Eight uncomfortable truths about staying consistent (most creators ignore these)

Most creators think motivation is something you find, like it’s hiding behind the Marmite in your kitchen cupboard, and if you just read enough books or watch enough videos, you’ll finally locate it.

I created like I believed this for years, and I ended up creating next to nothing.

I spent far too much time sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike, like the flu after a long flight.

After I quit my job to become a full-time blogger and illustrator, I found myself with no choice but to continue creating. I watched what the most consistent creators were doing and spoke to them.

I noticed that many understood things I hadn’t even considered. I also learned many things by simply refusing to quit.

Here are some of those things:

1. You don’t need motivation to act. You just need to act.

I learned that motivation follows movement, and it almost never precedes it.

It’s crazy how long it took for this to finally click with me. It meant that I didn’t need to feel inspired or confident to start.

Often, the lack of these things was a sign I took the work seriously, and that was enough.

You don’t need to feel motivated. Please stop looking for it. Consistent people follow a system, not their feelings.

2. You won’t stay consistent until you start seeing some wins, but wins can take a long time.

The biggest challenge I see today (though it has always been the case) is the temptation to jump ship and try out another shiny, cool thing.

You write online for a month. The results aren’t there, so you move to YouTube. Rinse and repeat.

Consistency is tough when you don’t see signs that things are working. This can take several months of consistent work with no clear wins.

If your expectations are high, you will be tempted into the arms of some novel new thing.

Because wins are important, you need to create your own measure for what a ‘win’ is in the early days.

For example, when you regard simply hitting publish every day as a win, you’ll be in a far better position to stay motivated over the long term.

3. You’re not afraid of failure. You’re afraid of other people watching you fail.

Most creative paralysis isn’t about the work itself. It’s about imagining the judgement, criticism, and the lack of engagement you’re hungry for.

Strip away the imaginary audience in your head, create for yourself, and suddenly the task feels lighter.

You’re not scared of writing. You’re scared of being seen to be wrong.

Once you find a way to care less about what people think, fear is replaced by excitement.

4. Consistency isn’t about willpower, but about making the action smaller than your resistance.

If you can’t write 1,000 words, write 100.

If you can’t post daily, post twice a week.

Shrink the task until your brain stops fighting it, because momentum builds from motion, not magnitude.

Tiny, simple, consistent steps compound faster than sporadic bursts of ambition.

5. The story you tell yourself about rejection is the only thing that makes rejection hurt.

Working for myself for over a decade showed me how important it was to be okay with rejection.

I needed people to say NO to me to progress at all. It’s part of the game. It’s necessary.

But I also learned that rejection is just information.

Rejection becomes painful only when you layer meaning onto it that was never actually there.

Expose yourself to the no, repeatedly, and cling less to what you think the ‘rejection’ means. Ask yourself, ‘Is it even rejection? Maybe it’s a gift.’

You’ll never get the clarity you wish you wanted on why.

You just take the no, learn from it if there’s a lesson there, and move on.

6. You’re not lazy. You’re over-dramatising the task.

When something feels enormous, you freeze.

But most creative work isn’t enormous at all. It’s one sentence, then another. One idea, then another.

I learned that any drama about the significance of the work was a thought manufactured in my mind. When I focused on volume, rather than needing to make any one thing perfect, my laziness disappeared.

If there’s pressure, the work seems near impossible. But without entertaining that thought in the first place, creativity opens up to you.

7. You think you need more time, but you actually need fewer options.

When I had all day to create, I created almost nothing.

And when I had two hours before a flight, I wrote more than I had in weeks.

The same applies to working on too many things at once. Have one creative goal for the next 3 months, not four.

Constraints force action. This is the ideal crucible in which creativity pops.

Too much freedom leads to endless deliberation about what to work on, which font to use, and which idea is best. The creators who stay consistent often have less time than you, but they’ve eliminated the luxury of choice.

This may mean your excuse for ‘not finding the time’ is no longer an excuse.

8. You’re waiting to feel like yourself before you create, but creating is how you find yourself.

I spent years believing I needed to ‘get my head straight’ before I could make good work.

I thought clarity came first, then creativity. But it really is the other way around.

The days I feel most like myself are the days I’ve created something, not the days I’ve thought about creating something.

Identity follows output. If you wait until you feel like a writer to write, you’ll be waiting a long time.

You become the person by doing what that person does.

The creators who stay consistent aren’t some weird aliens.

They just stopped believing that motivation comes before action, that rejection means something about their worth, and that they need to feel ready before they begin.

Like anything in life worth doing, they know it doesn’t always feel comfortable.

Knowing this, they create anyway.

And so can you.

Want to learn how to apply your habit for consistent writing so your audience grows?

My Online Writing Alchemy course shows you exactly how to write things that resonate in a way that grows your online following fast.

When you do, you’ll regularly enjoy that warm, fuzzy feeling of readers sending you emails of thanks.

Write something daily. Post it. You’ll have an asset few will enjoy in the coming years.

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