How to be Dependable and Reliable: 7 Life Hacks for Phantom Consistency

This article will reveal an effortless shift you can make in your communication habits, along with 7 life hacks, that will make others perceive you as a highly consistent, reliable, and dependable person.

Also, you'll learn what Bruce Lee had to say about being consistent and reliable...

In business, social, and personal situations consistency is a highly attractive quality.

Consistency and dependability are increasingly rare character traits In our chronically distracted high-tech society where we are constantly bombarded by mild amusements that voraciously consume our time and attention.

Dependability is debatably the most important quality in business; I remember when I first started in the business world at the age of 19 at a car dealership my manager explained to me that the dealership would rather have salespeople who sold a consistent amount of cars every month as opposed to salespeople who sold 25 cars one month and then 7 the next.

In our personal relationships, we all seek friends who will show up when they say they will to help us move and we abhor friends who say bad things about us behind our backs. If you've ever had someone stand you up on a date you know how unattractive and hurtful flakiness (the opposite of consistency) is.

In virtually all domains, consistent people are much more desired by society. Imagine if everyone you met either wanted to hire you, do business with you, be your friend, or help you. Being perceived as a consistent person is a huge step towards this.

The 1st problem: Being consistent, reliable, and dependable is damned hard work;

• It means showing up early
• Working late
• Thinking on your feet
• Overcoming obstacles to hit deadlines
• Adding more productive hours to your day and more hours to your productivity.

LimitlessMindset.com has hundreds of articles and resources along with hours of free audio downloads devoted to the subject of life hacking and biohacking to help you work smarter and harder in less time. Re-programing your life and biohacking your physiology for maximum productivity will deliver an outstanding ROI of being a genuinely more consistent and dependable person. Get started here.

The 2nd problem: It's really enjoyable (and satisfying to our egos) to pontificate about the things we want to do, especially big goals and grand visions we have for the future that are going to be very challenging and resource-intensive to complete.

When you are getting dinner with a dear friend who knows you well are you talking about doing laundry tomorrow? No, you are talking about your big projects, dreams, and aspirations, the things that inspire you! The likelihood of us accomplishing these kinds of BEHAGS (Big hairy audacious goals) is significantly lower than us hitting our day-to-day, weekly, or monthly goals and objectives. We are setting ourselves up to be thought of as flaky or inconsistent because we are spending so much time talking about our most unrealistic goals.
A very prescient example of this is the current state of American politics; The majority of Americans are completely disenfranchised and hateful of the two major US political parties, despite the fact that under these political parties...

• America has sent men to the moon
• Invented the Internet 
• Become one of the most powerful and prosperous nations on earth

Why do we Americans have so much disdain for our parties? The lack of consistency; politicians routinely break their campaign promises or sell out their constituency for the interests of corporate contributors.

While on the campaign trail, politicians make grandiose, passion-filled promises that their constituency can rally around and then consistently they fail to meet those promises.

The Goal: While biohacking and life hacking can make us significantly more consistent and dependable, we want to get all the benefits of people thinking we are highly consistent person without actually doing more work.

The Communication Techniques

What most people do: When asked to complete a task that they are highly confident they can do most people will simply respond in the positive that it is a task they can easily accomplish:

Instead...

Arbitrarily inflate your deadlines for tasks. In business and personal situations when people ask you to do something that there is a very high probability of you completing successfully or quickly, give them an inflated deadline for the completion of that task. Not only does this give you more time to complete the task, but it also gives you the appearance of a much more consistent person because you are getting it done when you said you would have it done as opposed to some ambiguous future date. It also establishes your time as being rare and valuable.

Inflate the 'weight' of your tasks. There's an interesting dynamic in the industry of locksmiths, when locksmiths are new and inexperienced their customers are actually happier about paying them than veteran locksmiths. New locksmiths will typically take 30 minutes to one hour to open a door and in the process, they will a lot of times break the lock and have to replace it, but their customers happily pay their full rate because of how much work they see them doing. Veteran locksmiths, in stark contrast, will open a door in minutes without breaking the lock and their customers frequently haggle their prices with them. Get this dynamic working for you as opposed to against you by emphasizing the complexity, sophistication, and amount of work that goes into completing the tasks that people ask you to do.

Boomerang for Gmail.

Gmail and Google apps are essential tools of highly consistent life hackers. Boomerang is a free app that allows you to schedule outgoing emails. Which is excellent for creating phantom consistency.

