My partner finished paying off her mountain of student-debt on May 1st. This six figure mountain took almost exactly 5 years to climb, or maybe it was a deep underground cavern she was climbing out of…

Like most accomplishments in this world it was not a glamours slaying of the dragon, but rather a death by one thousand cuts. The daily effort of consistency meeting persistence and trusting the process.

That can sound abstract, so let’s get concrete. What did the daily effort really look like? It looked like keeping health optimized with high quality home-cooked meals and lots of daily movement, so high energy and optimism propel her to focus on work that needed to be done. It looked like biking to work each day, walking to the store for errands, and dinner-dates at home instead of out. It looked like having friends over for dinner instead of meeting them out. It looked like reading books and making art instead of watching cable or scrolling through social media. 

The daily effort meant setting clearly defined goals, putting it in a place where she wouldn’t forget about it, and writing down what she was doing each week to move closer towards that goal. In this case, she used bi-weekly goals that could be crossed off as we went for extra satisfaction. 

The daily effort for something like money is fun because it is easy to see and measure, but it really does apply to so many areas of life: fitness, relationships, knowledge, career development, projects (like writing a book). It even applies to areas outside of human life and in nature: the sun-shower is more effective for growing crops than a hurricane, and the slow moving glacier cuts more rock than a landslide. 

In this information age of distraction I do believe consistency is a super-power, and I hope this story encourages you to stay on your course. Often you don’t realize how close you are to the finish until you are there…of course, then it is time to start again.