How To Do A Creative Sprint
I used to have endless ideas and no follow through. I jumped from unfinished project to unfinished project in search of novelty and excitement. Meanwhile, my creative goals went unaccomplished. Then I discovered the creative sprint. The creative sprint helped me crack the code of consistent creativity. Now, I’ve published 307 blog posts in 307 days, and I’m not stopping any time soon.
Here’s how to get started with your own creative sprint. I’m confident it will help you hack your motivation, develop real discipline, and crack your own code of consistency.
Step 1 - Define What You Want To Do
Spell out what it is you want to create. Define it clearly. This needs to be an actionable, quantifiable practice. Stay away from nebulous goals here. A bad definition is: I want to grow my audience. A good definition is: I want to post 2 original videos about my drawings on Instagram every day. Make sure your definition is binary, and doesn’t leave any room for interpretation. Even if you’re working on a project that can’t be published daily, define a benchmark of output that you will complete each day. For example, instead of saying “I’ll work on my book each day,” say, “I’ll write 500 words every day.” This is a quantifiable definition that is binary. Either you write 500 words in one day or you don’t. Make your definition clear and scientific.
Step 2 - Give Yourself No Room For Renegotiation
I will use no uncertain terms here: this creative sprint will be hard. Things will get in the way. You will have to sacrifice things you enjoy in order to accomplish this goal. You’ll either have to get up earlier, stay up later, reschedule time with friends, or cancel plans entirely. Before you start a creative sprint, take a moment to get real with yourself. Are your creative goals worth sacrificing for? Are you willing to rearrange your life, at least a little bit, to achieve consistent creativity? Let your answer be yes, and give yourself no room for renegotiation. I’m a big fan of the every day sprint, committing to a practice each and every day for a short period of time. It leaves me with no opportunity to push to tomorrow. It’s binary. It either happens today, or it doesn’t.
Step 3 - Commit For A Finite Period of Time
This is the most important step. Decide how long you will commit to your creative sprint, and stick to that. Pick an end date. In a rush of inspiration and motivation, it’s tempting to overshoot this, and tell ourselves we’ll create every day from now on, until the end of time. But committing to things indefinitely is a recipe for demotivation.
Here’s what ends up happening when we commit indefinitely: we start out strong for a few days, doing what we set out to do. Then, after a few days, the creative practice becomes inconvenient. Something gets in the way. The commitment becomes difficult. Because we haven’t been working on it long enough to produce any substantial positive results, the inevitable difficulty far outweighs the benefits. Since we committed to this practice indefinitely, sirens start ringing in our brains. It feels like we just committed to something that will be difficult and intrusive forever, and since there have been no positive results yet, the only logical conclusion is to quit.
Here’s what happens when we commit for a finite period of time: we start out strong for a few days, doing what we set out to do. Then, after a few days, the creative practice becomes inconvenient. Something gets in the way. The commitment becomes difficult. However, since we know our commitment has an end date, this difficulty is easier to overcome. We stick with our practice, and push through the difficulty because we know this creative sprint won’t last forever. It has an end date, and the end date is in sight. After we finish our creative sprint, we realize all the benefits that it had for us. We realize that the benefits far outweighed the difficulties, and that consistent creativity is worth integrating into our lives for the long haul. But now we have real data to inform that decision, not just fluffy inspiration.
Step 4 - Find The Best Time In Your Schedule
You can make a creative sprint much easier if you find (or make) the best time in your schedule. There’s a reason productive creators either wake up really early, or stay up really late. It’s because there are no distractions. No one is vying for their time. I’ve found the best time for me to write is first thing in the morning, after I’ve had my coffee, before I eat breakfast, before I start work. If I wait to write until the afternoon or the evening, there are so many distractions that get in the way. I have phone calls and emails that interrupt me. I have friends who ask me to hang out. There are sports and shows that I could be watching. Sacrificing the things and the people I love to work on my wiring is really hard. but if I write during the hours in which those things rarely happen, it’s barely a sacrifice at all. If you can find a distraction-free window of time, the creative sprint becomes much easier.
Further reading on this topic here.
Step 5 - Tell Your Friends
You have to tell someone what you’re doing, and how long you’re doing it for. Social accountability is one of the strongest motivators. Even making an announcement on your Instagram story puts you on the hook to deliver on your promise. If the nature of your project isn’t sharable on social, then find another creative friend and tell them what you’re committing to. Show them your work each day, and ask them to check if you’ve really done the work. When all my personal motivation has disappeared, I’m able to find motivation in the promise I made to my audience. I don’t want to let them down, even if I’ve already resigned to letting myself down. The announcement and social accountability is what keeps me motivated.
Step 6 - Finish and Reevaluate
The last step is to stop. This is important, because it gives you time to evaluate how your creative sprint went. Was it really difficult? Did you have to sacrifice a lot? Did you have a good time? Did you see any benefits? This reevaluation stage is crucial to understanding what you can adjust, and how you can optimize in the future. I first committed to 30 days of writing in a row. Then I did 60 days in a row, after a few months of reconsideration. Then I did 100 days in a row, knowing how good the practice was for me. It was only after I accomplished 100 days in a row that I realized how much I loved this practice. I had the information and the routine to confidently commit to a year of daily publishing, which I never would have been able to accomplish before my shorter creative sprints.
Small Wins
Habit development is all about small wins. When we commit indefinitely, we will eventually falter, killing our motivation and keeping us from consistency. But when we accomplish a creative sprint, even as short as 3 days or a week, we build momentum, and give ourselves motivation to sprint a little longer next time.
Want to try this out? Send me a DM. I’d love to hear about your experience with the creative sprint to improve this model, and make it more applicable to others in the future.
Good luck!
