#136: I Finally Figured Out How To Be Consistent (It’s Not Discipline)

Be honest with me for a second, how many of the routines that you started on the first of January are you still doing? I know that you didn't come here to be called out, but stick with me. Now think about when you quit these routines. Four days in, maybe it was 15 days in, maybe you were solid for a couple of weeks and then life happened and it slipped away. If you clicked on this video, I know that this is not your first time doing this. You are stuck in a loop. At the start of every week or every month, you plan your perfect routine. You watch inspiring YouTube videos and save aesthetic photos on Pinterest and then you convince yourself that this time it's going to be different. Day one, you're fully motivated, fully inside it, but day five, that motivation dips a little. And by the end of the week, you are back to square one, waiting for another Monday or another first of the month to restart your life. I know this because I have been in this loop more times than I can count, even as recently as last year. And the most frustrating part is not the starting and the stopping. It is what it does to your identity. You start thinking that I am inconsistent. I lack discipline. So you try to force those things onto yourself while carrying a lot of guilt. But what if I told you that you are not inconsistent, that you don't lack discipline? Consistency was never really the problem. The problem is and was that your routines are badly designed and forcing motivation or forcing willpower is not going to fix that, but changing the design might. So in this video, I'm going to show you a very simple psychology back method that helps you stick to any routine without relying on motivation or willpower. I call it the real life consistency method. And it works even when you're tired, when you're busy, hormonal, unmotivated or even overwent. But first, let me show you exactly why every other routine that you've ever tried has failed. Because once you see this, you will never fall for it again. So when a routine doesn't work, most people automatically assume that they themselves are the problem. We assume that we didn't try hard enough, that we weren't disciplined enough. But routines don't fail because of lack of motivation or discipline. They fail because they're usually built on assumptions. They're not really designed to work for real life at all. Let me explain with examples. There are five criteria that decide whether any routine system will actually work for someone like you, someone with a real life, a real college, a real job, a real boss, a partner and definitely a shared bathroom situation. The first criteria is time investment. How many hours a day does this routine demand from you? Think about any trending morning routine. It starts with a 5 AM wake up time, then a 10 steps skincare routine, one hour of Pilates, Greensmoody, journaling, meditation, reading 10 pages. By the time you finish doing all of this, it is already 11 AM noon. When are you supposed to actually study or actually work? The same thing happens with workout routines. You tell yourself that you will work out properly this time. One and a half hours of the gym, full leg day, cardio stretching, maybe even a walk after work. It looks great on paper, but the moment you have a long work day or you have a bad night's sleep or any kind of social or family commitment that 90 minute workout becomes impossible. So instead of doing something, you end up doing nothing. Any routine that asks you for more than 20 to 30 minutes when you are starting out is setting you up to fail. Because the moment you have a busy day and in India we have a lot of busy days, the 3 hour routine is the first thing you are going to drop. The second criteria is your starting over when. How much of your current life do you have to move around or shift up to start this routine? Making up at 5 a.m. doesn't just require you to settle alarm, right? You have to change your sleep schedule, you have to change your dinner time, your evening routine, your social life, all of these things together, all at once. That Instagram morning routine, you are trying to add 10 new habits simultaneously. James Klaire obviously talks about this in atomic habits. Your brain is literally wired to resist big changes because it sees them as threats. So when you are trying to change 10 things, all at once, it is basically telling your brain the panic. The third criteria number 3 sustainability. Realistically, how long can you keep this going? Most routines only work on your best days. The days when you sleep well, when you wake up on time, when you feel motivated and when nothing goes wrong. And for a few days, maybe even a couple of weeks, it feels great. You are proud of yourself. You feel back on track. So realistically, you can stick to waking up at 5 a.m. if your bedtime is consistently 10 p.m. But that can only happen if you get home from work on time every single day. And that can only happen if your office has an extremely strict work life balance policy. That can only happen if you work in a great company. So on and so forth. You see how many that can only happen scenarios it requires to stick to a routine like this. The last year in January, my goal was to be more consistent with workout. I was so motivated in January, woke up at 7 a.m. every single morning, went to the gym full morning routine. Absolutely beautiful. It lasted about a week. Because the most days I had to work that lasted till midnight, I didn't get to have a proper dinner and I used to go to bed by 113. So with that schedule, I couldn't