This idea popped onto my radar as I listened to Chris Williamson and Cameron Hanes on the Modern Wisdom podcast. And this idea appears in many other places as I searched for it. It doesn't always present as the word "consistency" sometimes it comes as: habits, discipline, 1% better everyday to name a few.
So what is consistency? It just means doing almost the same thing almost everyday. So why almost? Because we keep improving, and sometime life gets in the way.
When someone is consistently doing something for most of their life it shapes their identity as a person. They become associated with that thing. Someone who spends most of their time watching TV and snacking becomes associated with that. Someone who works to improve themselves everyday, becomes and improved version of themself.
So what does this consistency look like? Let's take walking for example, let's do 10,000 steps per day. Assuming a rate of ~1000 steps every 10 minutes, it would take 100 minutes to hit 10,000 steps. But that only holds true in the beginning. As we repeat this action, we get better at it. Maybe now it only takes 9 minutes and 59 seconds to hit a 1000 steps. Maybe we become more efficient with our walking form, so it takes less energy, or even allow us to cover a greater distance in a 10,000 steps. Eventually we get good enough where 10,000 steps is really easy, and it takes less time to accomplish this goal. Now in the same amount of time we can aim for more steps, let's say 12,000 steps. Or instead of walking we could aim to jog or even run 10,000 steps.
It's this slow adaptation that allows us to grow infinitely until we eventually die.
But there's a caveat to all this, intensity. Now let's use a different example, reading a book. Let's assume you read 6 hours per week, it could just be 6 hours all in one day, 1 hour for 6 days or some other combination of this. If you ever paid attention to your energy levels throughout the day, you would realize that it starts of high and then it dips. Same goes to your ability focus and process information, as you get more tired the lower the quality of your mental faculties. So now let's think about it, if I spread my 6 hours out, I can get a higher quality out of this 6 hours and perhaps gain more from the amount of time spent. On the other hand, I could grind out 6 hours in one or two sessions. But I probably won't gain as much. Well if the goal was to finish the book as quickly as possible, sure, why not just make it 8 hours. But if it was to learn from the book then maybe spreading it out is better.
That's all.