Consistency is for the Dead
Organism over mechanism
I’ve not written here for a good few months. Initially, for practical reasons, I became busy with a work opportunity for the consulting business I’ve started (my other substack:
). Getting a business off the ground is all-consuming, and in the process, too much screentime was giving me eye strain, so I’ve had to temporarily shelve many of the ideas and aspirations I have for this Ordinary Mastery project.At times I’ve felt guilty for not writing here - isn’t that silly! And I now have so many half-written pieces in draft that had the initial enthusiasm and momentum of the inspired creativity you get when you first delve into an idea which now seem like a burden, calling me to finish and publish them, but I’ve lost, or moved on, from the initial thread of the idea and the longer these drafts are left, the less likely they will ever see the light of day. But I’m sure I’m not alone amongst substack writers for feeling this way.
But something came up this week which has prompted me to write today and to think about where I go next with this project. It was a quote I stumbled upon from Aldous Huxley:
“Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.”
Aldous Huxley
Inconsistency is a very human attribute. We are organic, not mechanistic. Impermanence and transformation during this embodied experience as a human being are fundamental to this space/time reality. Evolution and adaptation seem intrinsic to the essence of consciousness. Everything vibrates, and everything has rhythm - the universe is inconsistent in its beautiful variety, it’s what provides contrast and contrast is where we find meaning.
Hustle culture promotes consistency to leverage the compound effect of effort. Morning routines, and systems of habitualised behaviours. There are formulas for consistently publishing on Substack and other platforms to gain followership. But that feels too mechanised for me, and my goal is to engage with people who have similar passions rather than follower numbers. I’m an advocate for systems of practice and repetition for skills development, for consistently sticking to a path of mastery, yet also like to explore tangents, flights of fancy, threads of curiosity and creativity that will take me away from the path.
And therein lies the art of being human, walking the straight line of consistency, but willing to dance with whims of opportunity. Order and chaos - the ultimate inescapable contrast.
I’m not entirely sure where I will go from here, I may try to be more consistent by writing shorter articles than I’ve written in the past, or it may be several months before I write again. I may pick up some of the many half-written articles, or I may abandon them completely. Some of my ideas on mastery are evolving - it might be good to write about those, or it might be better to let those ideas form a little more in the background - I’m not sure - and that’s OK - thanks, Mr Huxley.
This rings true, John. And in a sense, of course, Ordinary Mastery has helped you move on to the next stage.
Funnily enough, I used to feel a lot more "productive" when all work came to me and landed on my desk and I had no view into the future beyond a couple of days. But ultimately that was unsustainable. Now I have to balance three key things: delivery (doing paid work), demand (getting more clients) and design (creating better ways to do the first two). And it's easy to slip into a space that's more abstract than that :)
This somehow makes me feel less guilty about not being able to maintain consistency in many things. Thank you for sharing, John.