Consistency

Two months in, and my body still aches putting running shoes on for the next run. Progress feels invisible. It’s a lot of effort, and quitting feels tempting.

I’m tracking the consistency, I did the thing? Check ✅ But here’s where I almost got it wrong, focusing on consistency alone was a motivation mistake.

Consistency is the foundation. But tracking the right outcome is what fuels momentum when motivation fades.

The Plan

I typically start each year with a bunch of life goals to track throughout the year, it’s kinda become a thing for me over the last 5 years.

This year I went for the classic ‘improve fitness’ and decided to form an exercise habit to achieve this, and set about running three times a week, no matter what. I’ve probably read too much James Clear.

“Success is the product of daily habits not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.”
— James Clear, Atomic Habits

I had a plan to run consistently. But ‘improve fitness’ wasn’t a goal, it was a vague wish, unmeasurable and impossible to know when I’d achieved it.

The Problem

Consistency alone is not enough.

Sure, it’s easy to measure - Did I do the thing today? - and ticking the box can feel satisfying in the short-term. And yes, consistency is likely to lead to the outcome you want. But it doesn’t measure an outcome, it doesn’t tell you if you’re actually making meaningful progress.

You can be consistent without making meaningful progress. And when you can’t see results, motivation dies.

After two months of habitual running, I realised I’d fallen into the consistency trap: I had no idea if the runs were working. My body still ached. Runs still felt hard. I had evidence I was showing up, but it didn’t prove it mattered.

Here’s why this trap is so common:

We’re wired for instant feedback. Let’s be honest, we all love immediate results. Social media feeds us highlight reels: dramatic transformations, overnight success. We start to believe meaningful change should be fast. It’s a dangerous belief that distorts reality and sets us up for frustration when our progress doesn’t match those warped expectations.

Early progress is genuinely invisible. Physiologically, it takes weeks or months for real adaptations to occur - let’s remember that reality. You show up, put in effort, and nothing much changes. Most people quit here.

Our brains need feedback loops. Waking up to do hard things with no tangible upside requires serious determination. In the early stages, tracking consistency is often the only thing that keeps you going. But it’s not enough long-term.

The Solution

Track outcomes, not just actions.

I needed to get specific. What does ‘improve fitness’ actually mean?

For me, that meant cardiovascular health (I’d recently been learning from Dr. Peter Attia’s work on longevity), measurable through VO₂ max, a key predictor of healthspan (how long you’ll live well, not just long).

Put another way:

• Objective: what I want to achieve (destination) = Cardiovascular health
• Key Result: how success will be measured (evidence) = Increased VO₂ max
• Initiative: actions I’ll take to get there (path) = run 3x per week

Consistency keeps you in the game early on when results are invisible. But outcome tracking is what tells you if the game is worth playing.

Review data at key milestones, monthly or quarterly, not daily. That’s when you’ll see whether your effort is translating into real progress.

If it is? Keep going. If it’s not after 3-4 months? Time to pivot or adjust.

What Actually Happened

So I committed to tracking both action and outcome. Ticking off those “Did a run” boxes kept me accountable. But honestly, it wasn’t particularly motivating. I had to stick with it for a while before I started seeing any real change, and it was that change that became the true motivator.

After a few months of steady progress, I started reviewing my performance data monthly and saw real improvements. Riding that high, I extended my habit further, pushing my target to four runs per week.

Running Habit

• ✅ Target: Start with 3 runs per week in January, increased to 4 from March
• 🏁 Milestone: Completed run #100 on 14th July

Performance Improvements

Note: VO₂ max is based on Apple Watch readings. While not clinically precise, the trend over time is a useful and consistent indicator of progress.

It didn’t feel fast. Most of the time it felt hard, slow, invisible, and unremarkable…

But by sticking with it, and pausing to reflect and analyse outcome data at key milestones, I saw a very different story emerge. I stayed consistent, but most importantly, I was seeing improvements across all the metrics that matter to me.

That was July. It’s November now.

August continued to be successful with 10k and 5k races, hitting PBs in each. The summer weather helped, but more importantly, the four runs per week habit had fully cemented.

Full transparency, my consistency has since faded slightly. I’ve slipped back to three runs per week, partly because life got busier, partly because I got complacent after hitting my PBs. I’ve missed a few runs, and one entire week in September.

However, I have proof it works. Reviewing the data I can see my VO₂ max drops when I’m inconsistent and climbs when I get back on track. That feedback loop is what brings me back, even after falling off.

The Takeaway

Consistency is your foundation. Outcome tracking is your fuel. Together, they create sustainable progress.

Most people quit because they only track one: they check boxes without knowing if they’re improving, or they obsess over daily results before real change has time to compound.

The magic happens when you do both, and when you pause at meaningful milestones to look back at how far you’ve come.

If you’re just starting, commit to the action and build the habit. But set a date 3-4 months out to review your data. That’s when you’ll know if you’re on the right path.