How to Achieve Anything in Life

When you examine exponential growth patterns, you see feedback loops pouring more resources and energy into each subsequent iteration. No individual iteration by itself is particularly remarkable. What makes them so powerful? Their relentless consistency.

Consistency is the gatekeeper. It’s the hurdle to clear. It’s the required standard to progress.

Consistency produces momentum, and momentum produces more consistency. Repeated self-reinforcing actions in life, engineering, business, and society produce large-scale transformative results. Consistently.

Inconsistency produces none of this.

So let’s be clear upfront on what we need to achieve in any pursuit.

Consistency sounds simple — just do it, right? But our instincts, our minds are drawn to the new. And the new is by definition not consistent. Consistent is old, a rerun. And the old routine is not as exciting.

But you know what is exciting? Exponential growth. The massive transformation at the end of that expansion curve. That is life-changing.

So the trick is to stay cognizant of the endpoint (the desired state) while progressing each step along the journey. Day-by-day, hour-by-hour. Long-term vision with short-term actions.

This does not occur naturally. The best approach I know is systems to keep the vision and the actions aligned. The two (vision & action) must remain obviously, intuitively, and even emotionally connected.

Most people need consistency more than they need intensity.

Intensity is

• to run a marathon
• to write a book in 30 days
• do a silent meditation retreat.

Consistency is

• don’t miss a workout for 2 years
• to write every week
• daily silence.

Intensity makes a good story. Consistency makes progress.

                            -James Clear

Credibility with Yourself

But this is easier said than done. We often know what we want to be consistent at, then don't do it. So here is how:

Start with burning resolve, a commitment to do it and a determination not to let yourself down.

Go in knowing that if you tell yourself you will do it, then don't, you are destroying credibility with yourself. You MUST have credibility with yourself to achieve anything. You cannot let yourself down. Make a pact with yourself and live up to it.

You must have respect for yourself to get anywhere. And really, you need respect for yourself before you can expect to get it from anyone else.

Minimum Standards are part of our identity

Raise the Minimum Standards you will not tolerate or accept falling below.
We fight harder to stay above our Minimum Standards than to reach our Dreams.
Where you set your minimum standards is more important than any goal or dream you set.

We all have the power to change our resistance to change — it's ultimately a choice.

We can become the person that does what we commit to ourselves to do.

Clarity & Time Blocking

Next, the obstacle to implementation is most often a lack of clarity.

Define your next step that can be done in a 1-day focus session. Schedule exactly when you will do it. If you want to be consistent with something, then schedule that consistency — ahead of time, don't just wing it day-by-day, moment-by-moment. Block it off at specific times on specific days in your calendar — for weeks out at a time.

You won’t do this for every routine. But for the ones that matter, the ones that will change the game for you, it’s completely worthwhile to schedule and protect the time for them. This will bring clarity on what to do and when.

No ambiguity, no excuses.

Lock it in.

Then do it.

That’s it. Then repeat, week after week.

Ultimately this comes down to shaping an identity around these key actions, behaviors, and routines.

In the next article, we will revisit the concept of Identity sculpting to take this further. I also did a previous video on Identity Sculpting.