Maybe You’re Not Inconsistent. Maybe You Got What You Needed.
The proof that you’ve been following through all along — even when it looked like you weren’t.
Sometimes I’ll randomly remember a “thing” I used to do…
A workout routine.
A language app I was briefly committed to.
A skincare technique I did every night for a while.
And whenever those memories popped up, I think:
“oh. If I had stuck with that, I’d probably be further along by now”
Flipping through the catalogue of things I’ve done in the past year, it looks like inconsistency. It sounds like it too.
“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then…”.
“Am I inconsistent?” Am I someone who jumps from interest to interest? not getting anything out of it? not producing anything of value? Nothing to show for it?
But the more I’ve reflected on it, the more I’ve realized I operate in goals.
When I start doing something, it’s usually because there’s something I want to get out of it. Sometimes that goal is explicit. Sometimes it’s just a feeling — like I want to tone up a bit. Or I want to understand this topic. Or I want to see if I can do it.
So I start. Im locked in. I do the thing for a few weeks, months — maybe even longer.
Then at some point (usually without consciously deciding), my attention redirects. The task I did for the past five weeks has vanished from my mind— replaced by something new. Suddenly I’m building, learning and exploring elsewhere.
So what looks like inconsistency — or “falling off” — from the outside might actually be a closed loop.
You got what you needed out of the experience and moved on with your life.
And if you tend to operate through goals and momentum, consistency doesn’t always look like repeating something forever. Sometimes it looks like pursuing something intensely, extracting what you need from it, and then redirecting your energy somewhere new.
So if that’s the case:
How can you be inconsistent if you’re constantly achieving your goals?
Only recently did I realize that this is actually how I operate. (And since none of us has had a unique experience, I think other people experience this too.)
For years, I treated habits like temporary tools — something I would wear for a while, use for a specific purpose, and then set aside once I had gotten what I needed from it.
The problem wasn’t that I was inconsistent.
The problem was that most habits were designed to last forever — and sometimes you only ever needed them for a season.
A profound realization brought to me by — you’ll never guess:
Nail polish.
I Did Not Wake Up With a Plan to Change My Life
I was trying to justify my hoarding.
There’s an unnecessary amount of nail polish on my dresser. Bottles I convinced myself I’d wear. CVS sale colors. Entire shades that have never touched my hands.
And while I was mentally auditing how I got here, I had a thought that felt equal parts productive and dramatic:
Use seven of these in the next week — or throw them all away.
Was that excessive? Yes.
Was it necessary? Also yes.
I work well with constraints. Deadlines. Consequences. Anything that forces motion. But almost immediately, I could hear my thoughts rebel.
“I’m not someone who does their nails.”
“I rarely paint them.”
“Why am I adding another thing to remember?”
When I got down to it, it wasn’t actually about nail polish — it was the feeling of adding another thing that would demand consistency before it gave me anything back. Another task I’d have to hold in my head with no clear payoff.
So instead of forcing consistency, I gave the task a goal and turned it into a challenge.
Seven days. Seven colors.
I didn’t do it perfectly. I missed a day. I kept colors on longer than planned.
But throughout the day, I kept seeing my hands.
Holding my phone.
Typing.
Grabbing a cup.
Opening a door.
It was constantly in my field of vision whether I was thinking about it or not. And every time I noticed my nails, there was the little thought: “Oh right. I did that.”
And it kept happening. Dozens of times a day. So much so that I actually googled: “Are hands the most seen part of our own bodies?” (Yes, they are.)
There’s research connecting hands to self-recognition and perception of action which made me feel:
validated and
a genius because omg?
The evidence of what I had done was located on the part of my body most associated with recognizing my own actions — in the one place I was guaranteed to see it.
The Nail Polish Theory
Within that first week, I started telling people, “I have a theory.”
At the time, my thought was pretty simple.
For anyone who thinks they’re inconsistent — anyone who feels like they start things but can’t follow through — this was proof that you actually can.
Painting my nails every day forced me to make a small decision, act on it, and then see the result.
Pick a color.
Paint the nails.
Unintentionally see your hands 50 times a day and –
And there it was. Proof.
“Oh right. I did that.” Over and over again. A tiny task, but it kept showing me the same thing: I could make a decision and execute it.
To put it simply, the Nail Polish Theory is a starter — something small you do that lets you see your own follow-through in real time.
When I start something it looks like this:
Make the decision.
Do the thing.
And then my attention moves somewhere else.
Not gonna lie, from the outside? That looks like starting and stopping.
But if you look closely, there’s a good chance this “loop” actually closed. You started the habit because you wanted to get something out of it— and you did. You just didn’t stop long enough to notice it.
What’s important here: The action of painting your nails is a likely literal representation of how you typically approach new habits. Only this time, it made the goal of the habit impossible to miss.
It made the completion impossible to forget.
Seeing it throughout the day meant the follow through stayed visible and for someone who’s very “out of sight, out of mind,” it felt like having a tiny person next to me all day saying: “Period, and DID!”
And that’s when the realization hit.
If your attention moves quickly, sometimes you need habits that leave visible evidence behind — something you’ll keep seeing long after the action itself is over. Because when the evidence of completion keeps showing up, the story you tell yourself starts to change.
What This Actually Means For You
If you move quickly, pivot often, and build constantly but drift naturally — that’s not chaos, that’s velocity.
The lesson here is recognizing how you actually operate.
Some people build consistency through repetition. Others build it through momentum. It’s the ability to start something, get what you need from it, and pivot without guilt.
From the outside, that can look like inconsistency. But once you start recognizing your own completion — once you see the evidence of what you’ve already done — something shifts.
The Nail Polish Theory doesn’t teach you how to be consistent.
It reveals that you already are.
What it provides is visibility.
And once completion becomes visible, starting new things becomes easier; not because you expect yourself to repeat them forever, but because you understand the pattern now.
Maybe the problem was never inconsistency.
Maybe you were measuring yourself using rules built for repetition — when the way you actually operate is momentum.
Because when you really look at it, you’ve been consistent at the only thing that actually mattered:
achieving what you set out to do.
Author’s Note
If you found yourself nodding along while reading this — if you see yourself in the fast-moving brain, the many ideas, the desire to do a lot of things well — there’s a chance you might be a Renaissance Woman and not know it yet.
For me, becoming the person I want to be hasn’t been about fixing myself or forcing discipline. It’s been about building small, supportive systems that work with how I actually move through the world.
This nail polish thing became one of those systems — and I think it could be one for you too.
Now, months later, after I’ve done a somewhat real-life trial period post —“Nail Polish Week” (I’ll call it that for now); I can report that it has fundamentally changed the way I think about starting something new. Recognizing that there’s usually a goal attached to the thing I want to start makes it much easier to begin.
I’ve realized I don’t have to do something forever in order for it to be worth starting.
I could literally do a pilates class 15 times and not dedicate myself to fitness. But if the goal was to be active for a few weeks — then that’s exactly what happened.
Loop closed.
I really enjoyed this! And after reading it, I realize I am a momentum person versus a repetition; because repetition be whooping my a$$😂😂