Redefining Consistency

Your inability to take imperfect action is the reason you can’t make any meaningful progress. Leila Hormozi said this just a few days ago in her podcast BUILD, “You’re not weak for making mistakes, you’re not bad for making mistakes, but you are weakened when you use the mistake as a justification to self-indulge.

**And it’s this idea I want to explore today.

How should we truly think about our health and fitness habits, actions and plans when we clearly find ourselves living through a season of life that demands more from us.

Hey, its Adam. Welcome to the buffering. Today’s episode is a reframe around consistent action.

Maybe you’ve been trying to get more exercise into your schedule and it sticks for a while but it finally drops off. Maybe you’ve been eating more healthy through the day but you can’t help it but splurge in the evenings. Or, maybe you’ve started to feel like the juice isn’t worth the squeeze because you can’t seem to hit the target.

STORY

Today I want to focus on 3 ideas I’ve learned to act like a high performer when you’re facing either a mistake or an obstacle.

The 3 ideas are:

Take the emotion out of the mistake
Focus on scales not targets using the good/better/best framework
Persistence is the long-term play

If someone knowingly makes a misaligned mistake I believe it’s better to use the stick. Negative reinforcement works. Tit for tat. Hopefully someone is smart enough to also point out the upside and the benefits of acting in harmony. And by doing it this way you take the stance of “you can act any way you like but this way you’ve been acting… it’s not welcome and it has consequences”.

But if someone makes a mistake knowing the consequences, then the reason they made it is because they didn’t feel they had a choice. Then, if you as the leader, the coach, the parent… reward or punish someone for the action they felt they had no control over taking - at best you don’t help them, and at worse you fuel a negative self-identity with shame and guilt.

So, we incentivise around intent, and we educate for agency.

I say that because I continue to make mistakes - you probably will too - and this is the philosophy I’ve found to work with the people I coach, my kids, and when I’m playing mentor with myself.

Anyway-

Today, what I really want to do is give you a reframe for making high performance mistakes, and the habits that have been useful for me.

Some people would call it high-agency, resourcefulness, proactivity, and in a way its all of those and in another way it’s more specific to a particular pattern I see in fitness.

The single biggest reason people don’t get in shape, don’t improve their cardiovascular fitness from below average to life-extending level, and miss their goal of dropping 10 lb for summer is how they feel about themselves and where they place their focus WHEN their plan falls below their expectation.

Let me explain.

There are 2 types of problem that prevent someone from … I don’t know. looking and performing the way they dream about.

Those problems are

A lack of consistency on the fundamentals that directly effect physical changes. Consistency with the quantity or quality of your diet, the frequency intensity and type of workout. It doesn’t matter if its 3 months or 3 years, you can’t workout once every other week and see any results. It defies the law of consistency.

To achieve anything worthwhile requires delayed gratification. We could distil pretty much all of self development into the phrase “prioritise later”. Sacrifice some part of the NOW in service of the future. You know, time is this fundamental element of strategy.

So when we talk about getting what we want we’re talking about consistently performing a set of activities that - put dramatically pave the way for us to arrive at our goals.

Said differently:

Big goals are the result of you consistently achieving small habits.

In fitness, that looks like

Consistently walking 10K steps a day Consistently lifting weights Consistently eating your vegetables Consistently sleeping 8+ hours a night

You get the idea.

We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our habits.

Coaches telling their audience to be consistent works because our actions dictate the results.

So the whole game of habit building is about finding, ritualising, and completing the actions that affect the goal you want, more often, with increasing mastery.

It’s good advice. I’m thrilled that we’ve got to a place where more people are thinking about habits and systems instead of thinking about wishful resolutions. And without a shadow of a doubt - when I’ve been most successful is when I’ve also been most consistent in the actions or inputs that lead to the outcome I want.

That’s problem 1.

But, let’s get real for a second and step back

Problem 2 is the lack of persistence

The problem is that something will always get in your way as you gain momentum towards becoming consistent.

Examples: It’s been a long day and you’ve got to cook dinner and before you know it you’re 2 bowls deep in a sugar puff fix.

