The Reason Why It is Difficult to be Consistent

Rome wasn't built in a day

There are many quotes stating being consistent on achieving tiny small goals can lead to big success. Indeed, to be successful, there is nothing special we can do. Only accumulation of small progress which might be unnoticeable in the short-term will make a difference in the long-term.

For any success, time and effort is necessary. Unfortunately, there is no easy way. From ancient years, we say “Rome wasn't built in a day” implying any great achievement will take time to build up. Therefore, being consistent in moving forward step by step is crucial for any success.

Difficulty of consistency

Although people may understand and agree that consistency is the key to success, in reality, consistency is not easy to achieve.

Let’s say we roll a die and would like to get number 1. Probability of getting number 1 is 16.7% which is 1 divided by 6. Next, let’s say, we roll twice. Probability of getting number 1 both times is 2.8% which is 16.7% multiplied by 16.7%. Even trying to be consistent for once on rolling a die to get the same number is difficult to achieve. Obvious yet important learning we can learn is that being consistent on something special is almost impossible. This means, to be consistent, action needs to be easy.

To make the achievement rate higher, let’s say we roll a die and would like to get a number other than 1. Probability of getting a number over 1 is 83.3%. This is easily calculated by subtracting 16.7% from 100%. This looks like a high percentage but if we would like to be consistent for 20 times, probability will become 2.4%(83.3%20). Although it looks easy to achieve in the beginning, doing the same thing consistently is not easy to achieve when we look in the longer term.

To be more extreme, let’s say there is something that we can accomplish 99% of the time. When we hear the number 99%, it sounds like we can accomplish it perfectly. However, 99% of accomplishment rate means there is 1% of chance to miss. Let’s say, there are 250 working days in a year. And, let’s say we would like to achieve every working day for something which we can accomplish 99% of the time. If there is 1% chance to miss, there will be a possibility to miss for 2.5 days. Even if it is something we can accomplish 99% of the time, there is a possibility that we will miss it a couple times in a year.

What we can learn from here is that even if there is a task which is really easy to accomplish, being consistent to accomplishing those for long-term is extremely difficult. And, we need to be aware that being perfect in consistency is almost impossible.

Consistency doesn’t mean to be perfect

Usually, we will not see any difference in the next day for just achieving small tiny goals for one day. We will see a big difference once those small tiny achievements are accumulated. This also means missing some days to achieve small tiny things will not make a big difference in the longer term. Consistency means how much we can accumulate small tiny achievements and it does not mean how perfectly we accumulated small tiny achievements. Therefore, we should be aware that being perfect is not that important regarding consistency.

To be consistent means to be able to do the same thing for a long term. If a person tries too hard to be perfect, the pressure to be perfect becomes bigger and bigger each day. And, one day the person can be too stressed to continue doing it. This is a situation which we should avoid. Being generous on missing a couple days and focusing on a good enough accomplishment rate will make it consistent. However, I think there is no answer to the good enough accomplishment rate. I guess it will depend on the belief of each person. I don’t have any proof of the number but I’m guessing accomplishing 80% is a good start. As we know the statistics of how much those routine tasks can be accomplished, I believe there will be a relevant accomplishment rate number for each task.

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