Consistency Isn’t Perfect

What finishing this book taught me about consistency

If you’re one of the few who noticed, I missed my first newsletter last week.

I was traveling. I couldn’t come up with something meaningful to write about so I missed my publish date.

At first, I thought about posting two or three days later. But then I decided to give myself grace and skip it altogether. And honestly? That was okay.

One of the main reasons I add accountability into anything long-term is to stay consistent. Whether it’s this newsletter or training for my first marathon, consistency is important.

Ironically, since starting both, I’ve missed exactly one newsletter and one running session and I still feel proud.

Skipping that run made me overthink more than missing the newsletter. I’ve been so disciplined with my marathon training that missing a workout felt like I was sabotaging my time goal. But not resting my right ankle could have led to something worse: injury and that could have meant missing the marathon completely.

That outcome scared me a lot more than missing one workout so I accepted a short-term loss for a long-term goal.

The same goes for this newsletter. I don’t want to get into the habit of skipping but accepting slight inconsistency is very different from quitting and that distinction matters.

The Real Problem: Organization

I’m running into a different issue though. Being unorganized makes consistency much harder.

When I launched this newsletter, I was terrified of falling behind. So I prepared four months’ worth of content in advance. I didn’t want to panic every week about what to write. Funny enough, I ran out of pre-written stories.

Now I’ve been surviving by writing the newsletter one day before publishing and that’s not sustainable.

But if I’m honest, this isn’t new, in fact, I’ve always been this way. Even in school, I was the student who did homework last minute and studied the night before exams. I function under pressure.

Part of me wonders if I’ll ever change.

If you have tips for staying organized without waiting for panic mode to kick in, please share them. I could genuinely use the advice.

Finishing “Born to Run”

I had already decided to write about consistency after missing last week. But today something aligned perfectly.

I finished reading Born to Run. For most people, that’s normal. For me, it’s a huge win.

Consistency without accountability has always been hard for me so I gave myself a virtual deadline: finish the book before my marathon.

And I did.

Was I consistent? Not at all.

This mid-sized book took me almost five months to finish. I had long gaps where I forgot characters and the context. Weeks passed without touching it but I kept coming back to it and that’s the part I’m proud of.

I didn’t grow up reading much. After graduating, I didn’t have to read ever again. During the pandemic, I decided I wanted to become “a reader.” For a short period, I finished five books and thought, “I think I built a reading habit” but I lost the habit just as quickly.

Since then, I’ve started multiple books and abandoned most of them. When I bought Born to Run, I had two goals: I wanted motivation for my marathon training and I wanted to prove to myself that I could finish something I started.

The consistency faded many times but I didn’t quit and today, I closed the last page.

Takeaway

Here’s what I realized: being unorganized makes consistency harder.

Accountability helps more than we think. Things like deadlines, external pressure or people expecting something from us, actually work. That’s why we show up to work and why we don’t miss flights.

But when accountability doesn’t exist, like reading a book alone, consistency can fall apart and that’s where something else matters more: persistence.

You don’t need a perfect streak. You don’t need flawless discipline. You just need to keep coming back.

Even if you miss a week or even a month. Even if it takes you five months to finish one book.

If you don’t quit, you’re still consistent in the way that actually matters and maybe consistency isn’t about never missing. Maybe it’s about refusing to stop.