At this point most people then wrongly assume that they are the problem. They’ve ruined all their progress. They start telling themselves a story about themselves, and what kind of person they must be to have committed such an egregious act. Instead of incentivising for intent - they (or their coach) blame shame and mame them for making a mistake they didn’t know how to deal with in any other way.

It’s never an issue of intent but an issue of education.

Can you guess what happens next?

Of course you can!

What do we do when we feel shame or a threat? We self-soothe. We justify. We put the spotlight on ourselves and we create the conditions we say we do not want in order to feel consistent with the actions we’ve taken.

”Well, may as well finish the packet”.

Right?

This is how small bumps turn into giant obstacles.

Break the fourth wall. The original draft for this episode was me riffing on the idea that its better to have persistency than consistency when you’re starting out because you’ll rarely have consistency in the beginning and being persistent is about finding ways to move forward and not quit. If you don’t quit you can’t fail. And if you never quit then you’ve got an infinite number of shots on goal.

SEGUE idea…

But while I was writing the script I listened to an episode of Leila Hormozi’s podcast about how shame hinders your performance and some things clicked into place around the ideas of why I believe being persistence is the more important trait and the trait that leads to being more consistent.

Story example — the celebrations in the car story

Most people don’t miss out on their goals because they couldn’t actively work on their plans, they miss out because they don’t understand that working on their plans is a continuum, not a binary choice.

Consistent < Persistent

You won’t always be able to follow the plan to the letter. But your results are tied to the extent to which you can follow the plan, not whether you can follow a plan perfectly.

Following a prescription isn’t the true power of consistency.

The power of consistency is about showing up, noticing, tweaking, and then showing up again.

It’s why you might have tried…

To stick to the Paleo diet, Intermittent fasting, or P90X, and then.. after.. some.. time.. concluded that life will always get in the way - and who’s going to win against life?

Instead of prescriptions, focus on being persistent with:

Noticing what is working Trying something new when old routines aren’t working Unlearning and relearning routines that fit your lifestyle Finding the actions and decisions that you can control when other actions don’t go to plan

Consistency is the act of making progress by doing less of the wrong things and more of the right things.

In a sense, it’s adaptability aimed at your goal.

Here’s what that might look like:

When I speak to my partner about my busier-than-normal workload we find ways to solve the issue together instead of setting up resentment around the situation.

How does that link to consistency?

Busy periods are inevitable. Something in your life requires more time than normal. And by extension, you’re going to need to take time from somewhere else. If you’re in a relationship - one of the first things you can do is communicate that to your partner and either 1) set expectations around what you need to change while you’re busy, or 2) ask for more help.

—> I think about it this way - consistency is a form of negotiation with the person you want to become. And at the core of negotiation is value exchange. Your future self wants you to have the goal, and current you is dealing with the ever-present obstacles that you’re faced with. And you’re always asking what am I willing to give based on the conditions I’m facing.

The same goes with the other people in your life. I’ve worked with so many people who made the assumption that their lifestyle was preventing them from taking the actions needed to keep making progress towards their goal, when in reality all that was required was an honest conversation (or negotiation) with their partner on what WAS possible.

I’m craving food in the evening that makes me want to not stop eating.

This is a common pattern. You know those hours between dinner and bedtime. A lot of people can erase a whole days worth of good decision-making here. Every night. Instead of making consistent progress, they’re perfectly consistent between 7am to 7pm, and perfectly inconsistent from 7 to 9.

There’s a million ways you could solve for this but honestly, figuring out ways to be OK making a decision that is just good enough can stop you making decisions that derail progress. For example - be OK having the piece of chocolate - not being OK with it is the reason you eat the whole bar.

And here’s just a list of other examples of choosing consistency over prescription;

Training as if you’re still made out of rubber and magic at 35 and beyond. You’re going to go through periods where you feel either broken or burnt out

Adapt your workouts accordingly

The food options at the restaurant are garbage. Mid protein quality. Foods cooked with too many calories.

That could be the start of the end for a lot of people. You’re different. OK, it might not be perfect but how are you going to manage your way through?

And that’s just a few examples: here’s more.

