Success in business, like in life, is a marathon, not a sprint. Consistency is not only king but it is absolutely, undeniably, irrefutably necessary. Habits take time to form but like learning a new skill in sport, the more you practice the better you get. So how do you create kick arse habits to keep you going through the business marathon month after month, year after year with consistency?
Here are my 3 tips for creating kick arse habits:
1. Set a schedule
There are many areas of your business which require a consistent effort. Let’s take blogging as an example. The best way to ensure that you consistently do what it required, when it is required, is set a schedule. It sounds simple, obvious even. But the number of business owners with poor time management skills is astounding. Work out what needs to be done on a regular basis, and schedule it into your day, week or month and make sure you stick to this schedule. With our example of blogging, let’s set a schedule of writing a blog post every Monday and Thursday.
2. Choose a pace that you can sustain
Your schedule must be set at a pace that you can maintain for the long haul. Consistency adds up very fast and trumps a short lived, over enthusiastic effort which flames out after a month or two. Let’s look again at our example of blogging. A new, enthusiastic business owner might be super motivated when they first start blogging and they might serve up some great blog posts every weekday for a month. Inevitably, at this kind of pace, it’s simply not going to be sustainable. It would be so much more valuable to write a well thought out, engaging blog piece, twice per week and maintain that for 5 years than try and blog every day only to find that you can’t keep up that pace.
3. Repeat over and over
As reliably as seeing frost on a Melbourne morning in July, you will win the business battle with consistency, every time. Once you have your schedule set and a pace established that you can reliably stick to, simply continue to do it again and again and again, for as long as you want to have success.