How being consistent can help you succeed in academia and studies (and life in general).
The silent engine
Let’s be real for a second, consistency isn’t exactly the flashy part of getting things done. No one is going to retweet your daily grind or hand you a TED talk invite just because you showed up every day.
In my experience, consistency is the most underrated aspect of success in any field, especially in academia and engineering, maths, physics, machine learning. It’s the silent engine that keeps everything up and running from maintaining a sharp mind to keeping a healthy body.
My Personal Philosophy
Why I choose consistency
I don’t treat consistency as a performance metric for others nor do I do it for the crowd. It has nothing to do with posting progress updates, proving my discipline, or being seen as productive. I did it because I simply cannot rely on motivation alone to keep my life on track.
If I skip the small daily steps, everything around me slowly slides into chaos. [comment: experienced this with inconsistent progress in my studies on my previous University and with my food choices - if I’m not consistent and taking care of those every single day, everything crumbles]
Basically what I’ve learned over time is simple: the cost of restarting is always higher than the cost of staying consistent. I always regret [deeply] when I didn’t start something earlier and I never regret it when I did something consistently every single day. I always got the results this way.
The mental overhead
So when I let things slide for a few days - which is not happening that often anymore - the mental overhead grows, my notes get messy, my tasks are stacked up and my priority is blurred. Getting back into order takes significantly more energy than just maintaining a steady rhythm.
Consistency actually shrinks the mental load when I keep a routine. I don’t have to negotiate with myself every day and I don’t waste energy deciding what to do because I already know it becomes part of who I am.
- Small actions compound.
- Short sessions today prevent a long clean-up tomorrow.
- Small habit repeated daily beats the perfect plan that they never execute.
Structure gives clarity
Consistency gives structure, structure gives clarity and clarity makes everything else easier. So most people think that they need intensity but what they actually need is reliability. They need a calm stable baseline-just one small action done every right every day that reinforces who they want to be.
I choose consistency because it keeps me accountable to myself. It reminds me that the only person who cares whether I follow through is me. And honestly that is enough.
Example: GitHub streaks
I will show you an example with my Github where I told myself, “This might be cringy for some people but I’m not doing it for other people; I’m doing it for myself and I need to commit to Github every single day.”
Some days it really helped out because I wasn’t in the mood to code at all. What I would do is go refactor something or work on some side project or prototype. What ends up happening is that when I open the editor and I start doing it, some days I do it only for maybe 10-15 minutes or half an hour. But some days this turns into three or four hours long coding sessions which gave me a lot of knowledge in my field in software engineering.
Here’s the image of what my Github looks right now although it doesn’t matter but here it is.
In the long run consistency builds a quiet kind of confidence. You start trusting yourself and you start proving that you can show up even when it’s not convenient. The trust is worth more than any temporary burst of motivation and consistency is not exciting.
It does not feel dramatic or impressive but it really keeps my life stable, it keeps my goals alive and that’s exactly why it matters.
If you’re reading this, you probably have something you want to be consistent with. My advice? Stop overthinking the perfect routine. Just show up today.
If you’re on this journey too, say hi on X. I’m [trying to] build in public and sharing the messy parts too.
How being consistent can help you succeed in academia and studies (and life in general).
The silent engine
Let’s be real for a second, consistency isn’t exactly the flashy part of getting things done. No one is going to retweet your daily grind or hand you a TED talk invite just because you showed up every day.
In my experience, consistency is the most underrated aspect of success in any field, especially in academia and engineering, maths, physics, machine learning. It’s the silent engine that keeps everything up and running from maintaining a sharp mind to keeping a healthy body.
My Personal Philosophy
Why I choose consistency
I don’t treat consistency as a performance metric for others nor do I do it for the crowd. It has nothing to do with posting progress updates, proving my discipline, or being seen as productive. I did it because I simply cannot rely on motivation alone to keep my life on track.
If I skip the small daily steps, everything around me slowly slides into chaos. [comment: experienced this with inconsistent progress in my studies on my previous University and with my food choices - if I’m not consistent and taking care of those every single day, everything crumbles]
Basically what I’ve learned over time is simple: the cost of restarting is always higher than the cost of staying consistent. I always regret [deeply] when I didn’t start something earlier and I never regret it when I did something consistently every single day. I always got the results this way.
The mental overhead
So when I let things slide for a few days - which is not happening that often anymore - the mental overhead grows, my notes get messy, my tasks are stacked up and my priority is blurred. Getting back into order takes significantly more energy than just maintaining a steady rhythm.
Consistency actually shrinks the mental load when I keep a routine. I don’t have to negotiate with myself every day and I don’t waste energy deciding what to do because I already know it becomes part of who I am.
- Small actions compound.
- Short sessions today prevent a long clean-up tomorrow.
- Small habit repeated daily beats the perfect plan that they never execute.
Structure gives clarity
Consistency gives structure, structure gives clarity and clarity makes everything else easier. So most people think that they need intensity but what they actually need is reliability. They need a calm stable baseline-just one small action done every right every day that reinforces who they want to be.
I choose consistency because it keeps me accountable to myself. It reminds me that the only person who cares whether I follow through is me. And honestly that is enough.
Example: GitHub streaks
I will show you an example with my Github where I told myself, “This might be cringy for some people but I’m not doing it for other people; I’m doing it for myself and I need to commit to Github every single day.”
Some days it really helped out because I wasn’t in the mood to code at all. What I would do is go refactor something or work on some side project or prototype. What ends up happening is that when I open the editor and I start doing it, some days I do it only for maybe 10-15 minutes or half an hour. But some days this turns into three or four hours long coding sessions which gave me a lot of knowledge in my field in software engineering.
Here’s the image of what my Github looks right now although it doesn’t matter but here it is.
In the long run consistency builds a quiet kind of confidence. You start trusting yourself and you start proving that you can show up even when it’s not convenient. The trust is worth more than any temporary burst of motivation and consistency is not exciting.
It does not feel dramatic or impressive but it really keeps my life stable, it keeps my goals alive and that’s exactly why it matters.
If you’re reading this, you probably have something you want to be consistent with. My advice? Stop overthinking the perfect routine. Just show up today.
If you’re on this journey too, say hi on X. I’m [trying to] build in public and sharing the messy parts too.