How did I manage to maintain my gym frequency and even increase it?
My teenage years and early adulthood didn’t involve much physical activity. There was physical education at school, and at certain times, a weekly soccer game with friends, and that’s basically it. At some point, I decided to start swimming, and I took to it quite well. For a few years, I kept at it twice a week. Circumstances changed, and I quit swimming until I was able to return two years later. Since then, every week I’ve been in the pool.
A little over a year ago, I took another step: weight training three times a week. I had tried in the past and had never lasted more than six months. But this time it seems to have “clicked.” I’m feeling progress and enjoying my routine of exercising five times a week.
So why am I telling this story? It’s part of my investigation into consistency (or the lack thereof).
The most critical point of what I perceive as a lack of professional or creative progress is the lack of consistency. As analyzed previously, it stems from a restless pursuit of new visions, which in turn arise from new professional and creative passions. A monkey jumping from branch to branch who never really knows one tree.
Translating this into the context of exercise, this creative-professional restlessness would make me the kind of person who tries every new sport that pops up: Beach Tennis, Stand-up Paddle, Padel, Pickle Ball. Yet that’s not what happens. Why?
Or better yet: why does it work so well with swimming and weight training, and how can I translate that into the professional and creative realms? Maybe it’s because there’s a sunk cost at the gym: I pay every month, whether I use it or not, so I need to make it worthwhile. But it can’t be just that, because I could simply cancel at any time. Another point favoring continuity is the perception of progress. I feel my body improving, experiencing less pain, gaining more strength, and this generates emotional momentum.
So it could be that paying and seeing progress are key factors. If so, I need to bring this combination into my professional and creative life. Paying is straightforward: renting a new server, paying for a course, or investing money in new products stocks. But without progress, it’s completely useless, or worse, it becomes unprogress. In professional terms, progress might mean getting the first user for a project, then the first paying customer. In creative terms, it might mean noticing weekly progress in content production, finishing a book, and eventually gaining readers.
The key is progress. I conclude that consistency derives from progress. Progress is what generates the emotional fuel to move forward day by day. It’s like a walk that only makes sense if you see movement ahead of you. After all, why take a second or third step if the first didn’t yield any noticeable movement? Even better if the movement is taking you toward your desired destination.
So the real question is: how do we achieve progress? How do we move forward in small steps so that one advance encourages the next? How do we “fill the emotional tank” with progress?
The starting point is to create space for emotional clarity. To get there, I imagine a few possibilities.
Meditating is one possible solution that always comes to mind. Meditation creates space. Also, using less social media, and reducing the consumption of short-form content are actions that open up more mental space as well. Combined, these two actions can help me recognize the progress that might be slipping by unnoticed because there’s no room for it now. And it becomes clear that this recognition is what fuels the emotional engine.
That’s it: creating space for the emotion of progress. What follows is consistency, more progress, more fuel, more progress. The positive feedback loop I’ve been looking for.
