The Secret to Change is Consistency – Why Are We Still Doing That?
No Vacation Required
Updated 08/2026
If it’s old, it’s out. Ugh.
If your alive in the world today, you probably feel pressured to be fresh and new and novel and…
Well, we love a good reinvention but, in this episode, we challenge the idea that innovation is always the answer. We explain how recycling the habits, routines, and systems that already deliver results are a critical component to success.
Whether you are struggling with decision fatigue or looking to build lasting momentum, learn why sticking with what works is often the smartest move you can make.
Onward and Inward,
COMMON QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS EPISODE
❓Why is it important to stick to routines that work? Sticking to effective routines frees up mental space and willpower. By locking in core habits like diet, exercise, and daily schedules, you create the stability needed to grow and try new things in other areas of your life.
❓Why do people change habits that are actually working? People often abandon successful habits due to a cultural push for constant reinvention. There can also be a fear of consistency, as "new" things are often perceived as more socially valuable or exciting than steady, quiet progress.
❓How does social media affect our ability to maintain consistency? Social media often rewards novelty and "performance" over consistency. This creates external pressure to constantly reinvent the wheel, making people feel as though they aren't doing enough if they are simply maintaining what works.
❓Why are popular travel destinations often worth repeating? Popular destinations are often popular for a reason. While there can be social pressure to seek out obscure or "cool" locations, returning to places that genuinely bring you joy and relaxation is a valuable form of recycling what works.
❓How can you identify which routines to keep in your life? A simple way to identify valuable routines is to review your day or week and look for habits that both "fill you up and free you up." These are the core practices you should lean into to build a stable foundation for your life.
CHAPTERS
(00:59) Mind Share: Going “No Contact”
(03:58) The myth of constant innovation
(05:31) Building a core life
(07:05) Shaking things up
(09:02) There is no social currency in consistency
(16:03) A simple tip for reviewing your week
(16:33) Worth the Time: Oprah’s podcast on going "No Contact"
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TRANSCRIPT
Caanan (00:00)
Why are we still not recycling the things that actually work for us? When a habit, routine, or approach delivers, it deserves another round. Yet we live in a culture that constantly pushes us to reinvent the wheel, as if new is always better. The truth is, real progress comes from reusing what's effective and repeating it with purpose. That's how change sticks, and how we build momentum that lasts.
Caanan (00:51)
It's mine chair. I'm thinking a lot about something we've talked about very recently and many times on the podcast, which is not being around troublesome, toxic people, negative energy, certainly not abusive energy and just seeing, cause I know it's the holidays, all this talk around the topic and a new Oprah podcast, which we just listened to.
Caanan (01:18)
about the topic is truly living in my brain rent free. I love that this conversation is happening.
Caanan (01:26)
listen, I know it's really painful when the people are going no contact. It's painful to have to go no contact. And I'm sure it's painful to have somebody go no contact with you. we have some pretty good experience with the former that we'll get into at some point on this podcast, but, I think it's good that we're talking about this and that the power systems are being broken down.
Caanan (01:54)
You know, that we're no longer saying because we share DNA or a last name or whatever the relationship may be, you, parent or boss or whatever friend are allowed to treat me poorly. Yeah. And I don't like that the narrative, and I don't want this to turn into a podcast episode. As we're talking, I'm thinking this is the podcast episode. We're going to do this next year.
Caanan (02:23)
It's diminishing that the conversation is about, the abuse of these powers. People who are saying, my dad didn't get me the ring I wanted for Christmas, so I'm going no contact. Of course those people exist and they're being immature. We don't know the whole story, but this is not the conversation.
Caanan (02:45)
There are people who abusing the phrase no contact, abusing the term narcissist. They exist, but don't, that's why this is so mind sherry for me this week, what I can't stop thinking about. Don't confuse those situations with the very real need for people to decide what kind of relationship am I going to have with this person? How much am I going to try when
Caanan (03:13)
I'm not being treated well. Yes. Okay. We're veering into full podcast territory. We will be revisiting this, but I love that you said that. And I think when, if you ever think to yourself, somebody went no contact with me, how dare they, they're just being petty or selfish or whatever. You're maybe the kind of person who needs to
Caanan (03:38)
really look internally because people don't as a whole go no contact for no reason.
