Be Consistent
Gary Ryan Blair
Consistency, or the absence of contradictions, is one of the hallmarks of success. While variety may be the spice of life, consistency is one of the keys to successfully achieving any goal.
Let's have a look at Merriam-Webster's definition of consistency: “con·sis·ten·cy - agreement or harmony of parts or features to one another or a whole: correspondence; specifically: ability to be asserted together without contradiction.”
The agreement and harmony of your goal-setting activities can indeed create synergy, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Consistency will not only save you time by helping you simplify and focus your efforts, but more importantly, it will help you set and routinely meet the expectations you have for yourself. And that equals a positive impact on your bottom-line results.
Whether we want to admit it or not, as creatures of habit, we all like, expect and appreciate consistency. When we learn or experience something new, we expect to be able to apply that knowledge on a consistent basis.
It follows that good engineers, designers and architects believe in the importance of consistency. The streets in cities are good examples of both consistency and conservation of knowledge. Anywhere in the country, give way signs look exactly the same. Traffic lights use red, yellow and green to mean precisely the same things regardless of street, city or post code, making them clearly identifiable anywhere.
It becomes difficult for people and society when their knowledge of things breaks down, when inconsistency is introduced. For example, someone visiting a country with different street signs will inevitability make mistakes until he learns signs consistent to that country.
Here are a few examples of how a consistent approach can maximize your performance and accelerate the rate with which you achieve any goal.
Consistently:
- Show up on time.
- Tell the truth and do the right thing.
- Honour your commitments.
- Go the extra mile for your customers.
- Take action and avoid excuses and procrastination.
- Deliver excellent work.
- Meet or exceed quota.
- Pursue your passion and purpose.
- Make everything you say, think and do count.
Consistency is wonderful when used appropriately, because it improves the experience for both yourself and the beneficiaries of your efforts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
Is consistency all there is to successfully achieving any goal? What if we were perfectly consistent with respect to our behaviours, moral principles and values, and yet our behaviours were unhealthy, our principles incorrect and our values misplaced?
In some cases, consistency can become a self-perpetuating ogre. It has to be used for a purpose. A foolish consistency is one that serves no benefit for the end user or his beneficiaries.
Foolish consistencies include:
- Being late for meetings.
- Lying and cheating.
- Disregarding commitments.
- Procrastinating.
- Avoiding responsibility by making excuses.
Consistency is great, because people like predictable things. Family, friends, co-workers and customers feel comfortable when they can rely on you to do exactly what they think you will do and have done in the past.
This appears to be almost like a law of human nature. We have a strong preference for consistency in our lives. We want things to work the same way every time they happen. When we wake up in the morning, we want to find the floor under our feet, the sun above our heads and coffee in our cups. And just as we expect these kinds of physical consistency, we also expect psychological consistency. If we had marriages, families and jobs yesterday, we expect to find them in pretty much the same condition today.
Thus, we have “mental worlds” of our expectancies, the people in them and our relationships. And the glue that holds all these mental relationships together is consistency. It becomes like a form of human gravity, holding everything down and together. It helps us understand the world and our place in it.
