Consistency & the archaeologist within
“I haven’t started because I’m not clear on what my next step should be.”
That’s a good picture of me and my journey to building better habits for consistency and productivity.
I’ve read books (maybe half a book), several podcasts, and lots of YouTube videos on these topics. The advice is largely persistent: build good habits, map out your calendar/journal, follow the plan, and with time, your daily 1% improvements will compound enough for you to see results.
However, I’ve found that I haven’t obeyed these teachings of habit-building and productivity because my life lacks the structure required to do so.
Interestingly, although I generally struggle with this predicament of inconsistency, I’ve had a couple of episodes where I just did the damn thing. I got out of bed and took a long walk; I said no to a piece of cake at 11 pm and didn’t die; I timed myself for 30 minutes and did focused work. And so I’m thinking: In those moments, I didn’t have an elaborate 6-week plan for consistency, but I did something. Could it really be okay not to have a step-by-step plan for consistency?
The problem is, I’m fixated on knowing exactly how to get my life together — and it stops me from actually getting into the things I need to do. I’m hyper-fixated on what my output cadence for that hobby should be instead of just enjoying every day I show up to do it; I’m bothered by how far into the week I need to have insight before I put together my calendar, instead of allowing flexibility to guide my first few steps towards planning my week.
It’s an issue because I then never get things done.
But I think about an analogy I’ve heard multiple times over the past year — and maybe this could be of use to you. It describes two different types of people when working on something. There are the architects, and there are the archaeologists. Architects will usually go in with a clear plan; they know where everything goes, they drew it up before the first block was laid. But the archaeologist uncovers her way to the relic. Slowly but surely, she digs and unearths the intriguing piece. She’s not rushed by an urge to plan for what the thing could be. She just wants to slowly discover it.
And so maybe that’s me. Maybe I can be okay with being an archaeologist on the site of my productivity and habit-building. Slowly uncovering what works could mean I explore different methods and techniques to see what sticks. And this might just help me build stronger, more consistent practices because I took time to test and figure it out, one step at a time.
