Consistency is key, but...

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Happy Sunday and thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter! I’m back in my home country of Jamaica, and spending lots of time with family and friends as it should be. It’s always a blessing to be back at home, and even more so a blessing to have amazing people in my life that I can return home to who still make it feel like a place that’s welcoming and full of love.

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#Vlogmas & Consistency 🎄 

If you read last week’s newsletter, you’d know that I’ve been doing a Vlogmas series on Tiktok and Instagram. That means I’ve been sharing a vlog every day for December so far, and it’s been pretty rewarding! I’m certainly getting better at editing, recording and understanding the video creation process, and I’m beginning to understand what can actually make a short form vlog hit the algorithm and get more views on those platforms.

The challenge for Vlogmas is really in the consistency of posting every day, and taking the time to record and edit content in between my everyday life.

Throughout my life, I’ve always heard the phrase “consistency is key”, and as I continue on this vlogging consistency challenge, there’s a few things I want to add to that and share with you.

Consistency is key, yes, but…

Consistency is certainly key when trying to perfect your craft in something, and also when you’re trying to get better at any given task. From Vlogmas, I’ve learnt that consistency is key when trying to grow your audience, and the apps definitely reward creators that show up consistently by pushing your content to wider audiences.

In that same vein, however, consistency is key when you couple it with gradual change. Consistency is key, but only if you’re consistently getting better.

I’ve written before about how you can’t take growth for granted, and that same idea applies here. If you do the same thing over and over, but you’re not iterating in a way that improves on your process, consistency just means hitting a plateau rather that continuing to climb the mountain.

You have to ensure that you’re learning and intentionally growing from each iteration of what you’re doing consistently, otherwise consistency might not be the key that you’re looking for to unlock the door ahead.

How to consistently get better

If you’ve mastered consistency, that means that you’ve learnt how to continue to show up, and continue to be present when you need to be. It means that you’re disciplined and that you’re able to maintain a routine.

Growing up, another saying that I always heard, however, is “Only an insane person does the same thing over and over and expects to get a different result”.

That saying, I think needs to be coupled with the idea that “consistency is key”, because it highlights the fact that if you keep doing the same exact thing over and over, regardless of how many times you do it, your progress and change will be little to none.

Luckily, consistency is the key to progress, because it allows you to get better by just changing small things every time you show up. If you’re already doing the work of showing up, if you want to try something new in your process, it’s easy to make slight tweaks to test new strategies that can be implemented overtime.

If you weren’t already being consistent, there’s no baseline for you to effect change, and so you get the double whammy of not having any sort of routine and also not being able to become better.

Conclusion

As we near the end of 2024 and look to a new year ahead, reflect on your routines, and reflect on what you’re being consistent in. As I said in my newsletter from 2 weeks ago, whatever you’re not actively changing, you’re passively choosing. This means that might just be being consistent in something in your life without even realizing it.

And, news flash… you can be consistent in bad things too, and it’s much easier to go backwards and get stuck in bad habits than it is to make progress and be consistent in something that will make you better.

If you’re trying to make a change in your life, in the same way I show up for Vlogmas everyday, start by just showing up. Show up to the gym, to that run club you’ve been thinking about, or to that first therapy session.

After learning how to show up, to be consistent in just getting yourself out of bed or getting yourself in the car to where you need to be, work on leveraging that consistency to implement changes in that routine.

The routine is the hard part, but once it’s set, it’s like a car that self-improvement can just hitch a ride on. It’s exciting to begin, but even more exciting to watch the journey as you go along, showing up everyday, and getting better everyday too.

Until next Sunday,

Justin