The Secret to Change is Consistency – Why Are We Still Doing That?
No Vacation Required
Why are we still not recycling what works?
In a world that obsessively rewards the "new," we often feel pressured to constantly reinvent the wheel. We challenge the idea that innovation is always the answer. We explain why real progress isn't about constant upheaval ; it’s about "recycling" the habits, routines, and systems that already deliver results.
From debunking the social pressure to perform constant change to sharing personal stories about why even "basic" travel destinations like Italy are worth a repeat visit, this episode explores how a solid core routine provides the foundation for meaningful growth. 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,
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CHAPTERS:
(00:00) Why are we still not recycling?
(00:59) Mind Share: The "No Contact" conversation and Oprah’s latest podcast
(03:58)The "Change Guys" and the myth of constant innovation
(05:31) Building a core life: The stability of nutrition and fitness
(07:05) The danger of "shaking things up" just for the sake of turmoil
(09:02) Why there is no social currency in consistency
(10:41) Lessons from Italy and Hawaii: Why "popular" is worth recycling
(13:21) Lessons from Seattle: Stop trying to be "novel" with established systems
(16:03) A simple tip for reviewing your week
(16:33) Worth the Time: Oprah’s podcast on going "No Contact"
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Consistency as a Catalyst: Maintaining a core routine frees up the mental space and willpower needed to iterate in other areas of your life.
The "New" Trap: Society often fails to acknowledge or reward consistency, leading people to abandon effective habits just to avoid looking stagnant.
Purposeful Repetition: True momentum comes from reusing what is effective and repeating it with intention rather than chasing a counterproductive conclusion.
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
The Oprah Podcast. Oprah Explores the Rising Trend of Going No Contact with Your Family
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
00:00:01 Kent
Welcome to the No Vacation Required podcast, where we break down tired traditions and outdated thinking by asking the question, why are we still doing that? It's all about building a life you don't need a break from, being more present and fulfilled, and showing up in a complicated world that needs your voice and unique talents.
00:00:23 Caanan
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.
00:00:57 Kent
It's mind share. 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, because I know it's the holidays, all this talk around the topic and a new Oprah podcast, which we just listened to about the topic is truly living in my brain rent free.
00:01:28 Caanan
I love that this conversation is happening. Listen, I know it's really painful when that 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, 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, friend are allowed to treat me poorly.
00:02:19 Kent
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. It's so 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. 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 sharing 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 I'm not being treated well.
00:03:20 Caanan
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 really look internally because people don't as a whole, go no contact for no reason.
00:03:58 Kent
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, oh, I knew it. 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, you know, why are we waiting until New Year's to change? What about not constantly changing? Why are we not recycling things that work?
00:05:06 Caanan
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, a schedule, diet, the way we exercise, that we don't mess around with.
00:05:28 Kent
Yeah, the whole life will thing, really. Fitness, nutrition, all that stuff. Yes.
00:05:34 Caanan
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 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. It allows us to try new things and continue to iterate.
00:06:06 Kent
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 'cause so many people are on the hamster wheel. It's like, wait, why are you redoing that? Why 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. You hit the nail on the head.
00:06:37 Caanan
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. Wasn't that working really well for you? Were you really pleased with that? And they're like, yeah, but I'm going to revisit it. I'm going to shake things up. And sometimes it feels to me, well, we talked about this in the last podcast, people pushing off change to 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 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, they're looking to blow up things that work for them because it keeps the turmoil alive.
00:07:44 Kent
Yeah, I love that point.
00:07:46 Caanan
Yeah, no, go speak on it.
00:07:48 Kent
Yeah, I love that point because we see this all the time. And I love how you reference the 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. Because oftentimes, if we're being totally honest, the people we work with, friends, don't even acknowledge what they're already doing.
00:08:27 Caanan
Yes.
00:08:27 Kent
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, do you know anybody who's tried this? 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 is being done and this perception of how my actions, how they fit in with those of my work peers and my social peers.
00:09:02 Caanan
You just hit on something that I actually hadn't thought of, although we did mention the social pressure to reinvent, and that is that there's no real social commodity in consistency. We all love it when consistency, when we recognize it, but you can't build a social following or write a book about consistency. It's always about what's new, what's changing, what's happening next.
00:09:33 Kent
And on social, that's what people are performing.
00:09:36 Caanan
Yes.
00:09:37 Kent
Keyword performing for you. So you feel like you've always got to be 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?
00:09:53 Caanan
Yeah.
00:09:54 Kent
And you know, what they don't know is, yeah, Canaan, as you said, there's a next big thing because we have a very deliberate, fulfilling core routine that we crave 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, 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, oh, we used to tell people, oh, we'll go there when we're old. Those are easy places to go. We'll go when we're old. I think we'd been to Hawaii once or something, but something brought us to Italy 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, 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, Canaan and Kent, have a lesson to learn from this because this is worth recycling.
00:11:47 Caanan
Yes. Oh, that's funny because we were at the time, a lot of the people in our orbit were big travelers. We were ripping and running. We 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 Tuvan throat singers or, I don't know, swimming in the Arctic, it wasn't interesting to the group of people we were surrounded by.
00:12:28 Kent
Yeah.
00:12:29 Caanan
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.
00:12:42 Kent
Yeah. So this, this idea, why are we still not recycling things?
00:12:46 Caanan
Yeah.
00:12:47 Kent
Works on a lot of different levels. Important change 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 oh, well, Italy's popular for a reason. I want to start recycling that. I 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 becomes a very important thing to figure out within you.
00:13:24 Caanan
You know what 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, 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. Absolutely nothing can be even close to what you've seen in these other world-class systems. It doesn't seem like that would have anything to do with what we're talking about, recycling things at work. But 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.
00:14:43 Kent
Yeah.
00:14:43 Caanan
And that's just not the case.
00:14:45 Kent
No. Your best investment is knowing yourself. With YouFinder, you'll uncover your natural strengths, talents, and values through a quick assessment. You'll then get personalized insights to help you on your path. Get started at novacationrequired.com. 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 or want to make. And I just want to reiterate again that if you're feeling like you don't have those core things. I think you're, you're probably based on our experience, you're avoiding something or you're chasing something to a counterproductive conclusion. You've got to have those things that you're proudly leaning into recycling. 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.
00:16:03 Caanan
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.
00:16:16 Kent
Yes.
00:16:18 Caanan
And lean into those things so that you have more capacity to effectively change when you set out to change something. 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.
00:16:56 Kent
Thanks for listening to the No Vacation Required podcast. For more information, including services designed to help you build a life you don't need a break from, check out novacationrequired.com. And if you found this information helpful, please subscribe.