It can be surprisingly hard to do the things we want to do.
Much as I’ve always kicked against the idea of routine, cultivating good habits really helps. Especially if you mix things up occasionally, by throwing down a challenge for yourself.
Habits are the regular actions that make up our days, our identity, make us who we are. In my workbook, Your Next Year, I focus on habits as a way of structuring your days and weeks.
Habits help you progress the projects you want to do, but somehow never find time for. They’re also how you do those tedious maintenance tasks and all those things you need to do, with minimal fuss and drama.
Rather than setting a goal of writing a new book, for instance – a goal that sat on my list for years, without me doing much about it – I decided, in 2020, to focus on creating a daily writing practice. I’d got out of the habit of writing when I wasn’t on a deadline, and I wanted to change that.
I’m a professional writer.
It’s how I’ve earned a living for more than 40 years. (If you’re interested, you can see more of my journalism here.) So it was a shock to find how powerful this new habit was. After a few failed experiments, I settled on writing from 8-9am every weekday, with a looser schedule if I felt like writing more over the weekend.
As well as working as a coach, I’ve written a book since then, and republished two earlier books that were out of print. I’ve published over 100 blog posts about creativity and earning a living from your creative work, and over 100 editions of The Creative Companion, my bi-weekly newsletter for creative professionals. I’ve also written articles for magazines and newspapers, and contributed chapters to several more books.
This wasn’t all completed in my morning writing hour. But a lot of good ideas started there.
Sometimes I do more than my daily hour.
But very rarely less. It’s who I am now, what I do. There’s no decision-making, no procrastination. I just get up and write: however badly, whatever my mood, no matter how tired.
I never know how much I’ll write in that hour. Or how well.
There are good days, and bad ones. But when I show up consistently, I no longer miss a good day when it comes. And although I can’t predict what will happen in each hour, I do now have a pretty good sense of how much I can produce in a month, making it much easier to plan and meet deadlines.
For you, it might not be daily.
If you have a job elsewhere, children, freelance deadlines or other responsibilities, you might only get to your creative projects or your more personal work once or twice a week. But making a habit of it, developing routines and rituals around it, and protecting that time fiercely will still mean you make steady progress.
Which is far better than wishing, hoping, waiting for your muse to show up or for a stretch of free time to magically open up. (Spoiler alert: it won’t.)
Habits move us forward, slowly but surely.
In every area of your life, better habits will get you better results. If you create one new habit every month for a year, life will feel quite different 12 months later. (I know, because I’ve done it. You can read about that here.)
Creating new habits doesn’t have to be difficult. Start small. And only introduce one new habit at a time. I tend to start with an action that is so tiny that it’s almost easier to do it than to avoid it. Once I’m doing that consistently, I’ll gradually increase it.
I like building consistent streaks, ticking off new habits day by day. But if I break the chain, I don’t beat myself up – or abandon it altogether. I just start again the day after, or as soon as possible after that.
Life gets in the way, for all of us.
Habits are there to support you, to pick you up and get you back on track. They’re a familiar groove you can slot back into when normal life gets disrupted in some way. They’re a scaffold, a safety net. Not a cage. You shouldn’t feel trapped by them.
Still, there are times when we need to be more extreme. Perhaps we work intensely on a creative project, to get it finished or past a key milestone. We might want to take our fitness to the next level. To master a new skill, or deepen our knowledge on a subject. For this, challenges can help.
A challenge is when you choose to go deep, for a limited amount of time.
Challenges offer fast progress.
Especially if they move you out of your usual habits and routines.
Perhaps you book into a week-long meditation retreat or fitness bootcamp, or you set yourself a target of walking 200km in a month or swimming every day for 30 consecutive days.
Perhaps you take time off from all your other commitments, and throw yourself completely into a creative project. You take an intensive course to learn something new. Or you join a group challenge like the annual NaNoRiMo event, where thousands of writers across the globe try to draft a novel or write at least 50k words every November.
Sometimes we need to go all-in.
I can write the first draft of a book or lengthy article in one-hour sprints, but the second draft is about noticing waffle, repetitions, inconsistencies. For that I need long stretches of time when I focus only on the project at hand, with no other distractions or interruptions.
Mixing music, shooting or editing a film, the final polishing and finishing of most creative endeavours tends to demand this kind of intense focus. It can help to see it as a challenge, and to prepare accordingly. Warn your loved ones that you might not be available to them during this time, and keep your other commitments to a minimum.
A challenge isn’t sustainable.
This isn’t a roadmap for your life, a permanent part of your routine. It’s a one-off period of intense work and deep focus. Repeat it too often, and you’ll end up burned out, exhausted.
I find deep peace on a silent meditation retreat, and it strengthens my daily practice at home. But even if I had hours to spare every day, I’d find it hard to sit in meditation for long periods on my own. It’s the calm atmosphere at a retreat, the pressure of not fidgeting and disturbing the people sitting beside you to meditate, that helps me get into the zone.
Make a challenge into a game, if you can.
Try to make it fun.
- Do it with other people for encouragement and peer pressure (an organised 10k run, a group expedition or exhibition, an online challenge like NaNoRiMo).
- Track your output carefully, so you can see your progress (words written, songs recorded, hours spent making your art, weight lifted, steps/distance walked).
- Consider going on a trip, using a co-working space, or otherwise doing it somewhere different or interesting: a change of environment makes it easier to change your mindset, and avoid your usual chores and distractions.
A challenge is often about quantity, not quality. Although of course if you get your reps in, and do anything intensely, you usually get better at it.
It can last for a few days or weeks, a month at most. But it needs to end. We then need to rest, recover, and review its effectiveness before even considering another big push.
Pick up your old habits, and resume your steady pace. This is how the biggest, most challenging of creative projects get done, and out into the world.
Action steps:
- What new habits would be helpful to put in place this year, to make your creative practice most consistent – or to upgrade your health, wealth, life, happiness?
- Do you have a creative project, a skill you want to develop, a goal or intention would benefit from going deep? Would a challenge help?
Resources:
James Clear’s book Atomic Habits and BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits are both excellent on creating habits that serve you (and breaking ones that don’t).
Drawing crosses on a calendar works just as well, but habit tracker apps can be useful while bedding in a new habit – or recording a challenge. I like Streaks on my phone, but there are plenty of others.
We talk about structuring your days and building habits, routines and rituals that support your creative work in my 10-week group coaching programme. The next one starts February 6.
Jeep Diva
Great post! I completely agree with you on the importance of setting aside dedicated time for creative work. As a creative professional, I find that it’s easy to get bogged down in administrative tasks and lose focus on the work that really matters. By prioritizing my creative time and setting clear goals for myself, I’m able to stay motivated and productive. Thanks for sharing your insights!