The necessary condition for success in anything

I’m most certain Michael Phelps got his 20 + gold medals by doing this. Keith Richards became good at playing guitar because of this. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy at writing. Steve Jobs and Elon Musk at building their businesses empires.

More average individuals too. They couldn’t have achieved success without this rule.

I did it to get into Cambridge and Harvard. To run my sub-3-hour marathon (yeah, I will forever be bragging about it, here is the story) I did it too.

It’s a super simple rule. Ain’t secret in any way. Simple to understand, but very difficult to follow.

It’s not a sufficient condition but necessary.

To be good at something, do it EVERY DAY.

I ran a fast marathon because I had trained every day. I achieved academic excellence in my younger days because I studied every day. When I had school breaks, I studied too.

And the other way around — whenever I failed and I failed a lot, I hadn’t followed this rule. I could blame my failures on other things. I can even say I worked hard and had the passion. Well, that’s just not enough. “Hard” doesn’t count without the consistency of performing a certain action or activity every day. I had spikes in activity and took pride in persevering through hard times. That doesn’t count. That’s pseudo perseverance, pseudo heroism.

Or let’s say I decide to teach my kid to play chess. Every night before bed we play chess. I do it a few times, it’s fun on some days, less so on others. So we stop playing chess every night. Maybe because I’m tired, or my child is tired, or taking the game to the next level requires more effort. Eventually, the activity completely disappears from our daily routine. Will my kid be good at chess? It’s all relative, but unlikely. Let me go even further here. If I don’t spend time with my kid EVERY DAY, will I even be a good (“successful”) parent?

This rule applies to our life’s broader areas. If I decide to eat healthily, I eat healthily, every day. Eating clean Monday through Thursday and eating junk on Friday night and then the weekend totally undermines “eating healthily”.

When I say every day I mean it. Every day. Of course, there can be a purposefully planned rest day, weekend reset, vacation, or hiatus. But I’m speculating that even these breaks are infrequent in the journeys of successful people. Consistent means…