It's not what we do once in a while that shapes
our lives. It's what we do consistently. --Tony Robbins
The Under-appreciated Benefits of Creative Consistency
--by Gregory
Ciotti, syndicated from sparringmind.com,
Apr 23, 2015
Consistency
doesn’t count for everything, but it sure counts for a whole lot. With the
many landmines out there, ready to derail even the most talented of people,
“showing up” regularly offers undeniable benefits. Some of these perks often go
overlooked. For those excited to make progress this year, let’s keep in mind all
of the advantages at our disposal when we have an enviable attendance
record:
Consistency
begets consistency. A person in
motion stays in motion, unless acted upon by a Netflix binge session. The
creative mind is much like machinery. Too much work and you overload it, too
little and a decrepit state of rusty thinking awaits you. Keep the process
humming by allowing the steady flow of work to never let the mental cobwebs
settle.
When
you’re consistent, it means never having to restart. “I’m getting back into the
swing of things,” famous last words uttered by countless people with schedules
as reliable as the weather. Constant progress keeps morale high, keeps
enthusiasm brimming, and increases your investment in a project—nobody wants to
break the chain once it’s gotten
results.
Consistency
trumps goal setting. When Scott
Adams declared that “Goals are for losers,” the web went into a frenzy. The
point he was trying to make was that the process is more important than the
goal—what you do everyday matters more than what you plan to accomplish.
You
can aim to become a famous author, or you can bleed a thousand words per day
onto the page come hell or high water. You can aim to play Für Elise on the
piano by March, or you can design the habit that regularly gets you in front of
the keys for thirty minutes after work.
Consistency
is integral to creativity. Writing
doesn’t just transfer ideas, it creates them. The same can be said for all
creative work. There is a risk, as Bruce Lee says, that “If you spend too much
time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.” The inverse is rarely
true, as doing something requires thinking about it. Consistent work puts you
where the good ideas can find you.
With
constant work comes constant inspiration. Ideas are not a predefined bucket that
you should live in fear of drying up. Work creates a state that connects new
ideas. Often called the creative ear, when
you’re regularly working on things you enjoy, the walls come down and seemingly
insignificant moments spark inspiration. Just be sure to give yourself some space. Fires only burn when they have room
to breathe.
Consistency
lightens the pressure to be brilliant. Bearing a burden that even Atlas wouldn’t
envy, creative folks allow their flaky routines to trap them into a mindset that
demands each work be luminous. Expectations weigh heavy when they aren’t
continually reset—not only from your audience (“This had better be worth the
wait…”) but for the ones you set yourself.
Create
something once in a blue moon and people will expect something as novel and
awe-inspiring as a blue moon. Consistency relieves you of this burden. The more
you create, the more you have to throw away or release to the world; as
Hemingway would put it: “I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of
shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.” I hope you’re creating enough
to have material to trash, because even genius produces a few duds.
Consistency
forms needed constraints. Succumbing to “George Lucas Syndrome” starts
with having too large of a canvas. When you have to work backwards from your
schedule, consistent creation naturally forms constraints—you better have a
system in place to finish work at regular intervals.
You
can’t schedule insight, so the worry is that this will make your work
repetitive. The mistake here is believing that a common theme, style, or process
forces work to be mundane—creativity thrives on constraints. I love the videos
from ASAPscience even though they all use a whiteboard and are always about
science (here’s one). When
done right, consistency cultivates something that’s repeatable, not
repetitive.
Finding Your Average Speed - From a keynote by Dr. Peter
Myers, Data Scientist at Moz
Whenever
the word “you” appears in my writing, know that I am talking to myself.
Last
year, I stumbled into many of the pitfalls above. My writing at SparringMind.com
slowed to a snail’s pace, and I published less than ten essays.
To
be fair, I was creating very consistently at Help Scout. But everything I’ve mentioned
impeded on my ability to write personal essays: I felt pressure to always
publish a “big one,” I had no schedule and no template, and the work wasn’t
being done to give me additional ideas.
The
writing I did publish was well received, but I began to stress
myself out by working at manic speeds and depressive speeds—I’d write a long
essay with dozens of research studies in a blur of motion, only to later come
down from the high and not publish anything for months.
What
I should have cared about was my average speed.
On
average, my progress for writing last year was slow. Compounding interest
produces more meaningful results than individual swings, but I was chasing the
metaphorical “blue moon” mentioned above.
It’s
easy to make excuses when we don’t commit to a realistic average speed. Grand,
spasmodic effort won’t achieve lasting results—consistency will.
If
you set any resolutions this year, I hope you’ll join me in committing to a
simple objective: show up consistently. I’ll be here, will you.
This
article originally appeared on Sparring Mind and is republished with permission. Gregory
Ciotti leads growth at Help Scout and is the author of Sparring
Mind, where he takes a fresh look at human behaviour, productivity, habits, and
creative work.
Be The Change: Choose a small part of the day
during which you will put attention toward one of your most meaningful goals.
Consistently honour that small commitment and enjoy watching that goal come to
fruition.
Sourced
From www.dailygood.org
