Have you ever tried to establish a creative habit? Specifically, a content-creating habit?
Whether it’s writing your memoir, painting a masterpiece, knitting a sweater, or filling your journal, it won’t get done in a day.
So you break it into chunks.
There are a ton of resources around creating habits and getting things done. I won’t attempt to summarize or judge their efficacy.
But what I can speak to, having now written daily for 114 days, is the rhythm.
And I believe the only practical choices – in the industrialized world – for the frequency of regular commitments are daily or weekly. (And it can be more than once per week.)
Monthly doesn’t work – sometimes the 8th will be a Wednesday, sometimes a Saturday. What works one month won’t work or feel the same the next.
Nor does the second Tuesday of every month – who can keep track?
Less frequently than that, and I don’t think you’ll notice it as a rhythm.
Daily (the only thing that’s worked for me) is hard to forget. It’s unambiguous. Did I write today? Not yet? Ok, better do it now. (As long as I haven’t gone to bed, it’s still today.)
Weekly works because we live, most of us, in weekly rhythms. Each day of the week takes roughly the same shape. So you write Monday mornings. Or M, W, F. Or only on weekends.
These are frequencies we feel, and I think that’s critical.
Habitually,
James
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