How Being Consistent Will Help You Achieve Your Career Goals This Year

Do you constantly struggle to maintain good habits? Do you aspire to save more this year and push yourself towards success and wealth?

You may have set these goals last year, and lost momentum along the way. The good news is, with consistency, you can achieve what you have set out to. Consistency is power, and it is what inspires success.

Whether you are looking to get promoted, transition into working for yourself, run a successful business, exercise daily, improve your creativity or just be a better person, consistency is what will make the difference.

Renowned marathon-runner Eliud Kipchoge said, “When you bring motivation and discipline together, then you can be consistent. They say if you want to grow, consistency is the key. I’m confident in saying that consistency is key if you want to grow in a new profession. Be it sports. Be it law. Be it all sorts of professions. If you are not consistent, you cannot go anywhere. Consistency makes you grow.”

You can’t achieve anything, you can’t become anything, and you can’t reach any enviable height without consistency.

To realize any type of success in life, you have to consistently set goals and persistently work at them to completion.

How can you, therefore, be consistent?

1. Be specific

Instead of writing down vague and unreachable goals, be specific with the goals you want to set for yourself. By being specific, you’re giving your brain the roadmap to get things done.

The SMART acronym can help you come up with specific goals — by setting specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound goals, your ideas tend to move forward much more quickly.

Why are you working towards your goal in the first place?

What value is it adding?

What results are you hoping to see?

In the case of you making a career switch or finding a job, is it that you don’t want to have to depend on other people and want to be able to be financially independent?

By really nailing down the value that getting a job has, you’ll be able to not only motivate yourself but also be consistent in looking out for the results.

2. Make a daily commitment

Naomi, a customer service representative with over five years of experience, had been working with an e-commerce firm for three years. She had been awarded the ‘employee of the year’ award for two years running, while at the company.

Last year, the Customer Satisfaction Manager left the organization. Naomi thought this would be a good time for her to get the promotion she had always desired, for a chance to grow within the company.

The company, however, decided to bring in someone else to take up the position. This left Naomi feeling devastated and unworthy.

Through it all, she, however, decided to pick up the pieces and continue to show up for work regularly, and even take up more responsibility in her role.

Her commitment paid off and when she resumed work this year, she got the promotion, with an even higher salary!

It’s easy to skip doing something when it is not working out, eventually becoming inconsistent at it. If you haven’t gotten that job yet, don’t say you will never apply or go for any other interviews. Just show up because I can assure you that your effort will pay off in the end.

Being consistently committed – to that office or even to the job search as you send your CV, is 90% of the battle.

Although her promotion came a year later, Naomi did not attain her goal without the power of consistency. She emerged and ruled in her chosen field because she was committed.

3. Evaluate your progress

If you have not tried something new over some time and in a consistent manner, you cannot decide if it works. How will you be able to know its effectiveness if what you are evaluating is not performed consistently?

If you are looking for a job and have sent out 50 CVs a week for the past month and have not secured an interview invite, you probably need to reevaluate your strategy and tools. Is it your CV that is letting you down? You could come up with a revised plan that incorporates getting help with your CV from a CV writing professional.

Take time to evaluate your progress and to make any necessary adjustments.

You can’t fix what you can’t measure – so consistency of evaluating results is crucial to success.

In Conclusion,

Consistency is a great characteristic to build and implement in your life. The key to consistency is setting and achieving specific goals. Start by determining how you want to be more consistent in your life, and aim for these small goals. Over time, as you become more consistent, keep yourself motivated and accountable.

If you want a better career, happiness, success or whatever you deem important, the secret is to do consistently those things that will bring you those results while consistently avoiding those things that will deny you what you are aiming for.

If you’re not sure or you’re seeking clarity on where to start, with your job search, get advice from a mentor, family and friends, or a career coach.

Perminus Wainaina is the C.E.O and Managing Partner at Corporate Staffing Services, a leading HR consultancy firm based in Westlands. Through personalized career coaching he assists mid-level and senior professionals get solutions to complex and challenging career issues that they are facing. Click here for more on career coaching.