Steve Tippins Ph.D.Helping doctoral students get their dissertation accepted, succeed in their careers, & change the world | Academic Career Advisor | Dissertation Chair & Founder, Beyond PhD Coaching | 35 + years of experience.

The Students Who Finish Aren’t the Smartest… They’re the Most Consistent

24 Aug 2025 · 1 min

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In this brief monologue, the speaker argues that the rare achievement of earning a doctorate or completing a marathon—each representing roughly 2 % of the U.S. population—illustrates the power of consistent, disciplined effort over innate ability. By highlighting the need to “show up” repeatedly, even when progress feels minimal, the speaker emphasizes that long‑term goals are attained through sustained self‑discipline rather than occasional bursts of effort.

Chapters

It's quite interesting to me, about 2% of the US population has a doctorate. It's also about 2% of the US population that has completed a marathon. To me, that means people who can carry out a long term goal and be disciplined to continue to show up. Because it's very few people who can sit down and say, you know, today I'm going to write an entire dissertation. And it's very few people who can wake up and say, you know, I'm going to run a marathon today without ever doing any preparation. So it's being showing up over and over again. Even when you're not making a lot of progress, you're putting in the work, have that self discipline to get there.