go to a medium level of effort and time you’re putting in. And then, somewhere in the distant future, you will start giving it your all, or close to it.
Why should it be like that?
The path of consistency doesn’t guarantee a series of medium or big days once you "get to them." You will have to have small days even when you are years deep into your consistency journey. If that’s the case, if medium and big days are not guaranteed, why would you be "guaranteeing" small days, that is, why would you limit yourself to them?
This is the idea:
Start small, so that you can start. But don’t limit yourself to "small." Be open to the possibility of medium and big from the very start. And don’t view "small" as something that you are just starting with. Small is something you will keep as an option throughout your journey. Professional ultradistance runners have days when they run just 1 mile, and best-selling writers have days when they write half a page. Having small as an option for those days where it seems like you can’t do anything is what keeps your streak going. It’s what allows you to be consistent.
How small? So small that you cannot possibly fail. So small that no matter how bad or chaotic your day is, you can put in some work. So small that if you don’t do it you will know you had no excuses, you will know that failed yourself. One sentence. One set of push-ups. Three minutes of meditation. A 5-minute walk. As small as it takes to be consistent.
If we just stuck to the idea of starting small and didn’t see beyond it, going this small wouldn’t make sense. Even though I say that consistency takes priority over everything, it wouldn’t be practical to limit yourself to writing one sentence each day, or reading one paragraph each day. Sure, by sticking to "small," you would become consistent. But would being open to doing more jeopardize your ability to stay consistent? Absolutely not.
The idea is that you are open to having medium and big days, not that you demand them from yourself. The idea is to have them as options, not to create pressure around them which leads to eventually becoming inconsistent.
If you have a day where you feel like you could write 5 pages, do a full workout session, or meditate for 30 minutes, why limit yourself to going small?
But here is the thing: even if, one day, you decide not to limit yourself, you won’t be prepared for having a medium or big day. If your whole plan is to "start small" and nothing else, you won’t know what to do once you decide to go medium or big. That’s why you have to be open to these options from the very start, so that you are prepared for them.
You don’t start small. You start flexible. And you stay flexible all the way through. That’s how you become and stay consistent.
At the time of writing this, it’s been more than 5 years since I've started using this approach to be consistent with my physical training and over 3 years with reading and writing. Does it work? In the mentioned time period, I’ve missed a handful of days of training and reading, and not a single day of writing. So I would say it works pretty well.
However, as much success as I’ve had with this approach, there was one problem. Initially, I had little success translating it to other people. I knew that consistency should be given priority. I knew that there are no perfect days. I had my small, medium, and big days to stay flexible and ensure consistency. But I was focused on it working for me. And since it did, I never made the effort to give it a proper structure that everyone could follow. That’s why I say that what I had was an approach to consistency; it still wasn’t a method.
Then, around 2 years ago, I came across a book that gave structure to this approach I had for years: "Elastic Habits" by Stephen Guise. This book changed almost nothing about what I was already doing. But it showed me what kind of difference giving structure to your approach can make. It can make a difference between something being useful to one person and being useful to countless others.
Even though our methods are not exactly identical, I want to pay respect to Mr. Guise and his book. That’s why, as I move forward, I will call these different types of days/options the same as he called them: mini, plus, and elite. What I called small will be mini, medium will be plus, and big will be elite.
Now let’s lay out the method in detail.
For any activity that you want to be consistent in, you are going to have the mini, plus, and elite options prepared. On any given day, you will choose the most appropriate option according to the obvious and non-obvious conditions that we discussed in Part 3.
Mini
On those days where you would usually skip doing this activity because of unfavorable conditions, you are going to have the mini option, which allows you to stay consistent. The purpose of the mini option is not the direct results of the work that you will do, but rather the psychological benefit of keeping the momentum going.
Physical training: 3-5 minutes to perform as many reps as you can of an exercise of your choice. Or, perform a set number of reps as quickly as possible. In the latter case, you will choose a number of reps that you know you can perform in around 3-5 minutes.
Why 3-5 minutes? That’s not a rule, but my suggestion to you. After years of experimenting, I’ve seen that 3-5 minutes is small enough that most people can dedicate that amount of effort and time, even on their worst day, but still leaves them feeling like they’ve done some real work.
With that being said, what I mentioned before should take priority over this suggestion: go so small that you know you cannot possibly fail. If that means your mini option not being 3 minutes of push-ups but just one set of push-ups, that’s fine. If there is one rule in this otherwise flexible strategy, it is that the mini option should be something that you can do even on your worst day.
Reading: one page per day. Once again, the only thing that matters is that you cannot fail on the mini option. So, even though reading one page per day seems like the obvious mini option, don’t hesitate to go even smaller if that’s what's going to allow you to be consistent. I had a period of a couple of months where I changed my mini option to reading one paragraph per day. Would other people consider reading one paragraph an actual reading session? I don’t know, and I don’t care. What I do know is that, on all of those days where I read just one paragraph, I kept my streak alive and stayed consistent with my reading habit.