Example: Someone asks you for a proposal, and you set an inflated deadline, saying you will have it sent to them by Friday afternoon. When in actuality you already have a template for the proposal that will only take you ten minutes to customize for their project. So when you have ten minutes to create their proposal you do so and then you write up the email to them in Gmail, then you use Boomerang to schedule the proposal email to go out on Friday afternoon.

Call attention to the areas where you are consistent.

As stated above, the problem most people have with consistency is that they are so vocal about things that are going to be difficult, challenging, or flat-out unlikely for them to do. Most people don't talk at all about the things that they are consistent about. Think of things you do consistently:

• You run every day consistently.
• You attend a social club, group, or mastermind every week.
• You always make a healthy dinner for your family.
• You always take Saturday nights as a time to spend with your spouse.

These things aren't quite as sexy to tell people about as your big goals and career aspirations but by calling attention to them you appear much more consistent than someone who only talks about big things and then fails to deliver on them.

Call people back at specific times as opposed to as soon as you get their message.

When people drop you a voicemail or email requesting a phone call addressing something, unless it's a highly urgent issue, as opposed to just calling them right back as soon as you get a free moment, send them back an email or text message scheduling a conference call. Mention that you want to block out some time to address whatever it is that's important to them. This again sets up your time as being more valuable and you as being a more consistent person.

Handle meetings with consistency.

When you have meetings you are certain you will make always drop a call, email, or text message earlier that day confirming you will be there. Also, do not commit to meetings you are not certain you can make.

Flaking on meetings, social or business, is one of the surest ways to give you an inconsistent reputation. When scheduling meetings more than a few days out, state that you are scheduling tentatively and will touch base midway between now and then to confirm. Do these even when you are certain that you can make a certain meeting; write them a confirmation email in Gmail and then use Boomerang to schedule it to go out at the appropriate time to confirm. Again, giving you the appearance of being a highly consistent person whose time is valuable.

How to talk about big goals and vision.

3 different scientific studies dating back to 1926 have demonstrated that talking about your goals decreases the likelihood of them actually happening. This is somewhat counterintuitive because people are so encouraging to people talking about their goals, but the studies concluded that the emotional pleasure of telling other people about your goal is so intoxicating that it demotivates you.

The solution to this is to NOT start talking about your goal when you have accomplished 25%-50% of it. At this point, you are worthy and deserving of the praise others give you. Now having really big sexy dreams is essential to being limitless and at some point, you do have to tell other people about these dreams so they can rally behind them. These may be goals that require millions of dollars or other resources you just don't have, so here's the line I like to use when talking about these kinds of goals
I am not yet the person who can do this.
There's a very attractive romantic ambition to a person who has the introspective humility to identify a really big goal but at the same time admits that they need to do a lot of personal and professional development before they are worthy of accomplishing it. Of course, after using this line I always follow up with steps I am taking to become the person that can accomplish this.

Utilize 3rd party credibility.

Testimonials and letters of reference are essential tools of highly consistent life hackers. Request letters of reference from people with whom you have done good business (LinkedIn is my favorite tool to do this), and request them repeatedly until you get them. The secret to getting great letters of reference is to tell people what to write about you, here's the template I like.

In your letter of reference please include:
My communication style and ease of working with me.
How dependable or reliable I am.
The quality of the work I produce.

This ensures that others will talk about how consistent you are, then I recommend sharing these testimonials aggressively:

• Post them on Facebook and your other social media profiles.
• Add them to the front page of your website.
• Add them to your email signature.

Write people letters of reference.

Giving other people 3rd party credibility is also a great way of building your own credibility. There are few emotional deposits you can make into a relationship greater than writing a letter of reference. So tell people you are going to write them a letter of reference and then go do it, they are fun to write, and writing them takes 5-15 minutes at most.

The true secret to being a highly consistent person. Is to say no a whole lot more, be pickier about the commitments you agree to, and defy the tyranny of the urgent/unimportant. One of the primary reasons that people flake or fail to follow through is that they make commitments to things that aren't worth their time. Here's what Bruce Lee had to say about this:

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential."

The free technology applications I highly recommend for reliable life hackers worldwide are... 

Boomerang for Gmail

 

4.5

Category: Apps & Software

Sleep Cycle

 

4.0

Category: Apps & Software

Dual N-Back Pro

 

4.3

Category: Software & Apps

Brain.FM

 

5.0

Category: Apps & Software

Evernote

 

5.0

Category: Apps & Software

Check out the podcast version of this article...