realistically sustain a 7 a.m. Wake up time without impacting my health and my sleep quality. Crytidia number 4 is flexibility. What happens when life throws a curve ball at you? Can your routine work around it or does the whole system collapse? You have one late night and you cannot realistically wake up at 5 a.m. the next day. Your boss dumps extra work on you and the 10 step morning routine goes out the window. Someone in the family is unwell and certainly you haven't worked out in two weeks. A good system should not break when life gets messy. Because life is messy, unexpected guests, family obligations, festivals, power cuts, traffic. If your routine cannot survive a bad week, it was never a real routine. It was a fantasy. And Crytidia number 5 is a reality check. Is this routine designed for someone who lives your life? Or someone with unlimited time, money and ring light in every room? This is a huge problem because most of us do not have the luxury over 3 hour morning. You might be living with a family, you might be sharing a bathroom, you might be commuting for 2 hours every single day, you might be dealing with a 9 to 5, you might have overtime. The social media morning routines were designed for content creators who filmed their routine as a part of their job. Their morning routine is their work, yours is not. There just be discipline advice was written by someone who has a personal chef and a home gym. That is not your reality. So what would actually work? If I could design the perfect routine system, here is what it would look like. And it takes 15 to 20 minutes a day, not 3 hours, to fit into your existing schedule, you don't have to blow up your entire life to start it. 3. It starts so small that your brain doesn't even realize you are changing. And 4. It survives bad days, busy weeks and months where life goes sideways. And it is designed for real people with real lives. And that system actually exists. I call it the real method. And it's about to change how you think about consistency forever. Now the real system has 4 phases, divire, embed, align and lock in. Each one builds upon the last phase, right? So you cannot skip phases in between. And by the end of this, once you've done all of this, you will not just have a routine, you will have a system that works even on your worst days. Let's get into it. Phase 1 is rewiring. Basically, changing how you think about motivation and consistency. The first shift you need to make has nothing to do with discipline. It is about redesigning how you think a routine should work in the first place. People treat motivation as their starting point. They wait to feel ready, excited or inspired and then they try to do everything all at once while that feeling lasts. The problem is that motivation is unstable, it is fleeting. It comes and goes. So when your routine is built on motivation, it automatically collapses the moment that your motivation dips. Rewiring or redesigning a routine means you stop asking how do I stay motivated and you start asking a much better question. How do I design this so that it still happens even when my motivation is low? And here is how you actually do that. First you design your routine for your lowest energy days. Instead of building your routines for your best days, you redesign them for the worst ones. Ask yourself, "On a tired, on a busy, on an average day, what is the smallest version of this habit that I can realistically stick to without resistance?" That version becomes your default. Not the intense, not the perfect version, but that version. So if your goal is fitness, for instance, your default is not going to be a 90 minute workout. Your default is going to be a 15 to 20 minute walk in the park next to your house. This is something you can do even when you don't feel like it. If your goal is studying, for instance, or working, your default is not a full deep work session. Your default is opening the laptop and working for just 10 focused minutes. Second thing you're going to do is separate starting from intensity. Most people quit because they confuse their starting point with doing a lot. But redesigning rewiring means that these two are no longer linked. Your only job is to start. Intensity is optional. Not your in-motion, you are allowed to do more, but it is a bonus, not a requirement. This basically removes the pressure and makes showing up feel doable instead of heavy. After this, you want to stop designing perfect streak routines. If your routine only works when it's done perfectly every day, it is badly designed. The designing means accepting that misdays are a part of the system, not a failure of it. So instead of asking, "How do I never miss a day?" You ask yourself, "How do I make this easy to come back to after I've missed one day or two days?" Whatever the cadence is. That one shift alone basically prevents most people from quitting. This is the biggest shift that has prevented me from quitting my routines in this past year. And then you are going to use motivation to build momentum not to perform. Motivation is not useless, but it is misused most of the time. So, when you feel motivated, don't try to do more with that energy. Instead, use that energy to redesign your system. Decide your minimum version, remove all of the unnecessary steps, set up the defaults that make starting easier. So basically, think of motivation as planning energy, not execution energy. Okay? You are basically following what I like to call the redesign rule. If a routine needs motivation to start, it's too expensive. If it works, even on low energy days, it will automatically work on high energy