Consistency matters

Image by Varun Kulkarni from Pixabay

The most important aspect of going anywhere in life to keep showing up. This is true for yourself, for your family, your business, your society, your country and all of humankind. I learned this a couple of years ago when we had a band at my old workplace. We put a backline with drums, PA, guitar and bass amps in an unused room in the basement and started to play 15-30 minutes every day instead of taking coffee breaks. The goal was to play at the company inauguration party for the new office, a couple of months into the future. We kept showing up and played together. Most of us had musical background on a high level, but we were all surprised at how good the band started to sound in a really short time. I was especially surprised, because I had played with bands my whole life and I had never experienced that kind of improvement in such a short time. And the best thing of all – we didn’t put nearly as many hours into this project as I had done in previous bands. A 15-minute session every day equals less than two hours practice per week!

I called it micro-rehearsals, and for me it’s been the best thing since sliced bread. When I got up to speed, I just kept going with these 15-minute rehearsals Every. Single. Day. And I have now been doing it since 2014 without a miss. It’s such a little time slot that we can all find 15 minutes, no matter how tight our schedules are. And it can be used on almost anything, not just learning musical instruments. The only question is if we want the outcome bad enough? The secret is to remove all obstacles to start the micro-rehearsal. If you need to fire up the computer to start writing and it takes 2 minutes – use a pen and paper. If you want to learn the guitar – put an acoustic guitar in a stand next to your bed. If the skill you want to rehearse requires as little as a 5-minute start-up time, I think you will fail. You need to figure out a way to get going instantly. So, this of course rules out some time-consuming activities. You can’t put on your ice-skating gear and go to the rink every day for 15 minutes. But you can focus on a specific sub-skill that you can use that is. For example, go to the garage and lift some weights to practice muscles that are useful for you when ice skating.

For me, this 15-minute a day approach has completely changed all aspects of my life. If you keep pounding on something every day, it will give in eventually. It is impossible to fail to reach a goal if you always keep on moving in the direction towards the goal. This story is a prime example of how I learned something extremely valuable from music, that I now try to implement in all areas of my life.

My latest endeavour is to use this skill in my business. Keep showing up. Keep doing those little improvements on my business every single day. No matter what you are trying to accomplish, consistency matters. If you know where you’re going and can develop a method to work at it – with zero start-up time – I am convinced that you will succeed.