There is a lot out there written about success. People tell you to try this out, use this hack or buy that course because it will make you successful. The truth is… well, the truth. And the truth is messy, unpopular, and something we often don’t want to hear. That’s exactly why we need to hear it – because the popular, sugarcoated examples aren’t leading us to success.

So here are the 5 not so popular, but effective, ways success works:

1. Consistency trumps everything

It’s not about hustling 24/7 and it never was, no matter what Gary Vaynerchuk says. Consistency trumps everything when it comes to success. By that, I mean that if you keep yourself long enough in the game, you will eventually succeed by the sheer probability of success.

If you keep doing the right things, eventually success will find you. But the “trick” or better yet the truth is that you have to keep doing it day in and day out. Nobody, succeeded overnight. It takes a lot of years of consistent work to achieve success and that is the truth.

2. Do less today to do more in a year

Cal Newport closes his laptop every single day at 5 pm, drives home to his wife and three kids and doesn’t open his laptop until the next morning at 9 am when he comes to the office. He doesn’t work weekends – ever.

Cal has been doing this for the past 15 years and in that time he wrote 5 books, 3 becoming New York Times best sellers, has a wife and three kids, and is a tenured professor at Georgetown and got a degree from Caltech and MIT.

Cal Newport is just 35 and he does less today to do more in a year. He is consistent in his work, and he keeps doing the work day in and day out. There is no “hustle 24/7” mode. He just does his work in a regular 9-5 spread and that’s it. But he has been doing it for the past 15 years.

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” – Stephen King

3. Create a goal but work the process

Goals are easy to create. You sit down, think about your life and create a goal. But what happens after the goal is created is what counts. Everyone out there has dreams, and most people have goals but only a handful make their goals a reality.

That’s because goals by themselves are useless – they need to be followed by a process on which you work daily.

You want to be an entrepreneur? Start working on your business every single day for 1 hour. You want a six-pack? Hit the gym every single day. You want to author a book? Start writing 1 page a day. Every single goal has to be backed by process or else, it’s just daydreaming. When you work the process, the goal will take care of itself.

4. Track yourself like you’re a one-man company

We do what we track. We improve what we measure. So start treating yourself as a company. Do you have reports, trackers, and quarterly reviews? Because how else are you going to succeed?

Tracking yourself means taking yourself seriously and committing to doing that one thing.

When we commit, we double down on our decisions and make it work, one way or another. In order to know what we committed to, we need to track ourselves. The numbers don’t lie  so if you track them, you know exactly where you are on the path to success.

“Accountability breeds response-ability.” – Stephen R. Covey

5. The more successful you get, the harder you need to work

This is the one thing that perception misses out on when we see a rich and successful person. We think once they succeed, that life becomes this problem-free paradise of cocktails at the beaches.

In fact, life just gets harder. The more success we have, the bigger our responsibility, the bigger our problems, and the more we have to work.

People who succeed work harder now than they did before they became successful but their perception of “hard” changed. It’s like when you start going to the gym and you see a ripped guy over there pushing himself to the limits. He feels the same pain as you do since he is pushing his utmost limits but he simply got used to the pain. Now, it’s just a part of the process.

The truth about success is getting watered down over and over again. But if we truly want success and people who read Addicted2Success really do, then we need to know what it takes to become successful.

Which one of the 5 ways to be successful resonated most with you and why? Let us know in the comments below!