Elite
The unfortunate thing with most people, and the reason why they fail to be consistent, is that they set elite as a standard. They think that it is reasonable to ask themselves to perform at the highest possible level every day. Elite is their standard and their only option. They adopt an all-or-nothing mentality. And, sooner or later, they fall off track because that is an unsustainable strategy.
Physical training: If you have a training program that you want to follow or are already following, every time you complete a full workout, it is going to count as an elite day.
Meditation: 30 minutes of meditation. Once again, for most people, this might seem like something that should be standard. We often hear how we are "supposed" to meditate for 30 minutes. Well, how many people do you know who meditate for 30 minutes per day on a consistent basis? And how many people do you know who tried to adopt the habit of meditating for 30 minutes per day but failed? It's called "elite" for a reason. No matter what the activity is, if you performed it at this level consistently, you would be elite at it.
Plus
There is a reason why, in these explanations, the middle option is the last. It’s the most delicate option, and planning it will depend on where you are in your consistency journey. We will discuss how you can adjust it to your specific situation later in this chapter. The point with the plus option is that you have something for those days when the mini option seems too small and too easy, but you are not able to do the elite option. And there are going to be plenty of those days. This should explain another important thing: there should be a significant difference between the mini and elite options. Significant enough to where you genuinely need the plus option. If your mini and elite options are so close that you don’t really need the plus option, either your mini is too big or your elite is too small.
Physical training: one or more parts of your elite option, depending on how your training program is structured.
Reading: 15-20 minutes of reading. I’ve found this to be a sweet spot between the mini option that you can do on any given day and a 40-minute or longer reading session that most people mistake for a standard but is actually elite.
Now, we are going to add another level of flexibility to this strategy: Your options can be task-based or time-based.
Examples
Reading:
Mini option: 1 page or 4 minutes per reading.
Plus option: 7 pages or 15 minutes of reading.
Elite option: 25+ pages or 40+ minutes of reading.
Physical training:
Mini option: x amount of reps of a given exercise or x amount of minutes to complete as many reps as you can.
Plus option: one part of your elite option, which usually shouldn’t be more than two-thirds of your total elite workout. Or setting a timer to complete as many sets and reps as you can of a couple of exercises from your elite workout, again somewhere between half and two thirds of the total time from your elite workout.
When it comes to physical training, I suggest you keep the "elite" option fixed.
Yet another level of flexibility: whether time-based or task-based, you can have different tasks available to choose from based on which one is most appropriate under current circumstances.
Examples
Mindfulness:
Mini option: 5 minutes of meditation or 5 minutes of journaling.
Plus option: 15 minutes of meditation or 15 minutes of journaling.
Elite option: 30 minutes of meditation or 30 minutes of journaling.
Language learning:
Mini option – listening to a short online lesson or 5 minutes of repeating the words you learned the previous day
Plus option: listening to two lessons or 10 minutes of repeating the words you learned the previous day.
Elite option: listening to four online lessons or spending 20 minutes repeating the words you learned the previous day.
*In this case, I am giving an example based on most online courses having short lessons that last around 5-7 minutes. In the case of 10-minute or longer lessons, you should adjust your options accordingly.
Now that you have the strategy, explanation, and examples of different options, and even additional levels of flexibility, there is an important note about putting all of this into practice.
The trick with this method is to give yourself enough freedom and flexibility so that you can stay consistent, but not so much freedom that you feel overwhelmed. You don’t want to have so many options that, when the time comes, you don’t know which one to choose. You want structure to go along with your flexibility. That’s why I want you to view these additional levels of flexibility as tools. You don’t have to use everything right away.
The only thing that you need to do right away is create your mini, plus, and elite options for those activities you want to become consistent in.
Don’t think that you can start small and then come up with a plus or elite option on the spot when you feel like you can do more than your minimum. Don’t think that you can keep elite as your main option and then come up with a mini or plus option when you are not able to keep up with your unrealistic standard. That’s how you fail. You need to be prepared. So, before reading another paragraph on developing consistency, take out a pen and paper or your notes app and come up with your mini, plus, and elite options.
I hope you found this valuable and you start your consistency journey right away. If you are interested in it, the book is coming soon and it will be announced it here.
Thank you for reading.
If you are interested in a free ebook that I wrote for you, “The Lost Art of Reading,” you can download it here.
If you like my work and get some value from it, there is zero-cost support in the form of subscribing, liking this post, commenting if you have any thoughts on it, and of course sharing this with anyone who would find it interesting.
Or you can consider becoming a paid supporter of Existential Espresso for 5$ per month. By doing this you would be helping me to keep investing time into researching and writing all the content on the daily basis.
What you get by becoming a paid supporter is access to the locked essays (such as “Why Having a Price on My Head Didn’t Upset Me”or “Why Living With a Bulletproof Vest is The Best Thing to Ever Happen to Me”), as well as an opportunity to recommend topics for future essays.
However, even taking the time out of your day to read what I have to share with you means more to me than you can imagine. Thank you.