I’ll be honest with ya, I skipped last week because I had nothing to say. I had some ideas but nothing more than half-baked thoughts. I didn’t want to post something without the proper TLC applied to it. The pace of creation is a bitch though, and something I’ll write probably write about another day. But today is (ironically) about consistency.
Consistency
Over the past few years I have…
stopped projects before I have started
stopped projects after I have started
started, stopped, then half-started, stopped, and restarted projects all over again
I’ve repeated this process with more than a few things in my life. Some specifics, I…
Recorded seven episodes of a podcast where I interviewed friends and colleagues on their side hustles or hobbies. Never had a consistent release schedule down and it inevitably fell to the wayside. Something I want to start up again.
Started a book club that made it up to 12 people before falling into obscurity after a couple months of updates. I’ll probably stay away from this for a bit.
Tried my hand at ecommerce with a sports-apparel site. I’ve shut that down, re-opened, renamed, re-shut down, and re-opened it once again. It’s currently live now at the goodsports.store, although very bare bones.
Went the blog route, with 24 posts (including this one) over two years. No cadence, no consistency, no master plan. Because of the start and stops, there hasn’t been any real growth on this front, which is something that inspired the rest of this post.
That’s a quick recap of some of the few things I’ve started and stopped recently. Some hobbies, some new skills, but not much sticks.
Get Through vs Go Through
Here’s a peak into my life real quick. If you’re around me long enough, you’ll hear me say that the only thing I’ve ever really committed to in my life was wrestling.
I loved the process. I loved the practice. I didn’t love it at the time, but when I look back at that journey, I love how long it took. (I went 0-2 and was pinned twice in my first tournament, and that blistering pace continued for many weekends.)
I’m going through a similar feeling right now with jiu jitsu. Not to heighten an evening of struggling to choke sweaty dudes in rigid pajamas to that of a spiritual experience, but for me, these practices are an experience that helps me look at everything else in my life a little differently.
It’s something you GO through, not something you GET through.
The goal of every practice is to learn something, and then immediately try to apply it. You have to go through it to get something from it.
There are things in life that inevitably you just have to get through. Chores, errands. Things to do that just need to be done. But there are also things in life that happen to us, that we can choose to either get through, or go through.
Relationships. Career changes. Moving to new cities. All of these things can change you, or you can stay stuck in time.
When you go through something it means you come out the other side a little bit different.
These are low stakes, but let’s take the bullet points above for example.
With each thing I started, I cared more about the output than I cared about the process. I just wanted to make things and thought I could keep it up without any real process in place.
Now, since those experiments have largely been abandoned, I look at them as failures. However, on multiple occasions, my lovely girlfriend has told me to reframe how I look at them. To think instead that I started them, and learned a little bit from each of them. Took action, went through some steps, etc. Just because it didn’t work out doesn’t mean it ultimately failed. If it was something just to get through then I didn’t take anything from it. But if the experience was something I got to go through, I’m able to learn from it.
Ultimately, the point is the doing. The journey is the reward. As one of my favorite Twitter shitposters says in this clip here – there is no master plan. You just know that opportunities will come if you keep going. (Excuse the corny music.)
This whole life is something to go through, not just get through.
Hopefully this little reframe will help me from stalling out due to undue pressure. And if there was any hesitation on your end about starting that thing you’ve been talking about for a while now, hopefully this helps you get going from idea to execution, too.