F**CK Consistency, Persistance will get you further

If you want to be more productive, grow a business, get fitter, create content or pretty much improve anything in your life, there is one piece of advice you’ll hear over and over again: you need to be more consistent.

I think that’s bollocks. Or at least, only half the story.

I’m somebody who writes books about productivity and practical AI, speaks about AI adoption and helps people work out how to use artificial intelligence in their everyday lives and work. Over the last year I’ve written and published multiple books, built new programmes and communities, delivered keynotes and workshops, worked with businesses and organisations on AI adoption, created new frameworks and tools, experimented with more AI platforms than I care to remember and helped more than a thousand people explore how AI could help them make changes in their lives.

I’ve done all of that alongside a full-time leadership role, running my own business and being a solo parent.

And genuinely, I don’t think I’ve been particularly consistent.

I’ve launched things, sold things, spoken on stages, created courses and challenges, built partnerships and tested countless ideas. I’ve also disappeared from social media, neglected my email list, changed my mind, abandoned projects, resurrected old ones and got ridiculously excited about ideas that I decided were terrible approximately 48 hours later.

From the outside, my output might look like consistency. From the inside, it looks much more like persistence. And I think understanding the difference between consistency and persistence is becoming even more important in the age of AI.

What is the difference between consistency and persistence?

Consistency means doing something regularly and repeatedly over time. Persistence means continuing towards something that matters, even when your actions, circumstances or approach change along the way.

That distinction might sound small, but I think it’s massive.

• Consistency says, “I go to the gym three times a week.” Persistence says, “I haven’t exercised for two weeks, but I’m going today.”
• Consistency sends the newsletter every Thursday. Persistence realises you haven’t emailed your list for a month and sends the email rather than spending another month feeling guilty about it.
• Consistency follows the marketing plan. Persistence launches something, discovers nobody wants it, asks some questions, changes the offer and has another go.

Consistency looks fantastic on a habit tracker. Persistence can look messy as hell.

And yet, when I look at most of the meaningful things I’ve achieved in my life and business, persistence has probably mattered more.

Because I’m really good at giving myself grace, accepting that I don’t always have the same capacity to be consistent as others, and I am simply great at coming back when I am ready.

Why consistency can become a productivity trap

I don’t think consistency itself is bad. Of course it isn’t. Repeating useful behaviours over time can produce incredible results.

The problem starts when consistency becomes the measure by which we decide whether we’re succeeding….whether the consistent behaviour is working or not.

Miss the gym for two weeks and you’ve “fallen off the wagon.” Stop posting on LinkedIn and you’ve “lost momentum.” Forget to use the productivity system you created in January and apparently you need another productivity system.

This creates a strange all-or-nothing relationship with productivity where breaking the pattern feels like failure.

I see the same thing happening with AI adoption.

People tell me they feel behind with AI because they haven’t used ChatGPT for a few weeks, haven’t tried the latest AI tools or haven’t built the clever AI workflow somebody on LinkedIn says has saved them 37 hours before breakfast.

You haven’t failed at AI.

You haven’t failed at productivity.

You haven’t gone back to square one.

You just need to decide what the next useful thing is.

Persistence is the ability to come back

This is perhaps my favourite definition of persistence:

You don’t have to keep going perfectly. You have to keep coming back.

That completely changes the question.

Instead of asking, “How do I become more consistent?” I can ask, “What can I do next?”

That might be sending one email, making one decision, following up with one potential client, finishing one loose end or finally tackling one task I’ve been avoiding.

I don’t have to rebuild my entire productivity system before I can make progress.

I can just make another move.

For people who struggle with traditional productivity advice, I think this is particularly important. A lot of productivity systems assume that once you’ve designed the perfect routine, you’ll simply keep following it.

That has never particularly resembled my experience of being human….did I mention I have ADHD? Oh and I am a soloparent…last night for example my 13 year old slipped into evening conversation that she thinks she might have fractured her wrist.

Life happens. Work gets busy. Motivation changes. Priorities move. Unexpected opportunities and challenges appear. Sometimes you get distracted and sometimes you simply cannot be arsed.

Persistence allows for all of that.

But there is an obvious problem.

Some things really do need to happen consistently.

What should actually be consistent?

This is where my “fuck consistency” argument becomes a little more nuanced.

