Chances are, you’ve been asked this question: What is the best diet? Or what is the best workout?
And your response has probably been something along these lines: “The best plan is the one you can do on a consistent basis.”
The truth is, this lesson reaches far beyond nutrition, health, or fitness goals. It also applies to communication, leadership, and growing a practice or program. The more we lean in, the clearer it becomes that consistency beats perfection every single time.
It’s Easy to Overcomplicate
As professionals, we love optimization. We want the perfect system. The perfect strategy. The perfect timing.
But sometimes our pursuit of perfection becomes the very thing that prevents us from making progress.
It’s the same pattern we see in health. A client says, “I missed Monday, so I’ll start next week.” And the practitioners and program leaders we work with say it too, just with different words:
- “I’ll send the newsletter once I get ahead.”
- “I’ll create content when I have more time.”
- “I’ll build a communication plan later.”
And before they know it, another month has gone by without a single touchpoint reaching their patients, clients, or community. The plan was never the problem. Waiting to follow the perfect formula was.
Consistency Is a System
One of the biggest misconceptions about consistency is that it comes down to discipline. Yet the truth is, consistency is built by systems.
For more than 15 years, we’ve seen this firsthand through the Customized Nutrition Newsletters system. Every month, our team creates and publishes two new newsletter issues using the same repeatable framework:
- An intro letter
- A main article
- A complementary mini article
- A recipe
- A quote
- Coordinating graphics
Then the professionals and organizations we serve personalize the content by adding their own updates, events, and promos.
The magic isn’t in the newsletter. The magic is the system.
Some of the practices, clinics, schools, and programs we serve have been using this framework for 12 and even 15 years, because consistency removes decision fatigue. They don’t have to reinvent the wheel every month. They simply show up.
That’s what a good system does. It turns “Do I have the time, energy, and ideas to communicate this month?” into a sustainable process for creating and sending communications consistently.