The Consistency Curve

I started working out when I was 12 years old.

It was the summer of 7th grade, and football practice was starting soon. I was about to join the middle school team, my first time playing with the big boys. Coming from peewee football, I had never taken the field against anyone older than myself.

My school had a summer program for the football team, meant to get kids on the team in the weight room. For many of us, myself included, it was our first time setting foot in a real gym.

At 12 years old I was a bit pudgy, but starting to thin out as I hit a growth spurt. The idea of working out excited me. I understood that if done right, it would lead to an edge on the field, or at least help me hold my own against the bigger, stronger, older kids.

Quickly, I fell in love with it. Working out became something I obsessed over. I spent countless hours in the gym that summer, and many more after that.

It's now been almost 14 years since I started going to the gym consistently. To this day, I still work out 5 or 6 days a week, lifting weights and going on long distance runs.

Lately I've been thinking about the results of my 14 years of gym-going. They seemed banal at first, but then I realized that there are millions of people who would kill to have the same relationship to working out that I do.

For one, I don't even think about it. It just happens. Working out has become more of a compulsion than a habit at this point. Running for miles and pushing heavy weights has become second nature to my body. It expects them, almost the same as it expects food, water, and sleep.

As for how I feel, well, amazing. I'm in great health. I've never worried about my weight or had a reason to. I have a ton of energy all the time. I know that whenever I want I can run ten miles, carry double my weight, push my muscles to their limit, and not feel all that sore the next day.

That's about as close to having a superpower as I can think of, and it's all the product of remarkable consistency.

Reflecting on my years of working out has made me think a lot about the value of consistency. Anything worth pursuing requires it. But consistency is hard. So, how do you make it easy?

It starts with understanding that sticking with anything long enough to see results follows a predictable curve.

First, you start out excited.

Anything new is exciting. We're wired to seek novelty. For thousands of years, newness has meant the possibility of reward.

Thousands of years ago, exploring a new part of the woods meant the chance of finding vulnerable game or ripe fruit. In the 1850's, trekking out to the west coast of the US meant the possibility of striking gold, oil, and generational wealth. Today, learning a new technology like AI could turn you into the CEO of the next unicorn startup.

But the excitement you get from something new only lasts so long.

Whether it's learning to code, getting in shape, or making a career pivot, you'll feel the excitement drain away soon after you start. There are two reasons this happens:

1) You don't feel like you're making enough progress fast enough and get discouraged

2) A shiny new thing grabs your attention

This brings us to the first drop along the consistency curve, and it's where 95% of people give up. This is where every coding tutorial, Orange Theory membership, and dream of becoming an entrepreneur go to die. Making it through this part of the curve is the most difficult, but it's also the most important.

So, how do you climb your way back up?

Awareness of the Consistency Curve's existence is the first, and most important step. Most people don't realize that they can predict how they'll feel when trying something new. If you know to expect excitement, followed by total frustration, you won't let your motivation get carried away by either.

Here's where it's helpful to have the curve in front of you. Feel free to use my rendition of it to plot where you fall on the curve. This will help you be more aware of where you are, and what you can expect ahead.

If you decide to keep going when you're in the pit of despair, it'll feel like you aren't making any meaningful progress at first.

But this actually where the most important work is happening. The more you keep at it, the closer you get to inching up the curve. The problem is, you don't know exactly when you'll start going back up the curve. It'll be different for everyone, but the key is to just keep moving forward.

Imagine being in a foggy valley. You find yourself here after tumbling down a mountain, and now you're looking for a way back up. You know if you keep walking forward, you'll eventually reach another mountain face, but you have no idea whether it's 3 feet in front of you or 300. The only way back up is to keep walking forward until you hit it.

That's what this part of the curve feels like, but at least now you have a map that assures you that another mountain face is somewhere in the distance.

Eventually, you'll start making progress. If you're learning to code, this could be finally figuring out that one stupid bug in your program. If you're trying to start your own business, it could be getting the first inkling of interest in your product. Celebrate the little wins and realize that you're on your way back up the curve.

This is when excitement will start to creep back in. But it'll feel different. It'll be a tempered excitement, because you've now gotten a taste for what it feels like to be stuck. There's more of that to come, but it won't be as frustrating because you know you can get past it.

The rest of the curve looks like a series of steadily increasing "S" shaped lines. These represent the tiny peaks, valleys, and plateaus that you'll hit on your slow journey up and to the right of the curve. This is the ebb and flow of progress.

Before you know it, you'll become competent in something that was once new and daunting. The highs won't be too high, and the lows won't be too low. You'll have experienced hundreds of them by this point and know how to deal with them.

You can apply the Consistency Curve to anything you’re trying to do for a long time.

Give it a shot and let me know if it helps.

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