There are absolutely things in life and business that benefit from consistency. If you’re running a business, leads need following up, invoices need chasing, customers need looking after, meetings need preparing for, content needs repurposing and important information needs remembering.

Consistency matters.

But here’s the question I think we should be asking in 2026:

Does all of that consistency have to come from you?

Because this is one of the most useful ways I have found to think about AI productivity.

Get AI to do the shit that you can’t seem to manage consistently no matter how hard you try.

How can AI help you be more consistent?

AI can help with consistency by supporting repetitive, predictable and easy-to-forget tasks while leaving the decisions, relationships, creativity and judgement with the human.

That distinction matters.

I don’t particularly want artificial intelligence to replace the parts of my work that make me good at what I do. I want to bring my experience, judgement, humour, relationships, ideas, creativity and ability to understand people.

I do, however, need help remembering stuff.

I need help spotting things I’ve forgotten, getting started on boring tasks, organising information, turning thoughts into usable first drafts and keeping track of things I’ve decided are important.

That is where using AI for productivity becomes genuinely interesting.

For example, AI can help me review my priorities at the beginning of the week and remind me what I’ve said matters. It can help me turn messy meeting notes into actions, prepare follow-up emails, repurpose something I’ve already created, organise information, create repeatable processes and help me pick something back up when I’ve wandered away from it.

Add AI automations and scheduled tasks into that mix and the possibilities become even more interesting, because some of those actions don’t need to depend entirely on me remembering to initiate them.

The goal isn’t to automate my humanity.

It’s to automate or support some of the repetitive stuff surrounding it.

AI productivity shouldn’t mean doing more

This is one of my biggest frustrations with the current conversation about AI and productivity.

So much of it seems to be about increasing output.

• How can I create more content with AI?
• How can I write emails faster?
• How can I automate my marketing?
• How can I use ChatGPT to get more done?

Those aren’t necessarily bad questions, but I think there is a better one:

How can I use AI to make it easier to consistently do the things that matter?

That’s a very different approach to AI productivity.

I don’t want AI to help me cram another twenty tasks into my working week. I want it to reduce the friction around the things I already know I need to do.

Sometimes that means automation.

Sometimes it means a reminder.

Sometimes it means giving me a starting point.

Sometimes it means helping me organise the mess inside my head.

And sometimes it simply means helping me work out what the bloody hell I’m supposed to be doing next.

Human persistence + machine consistency

This is increasingly how I think about the relationship between humans, AI and productivity:

Human persistence + machine consistency = momentum.

I provide the persistence. Technology can provide some of the consistency.

I decide what matters; AI can help me remember it.

I decide what I want to say; AI can help me turn it into something useful.

I decide which relationships matter to my business; technology can help me remember when those relationships need attention.

I make the decisions; AI can help me keep track of them.

This isn’t about handing responsibility for my life or business over to artificial intelligence. Human judgement becomes more important, not less, because somebody still needs to decide what should be automated, what matters, what information can be trusted and when the machine needs to get out of the bloody way.

Stop trying to become a robot

For decades, productivity systems have tried to make humans behave more like machines: predictable, systematic, repeatable and consistent.

Then along comes technology that is extraordinarily good at predictable, systematic and repeatable tasks, and somehow we’ve decided to use it to generate inspirational LinkedIn posts while humans carry on trying to remember all the boring shit.

I think we’ve got that backwards.

Let AI help with the consistency where it makes sense.

Keep the messy human stuff for yourself.

Think. Question. Connect with people. Experiment. Change your mind. Try things. Learn things. Make decisions. Take risks. Fuck things up occasionally and use what you learn to make a better decision next time.

Action creates feedback. Feedback creates learning. Learning informs the next action.

That isn’t failure to be consistent.

That’s how experimentation works.

So, fuck consistency

Or perhaps, more accurately, fuck the idea that you need to personally provide every ounce of consistency required to make your life and work function.

Work out which things genuinely need to happen consistently and build support around them. Use AI where it genuinely makes sense. Automate appropriate repetitive tasks, create reminders and systems that don’t rely entirely on memory or motivation, and save more of your attention for the things that actually require a human being.

Your job isn’t to execute your entire life flawlessly.

Your job is to keep coming back to the things that matter.

Again and again, however imperfectly.

That’s persistence.

And I’ll take it over perfect consistency any day