braindump

Article the Power of Flexible Consistency

• [[anne-laure-le-cunff]]
• [[2020-12-04]]
• source

Summary

Highlights

• For one year, I consistently wrote almost every week.
• The keyword here is “almost.” According to the Cambridge Dictionary, consistency is “the quality of always behaving or performing in a similar way.”
• The problem with rigid consistency is that it does not reflect the way life works
• Rather than a specific framework, flexible consistency is a mindset.
• offers a set of principles to bounce back and keep on making progress.

Plan for Disruption

• You can not expect to predict all events, but you can create a contingency plan to make sure they don’t derail your routines over the long term.

Fail like a Scientist

• Learning is a perpetual experiment. Whenever things don’t go to plan, see it as a personal growth opportunity. Failing like a scientist means overcoming our fixed mindset, and considering every result is a new data point—whether it was the result you wanted or not.

Schedule over scope

• “Reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule.”
• the problem with the “focus on a specific goal” approach is that we just tend to skip a session if suddenly there doesn’t seem to be enough time
• It’s not always perfect, I did have to skip a couple of editions, and sometimes I wished I had more time. But by planning for disruption, failing like a scientist, and reducing the scope when needed, I manage to stick to an overall schedule.

Mindful time-blocking

• The crucial part of mindful time-blocking is to be flexible. Blocks can be moved or made shorter. Ideally, try to never delete a block. This only works because you need to be highly selective with time blocks in the first place.
• if something’s come up:
  • move the block
  • shorten the block
  • delete the block (should be avoided)

It’s okay when things don’t work out exactly as we planned. Long-term success is not a result of being perfect all the time, which is impossible. It’s the result of showing up consistently. That’s only possible if we accept the inherent chaos of life.

References

• Do What You Will (Collected works of Aldous Huxley) #book