“The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity.”

- Josh Waitzkin

Highly successful people share one common trait that might, at first, surprise you: consistency. Particularly, consistency in taking regular, small actions that, with time, get them to their goals.

But what does it take to be consistent ourselves?

A UCL study shows that it takes an average of 66 days to build a habit — and it can take much longer if it’s a hard one to develop. That’s a long time! Consistent work on new habits is especially difficult if it takes time for changes to pay off, or if the goal requires us to put aside other pleasures for a time. As the authors of Stealing Fire put it bluntly: people would “rather die than change.”

Consistency has always been a challenge for me. Despite defining clear goals for myself, I have always struggled to create the habits that would lead me to fulfill them. I had the motivation and time, yet I would consistently fail somewhere around day 10. Failure kept leaving me angry and frustrated, and compounded into a disbelief in my ability to succeed.

Working on consistency seemed unpleasant and verging on impossible. My motivation was gradually weakening, leaving me to comfort myself with snacks while binge-watching inspiring TED talks. “Better than funny TV shows,” I kept reassuring myself.

But I knew I wanted more. And that’s when I broke through. Ultimately, I created a new journaling habit designed specifically to support my consistency in working on new habits. In this article, I’ll show you how you can use this same approach to work on your own goals.