Are you consistent?
Seth Godin published a post the other day that said “This is my 3,000th blog post. In a row. It gets easier after the first 2,500.”
I’ve got distracted, been travellng in some internet-challenged areas, and realised that it’s been at least a week since I’ve posted here.
And I can’t remeber the exact figure, but something like 95 gazillion blogs have been started … and abandoned.
So what’s this all to do with Great Work?
Success is connected to consistency. Read Seth Godin’s The Dip (aka how to know when to keep going) or Clay Sharky’s fantastic Here Comes Everyone which talks about the power of social networking and the “power law” that says being #1 is (basically) 10 times as good as being #2 … which in turn is 10 times as good as being #3. And so on. (It’s also known as the Long Tail phenomena).
But consistency can be boring too. GM have been consistently turning out cars for some time now, and it’s not doing them much good.
Maybe the secret’s in separating out process and content.
Being consistent on the process means you keep showing up – and Woody Allen summed up the power of that nicely.
But don’t confused that with just putting out boring content. Mix things up, keep people guessing, disrupt expectations. That’s important too.
