5 habits that are helping me remain consistent online.

For the last 2 years, the concept of consistency in terms of writing online was a mountain I could never climb. Every time I felt I was almost at the peak, life happened and pulled me down swiftly. And along with my writing, it pulled down my belief, my hopes and my energy.

Let me be honest. It’s not at all easy to gather the courage every time you fall flat on your face. Especially if you’re a side hustler like I am, the climb is even more tedious. However, thanks to my grind in these two years, I finally feel like I’ve got a hang of this consistency thing in the last 4–5 months.

The hardest fact about consistency is- initially it’s almost invisible to everyone else except you. You know you’re putting your heart and soul into it every single day, but the world will be oblivious until you come out with remarkable results.

The secret of success is the constancy of purpose — Benjamin Disraeli

In the middle of this chase of the big bull of consistency, I worked a lot with my writing routine, my habits and my mindset. What resulted were these 5 habits that worked well for me, and helped me remain on track.

My bitter-sweet relationship with consistency has taught me to be kind to myself. When you fail consistently at one thing, it’s often easy to blame yourself, indulge in what-ifs, and stress over the lost time and effort.

So, before I tell you about these 5 habits, I want you to know two things.

• Give it time. Take time to settle in. It’s rather foolish to set a goal of writing 10 medium articles a month if you’ve never written a single one. A wiser goal would be to start with 2–3 per month or one article per week.
• Detach yourself from your results. It doesn’t matter if no one’s reading your post in the beginning. What matters is that you put in the work every single day. Results are the derivations of compounding. And compounding happens only with consistency.

The more you overthink the outcome, the more you avoid taking action. The foundation of building momentum around your work is based on this very fact- To get into the action without thinking about the consequences.

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out --Robert Collier

It applies to writing online so well. When you unload yourself from the pressures of likes, comments, and reach, you’ll find it way easier to take on the one goal that’s going to bring you everything else- Consistency with writing.

Okay. Fine. Without further adieu, here are those 5 habits that are helping me remain consistent on three platforms and with my newsletter, despite having a day job-

1. Internalizing my priorities

It’s never going to be all perfect. Life has a tendency to make things happen when we least expect them and ruins all our productivity grinds. But having clarity of our priorities makes it much easier. You have to treat your priorities like sacred beliefs; no matter what, you cannot be unfair to them. These are the non-negotiables of your life project.

For example, I could never imagine myself enjoying a Saturday party when I know I haven’t written the weekly newsletter. It also comes from the fact that I take my audience a bit too seriously.

It’s possible to stick to your topmost priorities only when you have clarity about the life you want, the kind of work you want to do, and the kind of routine you want to have for the rest of your life.

And if you don’t have that clarity right now, that’s okay. There’s no hurry. Also, most of those who claim to have that clarity is just following their gut instinct. Other than that, they don’t have any idea what they’re doing.

Don’t believe me? Ask someone super successful how they reached there. 99% of them will tell you they never had any idea they would get so fortunate in future. They were just doing their thing.

2. Writing in the same place at the same time daily.

The environment we work in and how it makes us feel have a deep and silent impact on our quality of work. Because it’s a silent impact, we often don’t realize why we are not able to work well until it almost robs us of the joy of working. I’ve often found myself feeling lazy to write when I can hear the sound of my favourite show running on the television in the next room.

I’ve often left studying halfway just because I could smell the delicious dish being prepared in the kitchen. It’s so obvious when I am studying on the sofa or writing in a noisy room!

We’re humans after all. Distractions are our biggest weaknesses.

But, when I started taking my side hustle more seriously, I started writing at the same time, at the same place daily. For example,

• I?write my articles in the afternoon at my work desk. And when I write, I keep my phone on silent mode. Since I write in my clinic, there’s no chance of getting distracted from savoury aromas and title themes on television.
• I schedule tweets and edit articles at my work desk in the morning.
• I reply to comments and engage with other writers when I’m watching Netflix.

It’s my writing ritual. When you do the same thing at the same time, you train your mind to the process. And before you know it, it becomes almost mechanical. Your mind reminds you daily it’s time to write.

3. Revitalizing my creativity.

Our mind is like a piece of farmland. To get fresh crops, you need to sow seeds, water the land, plough the fields, and keep doing it repeatedly, even after the tendrils peek out from the earth.

Sadly, most of us don’t realize that it’s the same with creativity, Unless you feed your mind with the raw material unless you let it indulge in creative thinking, it’s hard to come up with a new idea every time you sit to write.

Nourish your mind with something that activates your creative streak like never before. Indulge in something that makes you feel alive and makes your brain overflow with ideas.

For me, it’s the stuff like

• Reading books that naturally attract my attention.
• Listening to really good music. ( Although, I’m often told my taste in music is ‘handicapped’)
• Working out.
• Cooking
• Dancing (occasionally)

Work on what makes you forget your surroundings. Be on a constant lookout for the things that nourish your creative soul and add vibrancy to your life. Because those are the things that are going to make your writing and your life interesting and richer than before.

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have — Maya Angelou.

4. Documenting my thoughts

Our mind is constantly on a treadmill of thoughts. It’s the foundation of how are we feeling at a certain point in time. More often, most of those fleeting thoughts are all we need to reflect on our choices, analyze our journey and create content based on our experiences.

It has often happened to me that I get a killer idea for my content while commuting to my workplace and I make mental note to include that idea in my article. It’s so cruel that thousands of such thoughts vanished into the thin air when I actually start writing.

That’s the thing with thoughts. They are not permanent. In fact, they are the most temporary thing you possess. And yet they are so precious. They are the only reason for your uniqueness.?They are your signature.

Imagine how much value your readers are missing out on just because you can’t remember the one thing that’s your trademark- Your thoughts.

My solution? Documentation.

I now have an unwritten rule: no matter the time, place or occasion, once I get a great idea for my content, I must write it immediately.

Documentation is a love letter that you write to your future self. - Damian Conway

As a result, I have some ideas documented in Apple notes, others in Notion, and others simply in my physical notepad. I call them Content Banks. Whenever I don’t have any topic planned, I skim through one of these banks and start writing.

5. Scheduling my content.

I’m not a fan of a full tech stack for my content. I just want to keep my systems simple to manage, but with greater use to me, in terms of saving time and mental energy.

Scheduling tools do that for me. After my wedding, it was almost impossible to take out 15 uninterrupted minutes just to craft a thoughtful post for LinkedIn every day, thanks to countless family functions, and giant-sized responsibilities.

Since LinkedIn released its new scheduling feature, life has become seamless. Being a side hustler, scheduling my content has been the biggest game-changer for me so far. And trust me, you don’t have to be intelligent tech savvy to use them.

Just pick one or two for different platforms and you’re sorted for life. I schedule my tweets using Hypefury and my newsletter using the scheduling option in Substack.

Finally,

All writers find it difficult to remain consistent at one point in their careers. And all of them have their own unique writing routine. These 5 life-changing habits are all that helped me to finally climb that mountain.

1. Internalizing my Priorities
2. Writing in the same place at the same time daily.
3. Revitalizing my creativity
4. Documenting my thoughts
5. Scheduling my content

But, please! Don’t adopt these habits just because I advocate them. Try them for a few days, see if they work for you and make them permanent only if they really improve your consistency. If not, move on to the next thing that really works for you.

Create your own unique writing routine.

It’s never late to take control of your writing routine and imbibe it in your nature. Your life is yours to design.

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