The Truth About Consistency: And how to Outperform the Experienced

Written by Enrique Iturriaga on

February 1, 2023

Deliberate action magnifies results.

A terrible fallacy that almost everyone tends to believe in life is that consistency is everything. I'm a proponent that consistency is one of the most important and only things we can use to tackle the most potent force in the universe: Compounding.

But there are caveats and footnotes that most people overlook.

Your consistency will be nullified if you're not smart about what you do consistently. You won't reap the benefits of compounding if you keep doing the same things, make the same mistakes, and become a senseless robot that shows up for the sake of showing up. This becomes the "Checkbox Lifestyle," where everything is just a box to be ticked, without thought or reflection, without asking yourself if this is the right way.

This is why it is so common to see people with "experience" suck at something and people with "innate talent" become great in a tenth of the average time it usually takes.

You need to have systems and practice deliberately.

There are two things that I've found are the antidote to the checkbox lifestyle: Feedback loops and Deliberate practice. And keep in mind that implementing these two things as prescriptions will make you drift into the Checkbox Lifestyle without even noticing it. So that's why you need to be super careful with using these 2 "antidotes."

I will delve deeper into these in future writing. For now, avoid simply ticking boxes. Act deliberately.