ones. Now, once you redesign the routine this way, consistency stops feeling like a discipline problem. It starts feeling very, very logical. And after that, we move on to step number two, embedding this routine into your real life and environment. And the best routine will fail if it constantly fights with your environment. So, most people, when they approach any routine, They try to change themselves first. They tell themselves to be more disciplined, more focused, more consistent But behavior does not change because of intention, right? It changes because of what's around you because of your environment So if your environment makes a habit very hard to start you will avoid it no matter how badly you want it Embedding basically means that you stop asking how do I force myself to do this and start asking how do I make this my easiest Option in the day. Here's how you actually do that and if you read atomic habits You will probably already relate to this first is attaching that habit to something you already do The fastest way to embed a routine is to stop treating it like a separate event instead just tie it to an existing anchor in your day So if you want to move more get a stepper inside your house and do that while watching tv If you want to journal keep that journal next to your bed right one line before sleeping if you want to study or work Open your laptop at the same time every day after you sit at your desk not when you feel ready Next you want to reduce the friction between you and this habit every extra step is a chance to quit So embedding means removing as many steps as possible layout your work out close the night before Keep your book on your pillow instead of on a shelf charge your phone outside the bedroom If you want to stop scrolling choose the nearest gym etc all of this then you want to read design for your real schedule Not an ideal one So if your mornings are chaotic stop forcing a morning routine on yourself embed your habit in the afternoon or the evening instead when you have more time If you travel very often or if you have very long work days build a shorter more portable version of this habit that can happen from anywhere For instance last year I handed up building this travel workout routine so anytime I go anywhere It's just like five different movements body weight exercises that I can do from anywhere in the world Consistency does not come from perfect timing it comes from predictable placement And finally you're going to make your default choice the right choice Put the things you want to do in plain sight make the things you want to avoid slightly inconvenient So when you're surroundings nudge you towards the habit you do not need to rely on willpower Case in point is the step or that I have placed right in front of my TV anytime I'm watching TV I will step on that step or it will add to my step count See how easy that was this basically means that if your environment supports the habit that you're trying to build You will not need discipline to follow it when your habits fit into your lifestyle instead of fighting it Consistency becomes very very automatic now once you've redesigned your routine once you've embedded into your life The next step is to align it with who you are this is where I think a lot of routines quietly die because the goals You are chasing are not really aligned with what you want in life They are borrowed maybe from Instagram from friends from what you think you should be doing So I want you to stop all of that and ask yourself honestly How many goals on the list of your goals are there because you genuinely want them And how many are there because you saw someone else doing it and now you wanted to Because if a goal is not aligned with who you are or who you want to become Staying consistent with it will always feel like a struggle think of it this way If you buy a skin care product that does not suit your skin You are not going to be able to use it no matter how good it looks on someone else That is exactly what is happening with your routines You are trying to stay consistent with goals that don't fit you your life and your ambition Here's how to fix that Firstly tie your goal to a personal value start by writing down your goals All of the goals that you've made for this year and then make a column next to them and write down why you want to achieve these particular goals And not a surface level why okay you want a deep personal value based why If you cannot come up with a deep enough why then that goal is probably not aligned with what you want in life For example, let's say that your goal is to save one lakh rupees this year And I ask you why do you want to do that? If you say because everyone says it's important or because my parents say it's important That goal is not aligned with where you are in life and what you want to do You probably need to reassess within life But if you say because I want to get closer to financial freedom Or because I want to quit my job by the end of this year and I need runway Then that goal is very aligned to your personal values When you anchor a goal to your personal value Dropping it feels like betraying who you are And that is a lot more powerful than discipline alone You're not the person who tries to save money You are someone who saves money because it gives you freedom And the second thing you want to do here is to romanticize the tasks associated with these habits Because if you are not going to enjoy your tasks You are not going to follow through Period. So if your goal is to work out, where pretty you work out sets to the gym If your goal is to save money, use an app that makes