#1. Consistency and The Power of Small Steps
It’s written a lot about the power of small steps and consistency, and this is yet another note about that. The Why behind writing this is incredibly simple — every time I practice this, it pays off, and it’s even a reminder to myself how much you can do and improve with the small steps applied consistently. Anna, please read it every time you are in doubt.
This story started (at least what I remember) from the picture that impressed me about 10 years ago and still top of mind:
How powerful it is, really! One side of this is that small improvement applied consistently leads to great outcomes, on the other hand if you consistently do just one percent less, you are also in the situation when the outcomes are becoming worse. This tells a lot about consistency and how much small effort, but done regularly over time, can create a huge change.
Another thing I often tell to myself and others, that the only difference and gap between the idea and the outcome is action. Small step every day, small fucking step every fucking day. Most of the greatest things are not the results of pure accident, but consistent iteration over time.
The only way to write a book is… to write a book, the only way to build connections with people is to build those connections, the only way to become fit in a healthy way is to focus on nutrition and exercise consistently. Armen Petrosian, one of the people who inspired me a lot, often writes in his blog: “Fast is slow without a break”. I couldn’t agree more — every time I started doing instead of just thinking, it led to incredible results. Another idea here is that you really need to spend time with the thing to truly integrate it into your life, so it’s natural. In this case I believe much more that if you can do small steps (i.e. 5 minutes of exercise, reading or whatever), the likelihood of it becoming a part of you is much higher.
Some of the things this approach helped / helping me with so far:
Running: i do it consistently (yes, more or less) since 2014, and started with modest 2 or 3k, but now I run at least 600k per year and my fav distance is 10k (and I even completed a half marathon, which I could never imagine);
Losing weight: I did it twice, more than 10kg both times, and changing nutrition and exercise and apply it consistently helped to change the overall eating and movement habits. The thing that happened between these two losing weight periods is also a perfect illustration of 0.99 applied consistently, over time. In both cases every day changes are so minimal, that you sometimes even do notice them, while the outcome is dramatically different;
Learning language: I’m currently on almost 600 days of strike in Duolingo. I started with Dutch, but then switched to Spanish. My effort is minimal, almost zero, sometimes it’s just 2-3 minutes per day, and of course I’m not fluent in the language, but now I can read and understand the context more or less, the menu is not a problem at all, and I can hold a simple conversation. Not a bad outcome for almost zero effort, right?
Writing poems: when COVID-19 pandemic started, some of my friends and I created a group chat where we were sharing our creative efforts every day. This way I wrote about 100 poems, some of them were good, some were mediocre at most, but every time it was a practice, and over time the way I write improved quite a lot as well as effort needed.
I tried the same with stretching, writing (a bit), yoga, all works, but some things just don’t stick. While you can integrate almost everything in your life, sometimes it’s just not your thing or not the right timing. But every time I look back at things, it reminds me where I started and how far I came. I probably won’t be the best in a lot of things, but I will definitely enjoy those that I can do and like to do. To optimism and small steps!