Over the past decade, many people have called me the Queen of Consistency.
The evidence has supported the title:
- a daily workout streak that is approaching 13 years
- a daily meditation practice of over 10 years
- a daily blog of over 8 years
When people have asked me how I create these long-term sustainable habits, I’ve always been very quick to stay that these are not habits: they are not automatic actions that just happen because I’ve cultivated them for 21, 30, or 90 days.
My recent experience has reinforced this point.
Over the past few weeks, for the first time in over eight years, I’ve missed some days on my blog. A few days here and there led to a 9 day gap.
It’s been a frustrating time, leaving me feeling dysregulated and disconnected from my creative process.
I’ve also felt a little bit like a failure for not being able to sustain my daily output, like a fraud for not living up to the title bestowed on me.
These days, I’m definitely not feeling like the Queen of Consistency.
But this challenging season has also reinforced certain principles that I have consistently taught and written about regarding what’s really involved in consistently creating space for your best work.
(1) Creative work isn’t a habit. It’s a practice supported by rituals and rhythms.
Most of productivity culture is focused on creating habits. Habits are automatic reactions to a stimulus.
Creative work isn’t a habit. It isn’t something you can automate.
Writing, like all creative work, is a practice — but the usual advice to “just keep showing up” misses the mark.
For a practice like meditation or even exercise, just showing up is half the battle. Show up to your mat, sit, and you can meditate. Show up to the gym and move your body, and you’re exercising.
Creative work is a practice that depends on, and is supported by, rituals and rhythms.
I sustained my daily writing and publishing through a series of rituals that created a particular rhythm: workout, get a stimulus that triggers dopamine, sit down and write immediately after my workout before dealing with any other things, to best leverage peak dopamine and my peak creative time.
It wasn’t automated; it was a system of rituals that created a routine aligned with my natural rhythms.
To be fair, I had the luxury of being able to control my schedule so I could protect the rhythms that facilitate my creative output.
Recent changes to my schedule have diminished my control over my schedule and disrupted my rhythms.
It’s not simply a matter of moving the creative work to a different time of day. The disruption of the rhythm removes the physiological state that makes the writing possible.
(2) Consistency isn’t built on discipline or willpower. It’s built on a set of conditions.
I didn’t stop writing because I lacked commitment; I stopped because various disruptions to my circumstances and schedule have made it challenging for me to sustain the conditions that support my writing.
We often hear that consistency requires commitment, desire, willpower, and discipline.
Although these are important, they are not enough on their own. Willpower and discipline, in particular, are in limited supply. You can’t rely on them for consistency.
It’s also not enough to have ideas, although it’s certainly necessary.
Here’s what gets missed: You can have all of these things and still struggle with consistency.
The prerequisite for consistency is the ability to create the conditions that are necessary to support your work.
I call this creating space for your best work.
Energy, environment, and emotional regulation are the foundational elements that support consistent creative output. Without these foundational pillars, you won’t have the capacity to create.
I didn’t stop writing because I lacked commitment; I stopped because various disruptions to my circumstances and schedule have made it challenging for me to sustain the conditions that support my writing.
(3) Creative work isn’t about time; it’s about capacity.
When we struggle to do something in our day, we can be quick to default to the reason that we “don’t have time.”
The constraint isn’t the time.
You always have time — although you might not have time at the right time.
An example I often give to clients who tell me they “don’t have time” is 2 AM.
It’s unlikely that you have anything scheduled on your calendar for 2 AM. But most people would say that they don’t have the energy at 2 AM to do creative work.
That is a valid constraint, although it should be noted that some of the most legendary creators have often used the middle of the night time to do their best creative work.
The real constraint is your available bandwidth and energy.
Creative work requires space for incubation, synthesis, and cultivation. It can’t happen in the 10-minute windows you may have in between appointments or in the margins of your day.
It requires the white space in your calendar: blocks of time.
I can and have found time to write at other times; the challenge is that my bandwidth is depleted, I can’t form sentences, and I often fall asleep with the iPad propped on my lap.
Creative work requires time and space at the right time: the time that is aligned with your creative rhythms and energy.
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