Consistent Effort

You are what you do consistently. Those who know me know me well know me as a lively, energetic, and passionate guy. While I certainly consider myself as all those things, I feel like my personality has matured and settled down to the point where it’s brought a new found sense of peace and clarity. This clarity has given me the mental bandwidth and energy needed to deeply reflect, and doing so has provided me with a lot of life lessons. The biggest one that keeps presenting itself is the power of consistent effort.

Consistent effort is key to achieving success in most endeavors. Whether it’s athletic, academic, career, wellness, business, or anything else we take on, consistent effort will breed success. While this may seem bluntly obvious, how many people actually do it? Most people go “all-in” for a short stretch of time, investing constant and unsustainable effort up front in an attempt to see results as quickly as possible, only to burn out and quit before they make any substantial progress. This type of binging effort does not lead to success and isn’t realistic, practical, or maintainable. I’ve come to realize that putting in focused effort in short bursts more frequently has allowed me to achieve so much more than my previous binge, crash, repeat effort cycle, to the point where I now believe I can use it to achieve success in anything I take on.

Relating this to soccer/training, stop worrying about the perfect plan and simply invest in the things that matter to you. Figure out what you want to develop in your players (physically, technically, and tactically), and consistently invest effort into those areas. For example, if playing in transition is important to you, dedicate time each session to working on the transition phase of the game. This applies to skill and athletic development as well. Consistently invest effort into the skills and physical attributes you want to develop. The immediate results won’t be as profound as pouring copious amounts of effort into it up front, however, it will far out-produce that short burst in the long run as your team/players continue to revisit the concepts you want to instill and the skills you want to develop.

The lesson in all of this is to change how you are putting in effort. Put in shorter, more focused, more frequent bouts over a long period of time. Doing this will lead to far greater results in the long run and will eventually instill habits of success.

Thanks for reading,

-JL