Caanan (03:52)
Why are we still not recycling things that work? This one makes me laugh because we're the change guys. and I think people, I know people have an idea that we're in innovation mode much more than we already are. We're always telling friends about, you know, this little thing or that little thing or this thing we're trying or this place we're going or whatever. And there's always kind of a bit of frustration like, I knew it.
Caanan (04:21)
you again, how do you come up with these things? And what people don't know, or sometimes they do know, and I think they choose not to acknowledge, is that we also do a lot of sticking with what works. So we wanted to do this podcast because we're always kind of turning things on its head, looking at it through different lenses. We recently talked about
Caanan (04:47)
Why are we waiting until New Year's to change? What about not constantly changing? Why are we not recycling things that work? Yeah, I think this does would surprise a lot of people in that we have built over the years through testing and learning and iterating a kind of a core life.
Caanan (05:16)
schedule, diet, the way we exercise that we don't mess around with. Yeah. The whole life will thing really. Yeah. Fitness, nutrition, all that stuff. Yes. Yes. So when we find that something works well for us, we pretty much lock it in so that we don't have to think about it very often. And this enables us to
Caanan (05:41)
make little changes around those areas or in different areas of our life because we freed up the mental space and the willpower and all the things because we have this core routine.
Caanan (05:56)
It allows us to try new things and continue to iterate. You hit the nail on the head right there. Beautifully said. It is having this routine. We call it recycling things in the work we do because so many people are on the hamster wheel. It's like, wait, why are you, why are you redoing that? Where are you doing something that works? That consistency is what allows us to then grow in big and small ways in the way that we do.
Caanan (06:25)
you hit the nail on the head.
Caanan (06:31)
it's kind of funny because we're always saying, why are we still doing that? It's the core of this podcast. But every once in a while we'll say, why aren't you still doing that? And this is around people who, clients, friends, who will start to change things that are in fact working for them. And they'll tell us about all these different changes they're making. And we'll say, wait, hold on.
Caanan (06:59)
wasn't that working really well for you? Yeah, really pleased with that. And they're like, yeah, but I'm going to revisit it. I'm going to I'm going to shake things up. And sometimes it feels to me when we talked about this in the last podcast, people pushing off change and New Year's as a way to delay it because they're kind of scared to just take it on. But I think there's a little bit of fear.
Caanan (07:22)
that feeds in here when people are changing things that are actually working for them. And it's kind of like, I don't know, it's like they're looking to blow up things that work for them because it keeps the turmoil alive. Yeah, I love that point. Yeah, no, go speak on it. Yeah, I love that point because we see this all the time. And I love how you reference the
Caanan (07:48)
New Year's resolutions podcast we did on that podcast, we talked about fluidity and it's the same thing here in the opposite direction. Seeing people who I think are sometimes scared to acknowledge what's working. It's like this in this society, they feel like they don't get credit for doing what's working. Cause oftentimes if we're being totally honest,
Caanan (08:15)
the people we work with, friends, don't even acknowledge what they're already doing. yes. Right. And they're just talking about a frustration with this or that, or I want to try this. Have you gone here? Have you guys tried this? Have you, know anybody who's tried this? And you don't hear anything about what they're doing. So what you were saying, I think, is spot on that there's this strange relationship with what
Caanan (08:43)
is being done and this perception of how my actions, how they fit in with those of my work peers and my social peers. just hit on something that I actually hadn't thought of, although we we did mention the social pressure to reinvent. And that is that there's no real like social commodity inconsistency.
Caanan (09:10)
We all love it when consistency, when we recognize it, but you can't build a social following or, you know, write a book about consistency. It's always about what's, what's new, what's changing, what's happening next. And on social, that's what people are performing. Yes. Keyword performing for you. So you feel like you've always got to be
Caanan (09:38)
thinking in that way. And that's why I think when people know of our life broadly, it's always, okay, what's going on? What's the next big thing? you know, what they don't know is, yeah, Canon, as you said, there's a next big thing, because we have a very deliberate, fulfilling core routine that we crave.
