4 Ways To Be More Consistent

Have you ever asked yourself the following questions?

“I wish that I could have more time for myself”

“I wish that I could have more time for my creative gifts”.

“I have absolutely no time to work on my small online business”

Does this sound familiar?

Working on your personal growth and development, getting up earlier than usual to work out, or to work on our gifts or a side hustle can be hard to fit into our schedules because we think that we have to put in long hours every single day. This is the lie we tell ourselves, so we end up scrolling through our social media feeds or binge watching our favorite TV series every night after work, until it’s time to go to bed and then we wake up and complain all over again about how little time we have for ourselves and how we’ve got nothing done during the day.

I often get told by friends that they admire how dedicated I was to write and publish my book “The Inner Work: Journey In Process”. Of course writing a book isn’t easy and takes time. It also takes being consistent. Being consistent eventually led to progress, and progress eventually led to a finished book.

Finding the time to do anything in a world with so many distractions can be challenging. There are moments where we are so busy that we don’t even know how time seems to just fly by. If you’ve ever found yourself in this situation, then here are 4 ways to help you be more consistent

1. Ask yourself: What are you doing with the time that you have now ?

If you find yourself replying to emails and scrolling through social media from the second you open your eyes, and then look up at the clock and ask yourself “ Where has the time gone?” This right here can end up being the vampire that sucks the time out of our day. If you’re unsure of what takes up a lot of your time, try to think about what you did on this very day before you found yourself reading this article. If that has slipped through your mind, as you go about your day tomorrow, make a quick note of everything that you do on your phone. And I mean EVERYTHING!

2. Make a list

Once you’ve identified what takes up a lot of your time, make a list of all the things that you need to be doing or want to be doing on a typical day and as well as during the week.

When I first got into personal development, I started to take a look at where most of my time was going. What I observed about some of my habits is that I would spend 5 hours watching the news and other talk shows before and after work. That was about 4 hours in the morning before work and at least 1 hour after work. Once I started to cut back time on my TV time and put it back into writing was when I started to see progress. The same amount of time and consistency that led me to binge watching several hours of news everyday is what led me to releasing my first book on Amazon.

3.Where can I schedule this in?

If we are willing to schedule birthdays, meetings, or even a new Netflix series release, why not make a note in our planners to read that book that’s been on our shelf for years? Or to start writing up that business plan that you’ve shared with everyone and haven’t had the courage to get started? What’s important here is that we need to be specific and make it a habit. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, says that not only should we create goals, but we should be specific as to when we will take action on those goals. For example: I will write everyday. While this is quite ambitious, a more specific goal would be “I will write everyday for 30 minutes right as soon as I get home from work”. The more specific your goal is, the more likely you are to take action on it.

4.Work on your mindset

What made writing my book easy to write was that I had blocked out a 2 hour time window everyday after work on it from 2018-2019. Knowing that I had something important to do right after work made me look forward to the day ahead.

These small ways of thinking and a simple mindset switch can help you to achieve your goals too. By simply setting up appointments for yourself and making it an obligation to get something done can also lead you to for from:

“I wish that I could have more time for myself”

To

“I was so productive today”

from

“I wish that I could have more time for my creative gifts”.

To

“I was able to put in 15 minutes of creativity”

From

“I have absolutely no time to work on my small online business”

To

“My online business will finally launch tomorrow”

“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:9

In a fast paced and constantly changing world, it can be easy to just want to give up and continue scrolling on with our day, however by paying attention to the habits that are getting in the way of what we want to be doing and changing how we think about our goals, we can build consistency and eventually see the reward of what small consistent changes can do over time.

I’d love to hear your thoughts! Do you struggle with building consistency or finding time to do the things you love ? Have you ever thought about why you do this?

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