Three unexpected benefits of creative consistency
Last night I gave a talk at the Made Wild Creative Night called Three unexpected benefits of creative consistency. Watch a video of the talk below, and read the script if you like. Enjoy!
Three unexpected benefits of creative consistency
“If I force myself to create every single day, won’t that steal the joy from my art?” One big pushback I get when I talk to creatives and artists about creative consistency sounds like this. “If I force myself to create every single day, won’t I get tired, uninspired, and won’t it suck the passion out of my art?”
It’s a fair question, because we’re weighing the costs, right?
We’re weighing the costs because we see what happens when other people have consistency. They hone their craft, they grow their audience, they make great connections. I’m really big on creative consistency. I’m really big on it because it changed my life. Last year I posted almost 400 times on Instagram and grew my audience to more than 60,000 creatives and artists. I published 465 blogs in 465 days from September of 2020 until the end of 2021. A lot of those blogs became the early breadcrumbs which led to chapters in my first book, which was published last year.
And it all started in 2018 with a humble, 30 day challenge. In 2018, I challenged myself to post 30 blogs in 30 days on my website. It didn’t matter if I was tired. It didn’t matter if I had a good idea. It didn’t matter how busy I was. I forced myself to post every day for 30 days. That’s how my journey got started.
Still, we ask this question: “I force myself to create every single day, won’t that steal the joy from my art?” Because if we lose our passion along the way, it might not be worth it.
What I want to help you see tonight is that creative consistency is worth it. I want to share three unexpected benefits of creative consistency. Not from me! I’m obviously an insane person who can do the same creative act every day 465 days in a row. I want you to hear it from three artists in my cohort. Earlier this year I ran something called the 15-Day Creative Consistency Challenge. It was a small group of artists and creatives sharing a daily deliverable in a private forum.
I want to share three unexpected benefits of creative consistency from three people in the first cohort.
The first benefit of creative consistency is this: it helps you overcome emotional blocks.
The first story is from Eric. Eric is a full-time graphic designer who wanted to be more consistent with personal projects. For his 15-day challenge, he drew one sketch of a cartoon character he had been working on for a project. For a long time, it was really hard for Eric to start working on this project because the character was based on someone very close to him who passed away.
He said this to me in an interview: “This project is something that's been so personal to me. I get very precious with it. So i'll do a drawing and then not know where to take it next.”
I felt this immediately. I’ve had projects that felt so personal to me, and I became too much of a perfectionist about them. But by committing to a daily creative deliverable, Eric was able to overcome this. Later, Eric said “this is the first time where I did a drawing [of this character] and then the next day did more and more. I really started to build on it.”
There was an emotional block that kept Eric from working on this very personal, very meaningful project about his friend who passed away. Creative consistency helped him overcome the emotional blocks, and build out the character beyond where it was before.
The second unexpected benefit of creative consistency is this: it increases your creative freedom.
My second story comes from my interview with Susanna. Susanna is not a professional artist, she’s not a full-time creative, but she took on the 15-day challenge to be more consistent with one of her hobbies, which is painting.
She told me in an interview that going into the creative consistency challenge, she was afraid it would reduce her creative freedom. “I feared showing up with consistency in a creative realm. I didn’t want to suck the passion out of my passion by showing up and [creating] when I didn't want to.”
But Susanna and I also discussed how the constraint eventually brought freedom. Her mind and her will weren’t at war with each other. She wasn’t wasting creative energy fighting with herself. Her decision was already made, which freed up her creative energy to just paint in a flow state. It’s ironic, but a daily creative commitment increases your creative freedom.
The third unexpected benefit of creative consistency is that it shows you the depth in your art that you couldn’t see.
In all my interviews with people who took on the 15-Day Creative Consistency Challenge, I asked them the same question. I asked if there was a day of the challenge in which they delivered something they didn’t love, but then saw people connecting with the art in a way they didn’t expect? More than 80% said yes.
One creator, Zach, who created short, dramatic, sci-fi podcast clips for his 15-day challenge said, “my art being observed and consumed by people in a way that might actually reach them is a part of what I want.”
It sounds so noble and interesting to say that we’re just creating for ourselves, but in reality: we want people to connect with our work. We want it to impact them. The audience’s interpretation of our art adds layers to the art, and reveals depth in our work that you couldn’t even see yourself.
To recap, we discussed three unexpected benefits of creative consistency. It helps you overcome emotional blocks, it increases your creative freedom, and it helps you discover a depth to your art that you couldn’t see yourself.
There are many more unexpected benefits, and if I’d love to see you discover a few more for yourself; join us in the next 15-day Creative Consistency Challenge, we’re getting it started again in early March.
I’ll close by answering the original fear—the original pushback: does creating every day suck the life out of your art?
As someone who has done the same creative act for 465 days in a row…no. Consistency doesn’t steal the joy from your art. It helps you uncover a deeper passion for it. Consistency might be the only way to prove to your art that it is important to you.
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