Have you ever wondered how to get consistency and traction in your life - with your habits, housework, or homemaking?
I know for years I worked hard on consistency. I made it my word of the year for several years running, yet I never felt like I made much headway.
I would build a full, comprehensive plan. It would work on Mondays, but fall apart on Tuesday.
I tried bare minimum basic routines. Even that often appeared to be too much to be consistent with.
If I thought I was getting traction, something would inevitably change. A child would give up a nap. Something would come up and we’d be out of the house for a few unplanned hours in a day. We’d have people over for dinner and I’d have different work in the afternoon to do and more dishes than normal afterwards.
I started to wonder if consistency was even possible.
Should you be consistent?
“Just be consistent!” was the advice I was hearing from all corners, as if all it took was a good plan and determination.
Yet what I found was that if consistency was going to be my main goal, other things would have to be sacrificed to it: I’d have to say “no” to my mom stopping by, or only open our doors to hospitality on the same day every week, or badger the kids into keeping up with my plan.
I always ended up sacrificing the consistency to the emergent needs around me, and I wasn’t really sorry about it.
Was consistency even worth bothering about? Maybe mom life isn’t supposed to be consistent.
Was I just flying by the seat of my pants? Sometimes it felt like it, but I really wasn’t.
What does it mean to be consistent?
So then I started thinking about what being consistent means.
My default assumption is that consistent means doing things the same, all the time. Every Monday, 8am sharp, we all start chores. That’s consistency.
Most Mondays, before we start school, the chores are usually done did not count as consistent.
Sameness over time, as a goal, didn’t even sound right, and it certainly didn’t fit real life. How does growth fit in with that?
So, of course, I looked the word up in the dictionary:
Reliability or uniformity of successive results or events
Hm. I had assumed only uniformity, but what if reliability was the real goal?
We did reliably do chores in the morning. Was that good enough to count, even if it didn’t happen on autopilot, like clockwork, at the same time every day?
Then this part of the definition struck me:
Agreement or logical coherence among things or parts; compatibility
Do our days cohere? Is our life agreeable? Does it have an internal logic holding it all together? If so, that’s also a form of consistency. Are we living consistent with our purpose? That’s a level of consistency that has nothing to do with repeated sameness over time. That’s a human consistency rather than machine consistency.
And there was another definition as well:
Degree of density, firmness, or viscosity.
What is our family’s consistency? What is the texture of our family? There is no one, single Right consistency. There’s the proper consistency for whipped egg whites and a different one for whipped cream. You have to know the consistency you’re going for with each. You have to know what you’re dealing with.
Our family’s consistency is part of our family’s personality, culture, and atmosphere, which is my duty to maintain and direct as the homemaker.
When consistency is perfectionism in disguise
My dreams of consistency were actually dreams of perfectionism. I changed the label to make it sound better, but the heart was the same. I wanted things worked out such that I always got what I wanted, I didn’t have to adjust and adapt or learn and grow.
I just wanted to set it all up and set it spinning in perpetual motion. I wanted a system so perfect no one (myself mostly) would need to be good.
Yet what if “being good” *consistently* meant adapting to real life as it unfolds, keeping my plan as feasible yet willingly and cheerfully giving it up to serve others better when needed? Could that be called consistent as well?
What if we changed the terms entirely? What if I gave up my perfectionism for prudence and perseverance?
The perfectionist, sameness definition of consistency desires everything to be put together up front so that no wisdom is needed in the moment. If we just get it all figured out before we begin, then once we begin we will no longer need to exercise discernment.
But God’s goal for us is to grow in wisdom, which means He puts us in circumstances that require us to exercise discernment, prudence, patience, and perseverance.
If we consistently respond with faith to His direction day by day, we’re not flying by the seat of our pants and we are being consistent. We’re just not doing the exact same thing at the exact same time and getting the exact same result day over day. God did not make us machines and does not call us to behave as machines.
The kind of consistency we should have
As you make your plans and routines for the upcoming school year, don’t overthink it in an attempt to set yourself up for sameness every day. Instead, give yourself a baseline to return to as a default.
The reality is that people behave differently day over day, we make different levels of mess day over day, we have different situations arise that call for on-the-spot judgement calls.
There is no one-size-evenly-applied effort that will give us the same end result every day or every week. That is a pipe dream, wishful thinking, and perfectionist ideal.
God has a life far more interesting planned for us which requires our full engagement and attention, fixed on Him in faith. He will increase not only our faith but also our wisdom as we respond appropriately moment by moment.
You know that keeping a daily card and a weekly review gives you a good baseline. The goal isn’t to keep a perfect record of either. Something will happen to prevent you from one or the other at times. You can roll with it because you know where you’ll return to when you can.
The weekly review didn’t happen in its appointed slot? Do it Tuesday morning anyway. That’s perseverance and consistency.
The daily card you made in the morning doesn’t apply by lunch? Toss it and write a new one. You’re exercising prudence and recognizing what you’re being called to today, which you didn’t predict the night before. No biggie. No worries.
August Consistency
This August inside Convivial Circle we’re going to be working on proper, wise consistency all month.
It’s our monthly topic and we have weekly seminars on consistency, a brain dump, and some baby steps to build right consistency as we go into a new season and new rhythms. We need to think about our life rightly to live it out rightly.
We’d love to have you join us!
- Get gospel-focused advice and encouragement.
- Level up your plans and progress, one step at a time.
- Find accountability with likeminded women without any social media drama.
- Experience the homemaking mentoring you’ve always wanted.
- Learn to love being a homemaker!
The direction & accountability homemakers need to make noticeable progress in their home management skills.
Just $27.99/month
(or save with a quarterly or annual plan)