Emotional mastery for creative consistency

Seth Godin has published a short blog every single day for more than 10,000 days in a row. That’s more than 25 years of daily blogging. 

Digital artist Mike Winkelmann (better known as Beeple) has created a new digital artwork from start to finish every single day for 6551 days. 

This is my 97th day in a row I’ve posted a blog. Previously, my longest blogging streak was 465 days in a row. 

You might be reading these facts and thinking to yourself, “I could never do that. I’m not that kind of person.” Certainly, Godin and Winkelmann have incredible streaks going that not many people will ever replicate. But they’re not doing things that other people can’t do. Seth Godin’s blog posts are usually less than 200 words long. Anyone could do that. Winkelmann’s daily artworks consistently reuse and recycle ideas from his previous pieces, other artists’ work, and from current cultural moments. Anyone could do that. 

What Beeple and Godin have done (and what I’m trying to do, as well) is master their emotions. I’m sure there are days and hours and moments when they’re thought to themselves, “this is stupid. I don’t want to do this.” But they do it anyway. Certainly, there are moments when they don’t feel like what they really are. 

We have reason to believe that fluctuations in emotions are more impactful than a momentary discouragement. They can make us feel like a different person entirely. 

“Someone could be open and agreeable at noon but negative and rigid at two o’clock,” says Francine Russo. “Such oscillations in daily feelings and behavior…are, in fact, so great that they rival or even exceed the differences in personality traits such as extroversion or conscientiousness that can be measured between one person and another.” 

There are moments of the day and moods you’ll find yourself in when your motivation to be consistent is at an all-time high. When you’ll feel like Godin or Beeple. There are other moments when you might feel like the last thing you want to do is create something. 

When do those moments come? How can you leverage them? What can you do to keep your consistency afloat?