I’ve been publishing a daily blog for over 6 years. Lately, I’ve received a lot of questions about how I have maintained consistency over such a long time.
My Challenges With Consistency
In the interest of full transparency, my consistency is not without its challenges.
When I first started blogging, I would often spend weeks writing an essay only to never publish it.
As a deep thinker, I often process an idea through so many layers that I can lose myself in it.
Often, one thread spawns numerous related ideas, until I’m tangled in a web of concepts. I see the way the dots connect, but I sometimes struggle to articulate the threads coherently so other people can see them.
Sometimes I have an idea or a topic I want to write about, and the words simply don’t come.
In the early days, this led to a lot of frustration and self-berating. I couldn’t figure out how to move past those sticking points.
It still happens. The difference is that I have found ways to navigate the sticking points when it comes to publishing to my blog.
In full transparency, I still get stuck when it comes to social media and my newsletter. Those are my next frontiers to conquer.
When I have a challenge in one area, I look to a place where I’ve had success to see what I did and how I did it.
Here are 3 shifts I made to help me publish blog posts consistently.
I’ll be putting these into practice for my social media and newsletter.
3 Tips to Be Consistent as a Content Creator
(1) Commitment to Consistency
Tip: Commit to publishing more frequently
It may sound circular, but the way to publish consistently is to publish more frequently.
A cadence of daily publishing may seem like a heavy load, but it’s that commitment that keeps me from getting stuck.
The tight structure of my commitment means that I cannot allow to spin in the web of ideas for too long.
I cannot linger in the “I don’t have any ideas today.”
I cannot wallow in indecision about what to write about.
When I feel stuck, I have to find a workaround because I’ve committed to publishing.
If daily doesn’t work for you, pick a different cadence — but make it more than once a week.
(2) Simplify
Tip: When a topic feels too big, turn it into a series.
It my nature to be a deep thinker and to see the way that many ideas and concepts relate to each other — that’s unlikely to change.
When I start to get tangled in the web of ideas or lost down the rabbit hole, I know I need to simplify.
Incidentally, this is also where my commitment to publish daily helps me. Knowing I’m going to publish a new essay tomorrow helps me scale back and limit myself to one small idea at a time, while keeping me in the momentum of the topic.
Sometimes it’s actually easier to write in this way. I can take my time building layer by layer, knowing I can share it as I go.
This approach helps keep me out of the tangled web. As a bonus, smaller essays are easier for readers to digest.
And parsing a topic out into a series can keep the audience engaged.
(3) Lower the Stakes
Tip: Release yourself from expectations about what a blog post or essay must look like, or how it should land.
Sometimes the thing that really trips me up is the concern about “getting it right.”
I have found that the more important the topic is to me, or the closer I get to expressing something that feels like a core truth, the harder it can be to write about it.
The higher the stakes, the bigger the resistance that can crop up.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is where the structure of my commitment to publish daily helps.
(Yes, it’s a theme).
Baseball players play 180 games a year. The best hitters fail 7 out of 10 times. Just like not every workout is going to be hardcore or set PRs, not every blog post will be a home run.
Most of the time, an essay won’t land. It might not come out the way I wanted. Maybe it will be incoherent. Maybe I won’t quite hit the mark in how I articulate it.
The structure of a daily commitment helps me give myself permission to write it “messy” and release attachment to outcome.
I articulate it the best I can in the moment, knowing I can come back to the same topic and write it again from a different angle.
Sometimes you have to call it “good enough for now” and move on, trusting that you’ve given enough to serve.
Do you struggle with creating consistency in daily practices? I can help. Reach out to schedule a call to see if we are a fit to work together.
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