Consistency is often the key to our successes in life. Many entrepreneurs have practiced the discipline of doing things consistently to achieve their goals. Here are 6 ways to stay outrageously consistent in pursuing your most important life goals.

1. Have a big why and fully commit to it 

First, you need to have a big why in your pursuit. Why will you get up early to work towards this goal? Why should you prioritize your time in doing this instead of other things? What benefits and meaning will your actions result in? Having a big why assigns purpose to your actions and brings you clarity in your daily endeavors. 

For example, a lot of people attribute the pursuit of financial freedom to the love of their family and sense of responsibility. Because the happiness of family is their big why, they are able to remain unwavering and tackle challenges in their financial freedom journey. 

After determining on the goal on which you have a big why, then you fully commit yourself to it. By being mentally all in, you don’t waste time negotiating with yourself out of work. You are your biggest enemy in defeating fear and stagnation. 

Aristotle once said, “We are what we repeatedly do.” Once you’ve built that momentum of consistently doing things that you value, they become part of your daily life, habits and your identity. And things do become easier as we are practicing consistently and make them habitual. 

2. Block time to complete actionable tasks

Having a plan and breaking the goal into time-bound, actionable tasks is essential to achieve consistency.

By setting enough time aside for pursuing your priorities, you grant yourself the necessary focus to maintain consistency for quality work. In addition, when you plan the time block into your schedule, you are mentally preparing and committing yourself into the activity.

Ideally, you do it early during the day or the week. It is often easier to complete planned tasks when you have more energy and mental control during the day. Eat the frog in the morning!

3. Have an accountability partner or group

When you have a partner or a group of people who share the same goal and do it together with you, it is often easier to maintain consistency in that activity. This activity becomes bigger than you or any member from your group. People are counting on you to show up. 

For example, to gain consistency in playing tennis, you may consider finding a tennis partner or joining a community that practices every week – you might feel obligated to go because your partner and group are expecting you to come. 

Another way you can generate more accountability is to preset and automate the process. For example, for you to study Spanish more consistently, you sign up for a language lesson every Saturday. You pay for the lesson in advance (preset the activity) – so it is not an option not to go. If you want to invest more, you can use financial software to automatically invest a portion of your income into mutual funds each month (automate the process).

It always helps if you can find an accountability partner to join you along the journey.

4. Celebrate every win and take time to reinvigorate 

When you accomplish a goal, small or big, acknowledge the win and reward yourself! This acts as reinforcement that it is meaningful you are acting consistently. It will motivate you to sustain momentum and keep going.

Remember to take time off to fully reinvigorate. Imagine your body and mind as a machine. For it to run efficiently and consistently, it needs to be oiled from time to time.

Taking care of your physical and mental health is vital for consistency in your endeavor. Fuel your mind and body for any marathon in life.

5. When times get tough, try MVE (Minimum Viable Effort)

In the startup world, MVP refers to Minimum Viable Product – “a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development” according to Wikipedia. 

Borrowing the concept and applying it to real life, MVE, Minimum Viable Effort, refers to just enough efforts that will generate an impact and still contribute to your goal. Of course, it’s best if you go for the extra mile every time. But when things get tough or you are having a really bad day, it is still worthwhile to pay MVE and do it anyway, even though it is not up to your usual workload or expectation.

“Showing up is half the battle”, Stephen Hawking once said. Once you decide to show up, you’ve already done MVE and it’s more likely you will do more. For example, a 15-min workout is better than no workout; once you make the decision to work out, you are more likely to work out longer. 

6. Alway come back from failures and keep going

Failures are inevitable. There will be times that you miss a practice, fail a test or feel stuck. That’s okay.

But it’s always important to learn from your failures and ask: what makes me lose my consistency? Can I eliminate these distractions and factors that cause me to fail? What can I do better next time?

The key factor that separates people who succeed and who don’t is consistency. It is crucial to get up and keep going when you fall. Hopefully each time we fail better and always come back wiser.