I didn’t know it, but I was learning more than how to walk and eat with a spoon. I was learning two secrets of success. Here’s the first one: “Success requires consistent work.”
Disappointed? Hoping for an easier, less demanding path to success? The reality is that rule number one is clear, simple, timeless and unavoidable. Let’s look at the two key words in this first rule.
WORK
In Genesis 1 and 2, we read that God rested on the seventh day of the week after six days of creating the world around us. The passage not only teaches us about the seventh-day Sabbath, but also shows us that God is not lazy! He does not avoid work, but savors what can be accomplished through intensive effort. God has designed and created a vast and complex universe, from the most massive star to the tiniest cell in our bodies. If we follow God’s example, we will embrace work instead of trying to avoid it, and developing that attitude is the first step toward success.
For example, in math class you may be able to “slide by” for a time when the material is easy, but it gets harder. Successful students have learned that you don’t get an “A”—and, more importantly, don’t learn the material—without working hard by studying and practicing.
The same rule applies in sports. A competitive swimmer will swim hundreds and even thousands of yards as he strives to improve in the sport—and it is hard work, requiring both mental and physical effort. Anyone not willing to expend that effort simply will not succeed.
The Bible actually records many examples that demonstrate the importance God places on work and effort. For instance, God told ancient Israel, “The Lord will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand” (Deuteronomy 28:12). In other words, if you don’t work, you’ll limit God’s opportunity to bless you. And Nehemiah says that the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt because “the people had a mind to work” (Nehemiah 4:6). It wasn’t magic or “wishing”—it was work!
CONSISTENCY
But it has to be more than making a big “extra effort” once in a while. Real success only happens when we add the additional quality of consistency to our work. Practicing the trumpet once in a while will not produce excellence. But practicing consistently every day for months and years can.
According to some scholars who have studied successful people, there is a “10-year rule”: If you want to be really, really good at something, you have to put at least a decade of consistent, focused effort into it. University of Chicago psychologist Benjamin Bloom studied 120 elite athletes, performers, artists, biochemists and mathematicians, and he found that every person in the study consistently trained, worked and practiced for at least a decade before achieving international recognition (Ericsson, Anders K. with Niel Charness, Paul J. Feltovich and Robert R. Hoffman, The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance).
You may not aspire to be an Olympic athlete, but you can still apply this fundamental principle of consistent work in your life—even in your life as a follower of Jesus Christ. Paul encouraged the church at Corinth, for example, to “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58).