“Success comes through sustained effort.”

Consistency is hard. Yet it’s the only way to lasting success.

When you first start out, your work doesn’t get recognized. As radio host Ira Glass put it, “All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.”

Even we know our work isn’t that good. This is only affirmed by the lack of attention and engagement we experience.

We write dozens of posts. Somehow, we keep going despite zero feedback or any perceived traction. All the while, it seems like everyone is racing past you. You want to quit.

This is what consistency looks like. Because your 42nd article is the one that goes viral — articles 1–41 didn’t get any attention at all.

Most people fail before they even get a chance to succeed. In the face of discouraging returns, most people turn resentfully towards the ones who are winning. Everyone loves them.

“Why even try?” they grumble to themselves in frustration.

Then it’s over.

You need to be OK with feeling like a loser during this time. That’s what consistency makes you feel like — a loser. A nobody. A fraud, a fake, an impostor.

But these feelings are actually an integral part of the age-old principle of success:

Success takes hard work, usually with no recognition, before you can achieve success.

Lionel Messi, the World's Greatest Footballer

“I start early and I stay late, day after day, year after year," he says. "It took me 17 years and 114 days to be an overnight success.” He's referring to October 2004 when he made his professional debut for FC Barcelona. Recognize that there is a difference between overnight success and early success.

Although Messi was only 17 years old when he became a professional footballer, his road to success was neither easy nor straightforward.

The overnight success story is a myth.

“You have to fight to reach your dream. You have to sacrifice and work hard for it.”

“The best decisions aren’t made with your mind, but with your instinct.”

“I have fun like a child in the street. When the day comes when I’m not enjoying it, I will leave football.”

“You can overcome anything, if and only if you love something enough.”

"It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.”

Don't give way to complacency: It's a sad day, Messi says, when a player thinks there are no more improvements to be made. “Every year, I try to grow as a player and not get stuck in a rut," he adds. "I try to improve my game in every way possible. But that trait is not something I’ve worked on, it’s part of me.” Messi's desire to fight complacency while consistently getting better has been one of the biggest determinants of his success. He has trained himself to "want more, always be my top critic, and accept both the good and the bad."

Be precise in how you approach life: When Messi spends time with his family, he cuts out all outside distractions. When he scores goals, he scores with top-level precision. “In football as in watchmaking, talent and elegance mean nothing without rigor and precision," he says. Messi has a motto that goes like this: "Live life with precision on and off the field." In other words, you should approach your personal and professional life with the same amount of intentionality and passion.

The great basketball player, Michael Jordan said that work ethic, (effort), eliminates fear. By putting in the effort, we know what we are capable of and do not need to be afraid.

Effort teaches us that we can do more than we thought. We learn new skills and abilities when we take the time to put in consistent effort. Every new success that we achieve through our efforts increases our confidence in ourselves and our abilities. Effort keeps us focused on success. As your effort brings you closer to your goal, your motivation and willpower increase as you can taste victory.