Your target calorie deficit is leaving you feeling hungrier than the week before Your sleep is disrupted because there’s an upcoming deadline A nagging injury flares up and you start to get feedback that you should probably take a break from running The hotel gym only has dumbbells and they go up to 25 lbs? You’ve hit your training goal and it’s the first time in months you’ve been able to take the pressure off. You DO take a planned break and have a fun 3-day blow out. How do you prevent it from turning into 3 weeks?

All of these examples point at the same main idea:

What happens when you can’t follow the plan exactly as wrote? Because, as we know, not every fitness habit or input is as simple as brushing your teeth. We’re bound to face motivational or logistical constraints at one time or another, and the KEY is knowing what happens as a result of those constraints, AND how to move forward in ways that allow you to make progress at a slower speed, or at the very least don’t work against you.

Being consistent is way easier when you have two things:

A strong ‘why’ behind your goals that keep you focused And then, knowing what to do when the original plan isn’t an option.

Is it reasonable to think that if you were to remove the notion of giving up you wouldn’t eventually get to the result? Of course it is.

It might not be on your timeline, and it might not be exactly the way you thought it would happen - but the only reason we fail to achieve outcomes that are under our control is because we quit before we get them.

Being consistent CAN look like repeating the same actions without any variability. But it can also look like repeating the category of action with some variance in either the quantity or quality of input (or both) with the knowledge that your commitment to the goal is more important than a perfect scorecard.

Some of you might be listening to this and thinking just suck it up and get on it with it. You’ve got to be a killer to realise your dreams. Don’t be weak - and I agree. We put a plan in place because we’ve done our research and executing the plan is what is required to get to the finishing line. You can’t expect to get a six pack by creating a plan to follow a calorie deficit and then adapt the plan in a mission-critical way so that the plan no longer achieves the objective.

But a great plan always details the obstacles - and if you didn’t account for the current obstacles then your expectations weren’t aligned with reality or you didn’t know and now you’ve learned something about yourself.

So, in summary

These episodes are the result of coaching people and moving forward in my life. And as a student of human behaviour and flourishing, topics like this are the first-principles of getting what you want, whether its a six pack or a promotion, or becoming worlds best parent. Triple P alliteration.

Consistency of intent is way more important than consistency of prescription. Because when things are going well and life is good. Getting in your 10k steps, hitting your macros is a breeze. It’s when its not going well that makes the difference. Its crazy - but someone can eat a biscuit and feel as though they’ve ruined a whole days worth of eating healthy, when its 150-200 calories at best. But then because they feel bad will finish the rest of the packet. Consistency is most valuable when external events aren’t exactly going your way. And that’s when its most important to know how to stay in the game. True consistency means learning what modifications keep you moving forward when the original prescription isn’t an an option. The commitment you make to your future self matters more than the idea of a perfect scorecard.

X steps to consistency

Identify what do you want? Choose area or input (biggest upside or downside) to focus on Create a scaled target instead of an absolute metric Options and plans to get that done (how many ways can you satisfy the same scaled input?) Check how it feels Lastly, experiment. No pressure. Go forward with this as a passenger to the experience. Check bonesaw IG for the term. How does your theory work against reality? If it doesn’t feel like the right option it probably isn’t. Choose something else. Don’t waste time. Finding the thing (even if its not perfect) is better than making little progress on the so called best version.

If you redefine consistency to mean ones ability to adapt the effort applied towards a specific objective while eliminating the possibility of quitting you’ll find that you make far more progress, and even better you’ve removed the biggest obstacle, the yo-yo effect of making progress then undoing it over and over.

Being able to see goal-focused action on a continuum rather than a binary pass-fail I promise you - you’ll find more moments to make progress not less. I think a lot of people believe they have to hold themselves to an impossible standard to move the needle - but what actually ends up happening is they set their standard of success so high as to make it fragile. Remember, if you define consistency as a scale, the upper limit can be as high as you want. You can set your success criteria of working out between 20 mins and 2 hours. Give yourself the opportunity to win more often with the goals you say are important, and you’ll start to find more opportunities to progress. There’s almost nothing as disheartening as feeling as though you’re failing to enact a plan you yourself created.

Remember: If you don’t quit, you can’t fail. Adapt. Negotiate. And enjoy the ride.