Consistency Happens by Choice Not Chance: Schedule it!
Three hundred and eleven days. That’s as far as it went. I missed a full-year streak of closing all three rings on my Apple Watch by 54 days.
What happened?
Well, I could make the excuse that it has been 24 degrees outside for the past three days. I could defend myself and tell you about all of the projects I have been working on and how busy I’ve been. I’m sure I could come up with a lot of legitimate reasons why I missed my goal of 365 days of closing all three rings on my Apple Watch. The bottom line, however, is this: I didn’t schedule my walk. It’s that plain and simple. I worked on a couple of projects, lost track of time, and the next thing I know it’s 12:12 AM and my Apple Watch says the exercise ring didn’t close. No going back in time. No do-overs. I missed a day.
There went my streak. There went my goal.
If something is important we need to schedule it. This is true in our personal life and our professional life.
When we decide something is important we must look at where is it going to fit in the year, each month, each day? When? Where? How do we hold it accountable?
As an educator I often hear a common response to new initiatives, that it is the proverbial, “one more thing.” Why? I think it is in large part not because they don’t believe it’s important, but rather they don’t feel it is important. They don’t feel it is important because no time was reserved for it. It feels like one more thing because it was added onto a busy day, week or year.
Examine any initiative in any organization, scrutinize any successful individual’s goal and you will find a common traits.
When time is reserved for it, real time, it feels different. It feels important.
When time is reserved for it, real time, it gets accomplished.
We can say anything is important, but that doesn’t make it so. Things become important when we put them on the calendar.
Personal goals, professional goals and organizational goals might be met if we talk about them, but that is truly just a matter of chance.
We we make the choice to add them to our calendar, schedule them in our day, they happen.
That is how we make things a priority. We schedule it.
Don’t wait to celebrate the big win at the end; celebrate every mile marker along the way.
Oh, and the Apple Watch Streak? I started over. Just 364 days to go.
#culturejourney
Kelly Croy is an author, speaker, and educator. Want to learn more? Send an email. • Sign-up for Kelly’s Newsletter. Listen to Kelly’s other podcast The Wired Educator Podcast with over 187 episodes of interviews and professional development. • Order Kelly’s book, Along Came a Leader a book on personal and professional leadership, and Unthink Before Bed: A Children’s Book on Mindfulness for your personal library. • Follow Kelly Croy on Facebook. • Follow Kelly Croy on Twitter. • Follow Kelly Croy on Instagram
