Putting in the Reps

For years I’ve been told about the benefits of consistency and routine, most often in the context of how to be successful.

I’ve always chafed at this advice. I associated routine with sameness, consistency with predictability. I believed both that this would make my life boring.

Even more, I believed that I was not built for this. My family moved often. I spoke more than one language as a child, then lost them. I didn’t have friends for very long because we would soon relocate and I stopped expecting to. I found strength in being independent, self-sufficient, and adaptable.

In college, I joked that I majored in theater primarily because it allowed me to completely change what I was doing every semester and still graduate. I loved focusing on something intensely - and briefly - before moving on to the next thing.

I started my work life in theater and then moved on to other short-term, cyclical work. I developed skills in functioning with high variability in schedule, location, and even amount of sleep. I changed careers multiple times. I was an early cord-cutter so that my phone number could stay consistent even as I moved house every year or two.

My belief in my inability to maintain a routine was reinforced.

By extension, I expected that I was never going to be able to be successful (however that would be defined). Whatever successes I had (and there have been a few), I attributed to luck or circumstance in addition to hard work that I did for a while (before stopping to move on to something else).

Throughout, I kept reading up on habits, trying to crack the code on how to get myself to do them. I understood that my mindset about not being able to do them (or maybe just not wanting to because I didn’t want my life to get boring) was the primary thing in my way, but couldn’t see a way out.

And then I heard James Clear talking about just putting in the reps.

Somehow this got through to me. Treating the formation of a habit as its own end goal made no sense. I don’t have a clear idea of what “success” would look like so that wasn’t helping me to focus, but I know what it means to practice something over and over until you get that skill. I know what it means to work a muscle repeatedly in order to build strength.

I can’t speak Spanish if I don’t take the time to do the lessons consistently.

I wouldn’t have been able to climb a 600’ wall if I hadn’t put in years of training on other routes.

My theater jobs were cyclical, but my practice and study of it was consistent.

What I write has changed over these 40+ years, but my focus on improving my writing has been consistent.

I don’t need to create a routine that feels boring, but I do need to put in the reps consistently. I need to commit to the process and not be hung up on the outcome.

Without the process there is no outcome anyway.

Don’t get stuck on the end.

Use the desired end to help identify and set up the process, but then let it go and just put in the reps and find out how far you can go.