How Choice and Consistency Influence Success
Posted on April 08, 2020 by Lucy Adams BSEd MS PCC, One of Thousands of ADD ADHD Coaches on Noomii.
Coach Lucy Adams explains how too many options and too little consistency combine to derail us from achieving out goals. How can a coach help?
Do you want to get your finances under control but you just haven’t found the right budgeting app? Have you set a goal to organize your professional contacts, but you’ve yet to identify just the right client management system? Are you always at loose ends, missing appointments and forgetting to complete tasks, but, despite all your research, you’ve yet to discover the perfect calendar, planner, and time management tool?
How much time have you spent online searching for the solution to solve your problem and help you attain your goal? How many rabbit holes have you descended into, only to emerge hours later with nothing to show for it? How often do you think you’ve found what you’re looking for only to ditch it and start over again a few weeks or a few months later?
If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. I have clients every day who tell me, for example, how desperate they are to get their finances in order, but then stall out on making progress to that end because they can’t, won’t, or don’t commit to a solution. Two things are at play here: 1) People become overwhelmed by too many choices; 2) People lack faith in the power of consistency.
A classic study by psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper demonstrates how crippling an excessive number of choices can be. Though not immediately intuitive, the optimum number of items from which to choose is about four. Too many choices causes paralysis; in the end, we choose nothing at all.
While the Internet provides us valuable access to a multitude of options for solving a particular problem, it doesn’t narrow those options down to a manageable number. By Googling key words, we feel like we’re doing something to get the result we want, but we never actually move forward toward our desired outcome.
And if/when we finally decide on something, we then worry that by choosing one particular solution with inevitable flaws, we now are giving up the chance to hit upon the perfect tool, app, system, etc. to meet our specific needs. Those inevitable flaws that become apparent over time and the nagging thought that there’s something else out there we missed in all our previous searches work together to increase our discontent. Soon, we;re scrambling back down another rabbit hole, while our finances, our organization, our time, etc. spiral out of control again.
Darren Hardy, author of The Compound Effect, is quoted as saying, “If I were to boil down the number one trait responsible for any unusual success I have experienced in life, I think it would be this: unyielding and relentless commitment to consistency." Consistency separates the people who say they want to succeed at something from the people who actually do succeed. It’s critical to not only select a solution to a problem, but also to adhere to that solution without wavering.
The key takeaway: Making a choice and mustering your staying power can get you unstuck and on track to achieving your goals, big or small.
How can a coach help? A coach assists you in narrowing the number of solutions from which to choose and then guides you through creating accountability strategies to keep you on track to achieving your goals.
