Consistency Beats Intensity

The kind of life you are leading today is a compounded consequence of all choices you have exercised all your life-up until this moment. The tricky thing with our day-to-day choices is that the consequences are never evident in the immediate moment. They take time to manifest.

• Eating a burger or drinking Coke right now won’t make you unhealthy. Just as not eating a burger or drinking Coke won’t make you healthier.

• Holding yourself from buying that gadget won’t make you wealthy, just as buying the gadget won’t make you poor. 

• Going for a walk today won’t make you fitter. Just as not going for a walk will not make you less fit. 

• Reading a couple of chapters of a good book won’t make you wiser. Just as not reading a couple of chapters will not make you less smart. 

Most times, none of the choices we exercise daily come with any immediate consequence. But make no mistake, the choices we make every day will either work for us or work against us in the long run. This is because time amplifies the consequence of our daily choices. What we do today may not matter today, but it will matter when seen over a timeline.

Most of us intuitively know the choices that help us in the long run vs. those that don’t.

We need to be consistent if we want our choices to compound. But unfortunately, many times, we try to replace consistency with intensity. E.g., we eat unhealthy for long periods and then get into extreme diets for a week or two, thinking that it will balance out.

Intensity will only carry us in the short term, but we need consistency if we want compounding results to accrue over time. There is a big difference between doing something all the time vs. doing something most of the time. Time becomes our biggest ally when we do something consistently, even though we may feel like no results are showing daily.

People who excel in life are not born with any special advantages. They are simply people who are good at exercising the right choices consistently. 

So what are the right choices you make consistently, all the time?