Consistency Means Having Fun

Everyone says consistency is everything.

“1% improvement every day.”
“Discipline over motivation.”
“Show up even when you don’t feel like it.”

I believe that. I’ve lived that.

But here’s something that hit me recently:
What’s the point of consistency if it stops being enjoyable?

If you keep showing up to a system that drains you, at some point you’ll either break the system, or it’ll break you.

A few weeks ago, my routine was solid.
Morning learning work > Office > Evening personal work. I was working on learning about Azure AI Search, and Power Automate - pace was flowing.

And then it collapsed. Not all at once. Just... gradually.

In the mornings, I had my learning routine—exploring Power Automate and Azure offerings, which I accessed through my work laptop because of enterprise subscriptions.
Then came regular office work. In the evenings, I’d return to the learning track.

On weekends, I had to work on a Tally project that also needed a Windows setup.

At that point, I found myself juggling everything - learning, office work, and project tasks - on the same laptop.

The boundary between work and “my time” started to blur. I’d wake up, open the laptop, and I was already in work mode—before I even got a chance to think about my learning, my reflections, my plans.

That small shift threw everything off.

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I stopped checking my reflection board.
Stopped working on my learning items.
Didn’t even open my todo doc for days.

And suddenly, the thing I was looking forward to every morning… wasn’t something I wanted to touch anymore.

Instead, I binged 24 episodes of "The Apothecary Diaries" (enjoying it!) in two days. Didn’t plan to. Just... did.
I told myself I was tired. But I wasn’t.
I was bored. Burnt, maybe. But mostly bored.

That’s when this clicked:
I stopped because I wasn’t having fun anymore.

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Now - when I say “fun”, I don’t mean dopamine-chasing, scrolling, or sugar-hits.
I mean aliveness. Flow. That sense of rhythm where something clicks and time just moves.

Fun can be walking around the lake near my house.
Watching trees move. Seeing birds messing around by the water.
Or fixing a small piece of my wardrobe.
Or trying a weird side idea that wasn’t on the plan.
Not because it’s productive. But because it feels like me.

And maybe - maybe, that isn’t a break from the system.
That is the system.

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So I added a new question to my weekly retrospection:

“Did I have fun this week?”

Not “Was I entertained?”
Not “Did I rest?”

But: Did I enjoy something deeply enough to want to keep coming back to it?

If the answer is no for too many weeks in a row, something’s off.
Even if the routine looks good from the outside.

So I’ve added two more:

Am I feeling burnt out?
Do I need a distraction?

Sometimes, I just need to do the same task differently.
Sometimes, I need to switch tasks entirely.
And sometimes, I need to walk away, reset, and come back with fresh eyes.

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The big shift here is this:

Consistency doesn’t mean doing the same thing the same way every day.
It means continuing to show up in a way that works for you.

That might look like switching mediums.
That might look like skipping a day and reflecting instead.
That might look like changing the weight, the reps, the pace—just enough to keep it interesting.

I’m starting to think that variety isn’t the enemy of consistency.
It’s how you sustain it.

I was hitting most of what I wanted. Checklists were clearing. I even tweaked my retrospection process to better suit how I think.

Because consistency isn’t about how hard you grind.
It’s about how long you’re willing to keep showing up.
And you’re not going to show up for something that doesn’t feel good, at least some of the time.

So yeah—consistency means having fun.
Not always. Not recklessly. But enough to make you want to do it again tomorrow.

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Have you ever burnt out from something you actually loved? What brought you back?
Tell me your story, I’m genuinely curious.