Monday, February 12, 2024
Being consistent has been tough for me last year. Whether that meant being consistent in posting YouTube videos, writing blogs, LinkedIn posts, journalling .. you get the idea.
With a lot of personal priorities to juggle every day, every hour sometimes, being consistent on YouTube surely took a back seat.
Me being me, I had to find a better way!
First, what does consistency or being consistent mean to me?
Here’s my simple perspective
“Consistency provides a rhythm that builds habits over time. It is all about the commitment to show up, persistently and reliably every single day, even if all odds are against it.”
So, me being me, I disrupted some of my habits and unleashed some new ones, built a system for myself including an accountability mechanism and challenged myself with 4 weeks of posting vlogs on Youtube every business day starting the 15th January 2024. This journey has me convinced already. Consistency is the key.
Today, I celebrate 4 weeks of being consistent on YouTube. 🌟 And my journey continues with an even higher momentum.
I want to share the Top 11 things that anyone could do to be consistent in any context - whether that’s writing a blog consistently every week, putting out a weekly video on YouTube, working out every weekend at the gym, doing daily runs at 6 AM, just about anything.
Reminder - it’s not as simple as it sounds when I write this. If you are intentional, this can totally be achieved.
Let’s get started.
1. State, write and commit yourself to your intent
This includes
- what is it that you are wanting to achieve
- why do you want to achieve what you want to achieve
Writing this with a physical pen and paper is important for me since it works like a commitment I’m making to myself. That’s important for me to keep.
2. Visualise Success
Visualising success is a powerful exercise that bridges the gap between aspiration and achievement.
When you close your eyes and imagine success, you create your roadmap that aligns your thoughts, emotions, and actions towards a specific outcome.
Bindi Basan and Mangesh Shinde have emphasised on this too. It is critical to visualise your success. Here are links to watch / listen to what Bindi and Mangesh share on Visualising Success.
3. Prioritise, prioritise, prioritise
I use this approach to manage my time every day. With so much happening around me, I need to continuously keep prioritising work.
So, in my approach to prioritisation I need to make this 1 thing to do my most important prioritised thing to do. Nothing else can take over that priority.
4. Focus and Limit distractions
I do not let any distraction get into the way when I’m working on this 1 prioritised piece of work. Focus is key!
5. Create your own routine
I can only stress again “We are all unique individuals.” Our routines will be unique to us. But ofcourse we could borrow and tweak something from someone else’s routine and see how that works or not in our own daily routine.
My routine today revolves around Yoga and my health. Everything else is built around that. These 2 components are non-negotiable. So, I build my routine around these. I also work in different timezones. I’m mindful of that too when creating my routine for the week. Building your own routine is key. The variables and fixed components will obviously differ.
6. Seek accountability
Accountability keeps me grounded.
I made myself accountable in 3 ways
- by sharing my intent on the Day 0 Vlog on Youtube,
- by sharing my intent with my mentor (my mentor regularly checks-in with me on this)
- by writing my intent on a large post-it and sticking that on my cupboard to serve as a daily reminder.
7. Practice self-discipline
I remember in one of the Vodcasts where I interviewed marathoner Mangesh Shinde, he shared ‘showing up for the run was key, no matter how tired one is or sleepy or any other excuse.’
I realised I was doing essentially the same thing in my context. I could come up with many excuses for not putting up a YouTube vlog - It’s not perfect enough, I’m not in the mood to record it today, I could have added 1 more learning nugget into it, blah blah blah. I chose intentionally to not go in that direction.
My Vlog had to be released at 7 PM (GMT + 5:30) every week day. And it did!
No matter where I was in the day or which calls or trainings I had planned in the day, this 1 minute learning nugget vlog got out every week day.
There was once a time when I recorded the vlog around 6:15 PM, got done with the editing only at 6:50 PM. But the vlog did go out at 7 PM. (And I am neither a pro at editing nor do I have a team for that - at least not yet 😉 )
I strongly believe “You can either have excuses or results - not both”.
8. Learn from mistakes
I experimented with the time of 7AM (GMT + 5:30) for putting out my vlog I the 1st week. That just did not work well for me in many ways.
So, the next week I tried 7 PM (GMT + 5:30). That worked out well, also from my recording and editing perspective. So, I’ve kept that for now.
It’s important to learn from an experiment, inspect and adapt with that learning.
And be open to running more experiments!
9. Be Patient
It’s important not just to be patient with the progress of work, but also with yourself. You have to give yourself time to build new habits and be consistent with them. To get those habits into your DNA is going to take time. Don’t beat yourself for not building a habit quickly.
10. Be adaptable
Continuously adapting in this fast-changing landscape and cultivating a mindset that allows you to do so, is key.
I realised I actually changed the complete content for a week than what I had originally planned to deliver. That’s because of things happening around me, questions that I was getting from people who started listening in to learning nuggets and were curious if I could respond to their current challenges. I had to respond to this and update my content for the week. I'm glad I did!
Being adaptable is key!
11. If it ain’t fun, it ain’t worth it
I wanted to check-in with myself after 4 weeks and see if I still enjoyed creating the learning nuggets and putting them out there on YouTube.
I realised at the end of the 1st week that I was creating more content that I had planned - as I introduced the Sunday breakfast musings. By the end of the 3rd week I found myself diving deeper into what challenges teams, leaders and change agents wanted me to share more content on.
I started feeling really awesome about this journey.
As I write this blog today, I can tell you I’m enjoying bringing new content every day every week.
I’m sure I can make this list longer than these 11 points. But I believe these for me would be most important - unique in themselves, but also inter-connected.
I’m celebrating 4 weeks of being consistent on YouTube. 😊
I’m keeping up my momentum of being consistent with even more trust and confidence in myself!
In conclusion,
I’m reminded of Tony Robbins quote today
“It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It’s what we do consistently.”
Monday, February 12, 2024
Change Facilitator and Change Hacker
I enable teams and organisations to breakdown Resistance barriers, build Organisational Change Muscle and strengthen Team Dynamics so that they can be resilient and thrive in fast-paced change.
I achieve this through training, coaching & facilitation of Modern change management, remote ways of working, Management 3.0 and business agility.