you feel in control of your finances If your goal is to be more productive, go to an aesthetic cafe to do your work If you want to eat better, make your healthy meals look beautiful If you want to feel like the main character, play a playlist that makes you feel like a main character When you are getting ready Like a candle when you journal all of these things, right? All of this is not superficial Because when you romanticize a task, your brain starts associating that habit with pleasure instead of pain I'll tell you something about myself I have to get dressed up and do my makeup for filming And I film almost every single day But I'm not somebody who loves or enjoys doing makeup At least I was not that kind of person initially But then I saw how my friends get ready They play this beautiful main character playlist They are dancing, they are in the groove And during that time, they make it their meet time while they are getting ready And they enjoy getting ready as a result And when I started doing that, boom All of that friction went away And now getting ready is part of my process of filming a video There's this very popular research by BJ Fogg at Stanford Which shows that emotions and not repetition are what actually wire in habits You are rewiring your brain to want to do this When you romanticize a task And finally, we come to phase number four, locking in This is the final step And it is making sure your routine does not fall apart on bad days Because bad days are not an exception in life They are part of your life You will have bad days when you are tired When you are busy, when you are low on energy Or when you are just not in the mood And most routines are designed to work only on good days Same time, same effort, same intensity So the moment that you cannot show up perfectly, the routine breaks Locking in means designing your routines so that it works Both on good days and bad days Especially on bad days First, you want to build a minimum version We also talked about it in the first phase This is the smallest version that you agree to do even on your worst days So if your usual workout is 40 minutes The minimum might be 10 minutes of movement If your routine is studying for three hours every single day The minimum might be opening your notes and reading one page You do this so that showing up never ever feels too hard Second, you want to allow yourself to scale up on the good days On days when you have energy and you have time and you can do more But that is a bonus not the rule The rule is the minimum This keeps consistency without you burning out And thirdly, drop the idea of perfect streaks altogether This is not something you restart It is an ongoing journey with interruptions along the way And I think this is the mindset shift that has helped me stay consistent more than anything else Anytime I pause, anytime I halt Let's say that I'm on a fitness journey And I have to go to meet it to meet my end-laws Or I have a family event that I have to attend And that day I'm not able to work out It's okay, that's a hurdle in the way I can get back to it the next day You basically don't start over just because you missed a day Just like you don't restart a journey Because you are in the middle of traffic You don't just abandon your car There go back and come back again to start it You keep going from where you are One misday to misday is this not cancel the progress that you have already made What matters isn't never slipping It is how easily you continue after a slip When your routine is essentially logged in this way Bad days do not derail you from the good days And the good days do not exhaust you That is for us writes about this in-do it today The trap is not failing The trap is letting the failure convince you to stop trying Your routine does not have to be perfect It just needs to be protected And that was it Let's bring all of this together If you have struggled with consistency It was never because you were lazy or you lacked discipline It is because the routines that you were following Were never designed for your life The fix for this is not trying harder It is designing better routines So you start by redesigning your routine So they work even on low energy days Instead of relying solely on motivation Then you embed them into your actual life And your environment so that they stop fighting your schedule You then align them with your values and your identity So they matter to you and don't feel forced And finally you lock them in By designing them to survive both the good days And the bad days without needing to restart There's a quote that I really really love You do not have to be smart But you can make smart decisions Similarly you do not have to be the most disciplined person in the room But you can make decisions like a disciplined person You don't have to be a 5am person You just have to make smart and national decisions every single day And those decisions compound One-twenty-one at work out becomes a fitness identity One evening outfit of planning Becomes a polished put together woman One day of forgiving yourself becomes a lifetime of resilience The women, the men who seem effortlessly consistent Are not different from you and me They just have systems that work for them And now you have one too So if this video helped you see consistency differently Let me know in the comments which phase you are starting with And if you want more videos like this Make sure you're subscribed Make sure you go check out this one And this playlist right here Because it has a lot more videos like this And I'm gonna see you guys very very soon in the next one Bye (gentle music)