Caanan (10:04)
so that there's kind of a balance in this. Can I switch gears a little bit? Yeah, of course. Because just thinking about this in a lighter sense, a lighter way to look at this, I think about when we first started traveling, which was a huge part of our, what we call our chapter two, was a big growth phase, learning, expanding, growing our business. And a big part of that, as many of you know,
Caanan (10:30)
was seeing the world. A goal of ours was to see the world, give back along the way. So we always avoided, for instance, Hawaii and Italy. And I have a little note to bring this up. We always say like, we used to tell people, we'll go there when we're old. Those are easy places to go. Yeah. We'll go when we're old. I think we'd been to Hawaii once or something. something brought us to Italy.
Caanan (10:52)
that first time. We were like, well, we'll just go for this thing. And then, you know, we'll go for real when we're older, because it's easy. But we got hooked on Italy and have been back many times since. Different things brought us to Hawaii over the years. And we ended up being there many times and leaning in and loving it and just being like, these places are popular. And used to kind of make us roll our eyes. Yeah, because they're so basic.
Caanan (11:19)
so to speak, that they're popular for a reason. And we learned that like, oh, okay, this is why people actually recycle this, why we hear about this all the time. You and I, Cannon and Kent have a lesson to learn from this because this is worth recycling. Yes. Oh, that's funny because we were at the time, a lot of the people in our orbit
Caanan (11:48)
were big travelers. We were ripping and running. were seeing a lot of the world and to the point we were just making, there was no like social currency in places that other people had been. There was no social currency in Italy or Hawaii. Like if you weren't tracking down toven throat singers or I don't know swimming in the Arctic.
Caanan (12:18)
It wasn't interesting to the group of people we were surrounded by. Yeah. And so we actually, for a while, were missing out on things that were, that are extraordinary places that we loved because there was this idea that you can't go do that. That that's not cool to do. Yeah. So this, this idea, why are we still not recycling things? Yeah. Works on a lot of different levels. Important change.
Caanan (12:47)
As we talk about constantly versus things that really may seem basic to you, but give you life and give you the energy to then make change. And then things like, well, Italy is popular for a reason. I want to start recycling that. mean, there's, there's a lot of ways that this mindset of where do I want to reinvent the wheel versus where do I just want to lean into something established?
Caanan (13:14)
becomes a very important thing to figure out within you. know, it comes to mind for me, something very close to home, but well, bear with me. It's our transit system here in Seattle. Like we're in the process of building out light rail and Kent, you and I have been all over the world. We've seen extraordinary transit systems all over Europe.
Caanan (13:42)
China, Asia, amazing transit systems. And for some reason here in Seattle, which is an incredible city, we act like building light rail in the city requires completely brand new ideas. Like absolutely nothing can be even close to what you've seen in these other world class systems. it's...
Caanan (14:06)
It doesn't seem like that would have anything to do with what we're talking about recycling things at work. But, you know, we do this in our own lives where there are systems that exist that are working beautifully and we can access those and apply them in our own life. And yet we'll have this idea like I have to come up with something completely novel and do all this extra work and effort in order to make this like uniquely my own.
Caanan (14:37)
Yeah. And that's just not the case. Nope.
Caanan (14:55)
So change, what we're all about. The big secret is that it's often about knowing what works, what you need to recycle, what provides the stability and foundation in your day, your life, your routine, so that you then can, as we said, lean into the change that you need.
Caanan (15:21)
or want to make. And I just want to reiterate again, that if you're feeling like you don't have those core things, think you're probably, based on our experience, you're avoiding something or you're chasing something to of counterproductive conclusion. You've got to have those things that you're proudly leaning into, recycling.
Caanan (15:45)
You've got to have those things in life that your comfort movies, your comfort sports, whatever, that you're also leaning into and allowing yourself to recycle.
Caanan (15:57)
So here's a little tip, a really simple one. Review your day, your week, and look for places where you have a routine that fills you up and frees you up. Yes. And lean into those things so that you have more capacity to effectively change when you set out to change something.
Caanan (16:27)
Our Worth the Time this week is very fast because we already talked about it in Mindshare and that is go listen or watch the Oprah podcast about going no contact. It's fascinating and it's 100 % worth the time.