Practicing the same skill once per week vs. twice per week
When I was in college I taught swimming lessons to make a little extra money. I taught at a few different places and each facility had a different schedule for how the classes were set up. At one facility in particular, students had the option to come for two sessions per week or for one session per week. The total time was the same and often it was the same instructors. I couldn’t help but notice that the students who came twice a week were almost always more advanced than the students who came once a week. They spent the same amount of total time in the water each week and they had the same instructor. Was this a coincidence? Can practicing more often help with learning a skill and reaching your goals faster?
3 variables in training programs
Later when I studied personal training and group fitness, we learned about the 3 variables in exercise programing, Frequency, Intensity, and Duration. These three variable can be adjusted to vary the workout program. I had some clients who worked out harder than others(higher intensity). The clients who worked out the hardest, often didn’t get the best results. Some clients stayed for longer sessions(longer duration). The clients who stayed longer each session didn’t always get the best results.
Over time it became obvious to me that the clients who got the best results were the ones who came more often(greater frequency). Even if they didn’t work out as hard or stay as long each session, the clients who were the most consistent got the best results. Working out more consistently is critical to reaching your goals faster.
Does cramming ever work?
Think about your own life. If you study a little each day, don’t you learn more effectively than if you try to cram at the last minute? If you want to learn an instrument or a new language, isn’t it better to practice a little each day, than to spend longer periods of time less frequently? We often think that we can make up for a lack of consistency by pushing harder or spending extra time, but that is never as effective as consistently showing up and doing the work towards reaching your goals.
The Power of Consistency
Consistency is the most fundamental key to success in any area. If you want to be successful in business, you’ve got to identify your key money making behaviors, do them more often and work to get better at them.
Salespeople need to make more calls and get better at them. Content creators need to consistently put out content and work to create better content. Marketers needs to run more ads, drive more traffic and do more testing to improve the quality of their work. The key to reaching your goals is to consistently do the key activities need to reach them.
What gets in the way?
Whatever is it that you want to be good at, spend more time doing it and consistently work to get better at it. Make it a habit, something you do daily. It sounds simple, so why aren’t more people successful? What gets in the way of reaching your goals? The truth is that we have a tendency to overcomplicate things. We think, ‘it can’t be that simple’ and we sabotage ourselves in the long term by overworking ourselves in the short term.
Another big issue is that we get distracted, makes excuses, get frustrated and finally decide to take massive action and then burn ourselves out. We make a little progress and fall back into our old habits. Often we take a formula that works and overcomplicate it and then give up too soon. We give up before our efforts have had time to make a lasting effect. Then we assume that our efforts were for naught and the method we tried doesn’t work.
Where to start
If you want to walk a thousand miles, you don’t need each step to be perfect. You don’t even need to always step in the right direction. The most important thing is to get started. Then just keep going, making incremental improvements along the way.
It’s the same with reaching any goal. The first time you strum the guitar, it’s probably not going to sound very good. Over time with consistent effort and improvement you will learn to do it well. It’s the same with any goal, starting a business or learning to make money online. You have to start with imperfect action and learn and improve over time.
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