A Guide on How to Develop Consistency in Writing
How to reach from an average player to an excellent one? How to reach from scratch to the best business model? How to reach from a budding writer to a full-time bestselling author??Consistency is the key!
Let’s check what drives consistency? One simple word and it is ‘reason‘.
The first step is to find your ‘why’.
If you ever put your mind to do something, whether it’s writing or the job you do, ask yourself why you do it. For everyone, the reasons are different and your reasons will always be different from theirs. This should not make you doubt your reason.
For instance, let’s imagine an engineer who does not love her job. Maybe, for the world, there is then no point for her to be an engineer but the truth is her job pays her bills, right? Therefore, it is valid enough, at least for her. So, the first step should be to identify your ‘why’ without judging your reasons. It could be because you love doing it, it could be for money, or that people love you when you do that. All the reasons count valid till the time it does not makes you dependent. Once you find your reason, make a to-do list and set a priority check.
‘Priority Check’ comes next
Guess what, you cannot be consistent with it if you always have the option to do it later. Are you a great procrastinator? Who is not? The trick is to trick your mind by making your task a priority. On paper. Never prioritize in mind. Always prioritize on paper. Jot down all the tasks you want to and you ought to do today and number them from 1 to n in terms of priority. Disclaimer: Make sure the activity you want to be consistent at isn’t numbered 10. Pun intended.
Categorize – Long-term or short-term?
While short-term goals are the ones that are there for a duration of less than a year, long term sticks to you for as long as 2-5 or 6-10 years. The third step is to categorize your goal and know whether it is a short-term or a long-term goal. Set out plans accordingly.
Let’s understand this. Consistency doesn’t mean daily. It means recurring at the same durations. Short-term goals demand your attention daily because their deadline is coming closer with each day. However, long-term goals need more patience and planning backed up with execution. That is why it is important to know the category of your goals. Because it is going to tell you how, when, at what timing, how often are you going to be consistent.
Now that it is clear what exactly consistency is, how it works and what factors drive it, let’s now dive deeper to know ‘HOW’ we can act upon it.
Hola, authors! All ears, please? Now that you know:
Let’s brace up with the execution.
Here are powerful tricks that will help you be consistent.
1. Create an urgency about the task
Maintaining consistency in writing is like getting up early in the morning. You don’t do it unless there is an important stand-up, failing to attend it, you will be fired.
Yes, it’s not always about what you will get out of it but what great you will lose if you don’t do it.
A very simple trick is to break your task into small blocks and assigning a day few blocks of work to do. Imagine it like a puzzle where the block are the pieces and the task in hand is the puzzle. If you miss on a block, i.e., on a specific work to be done at a particular time, it keeps you away from framing your final picture.
If you keep on reminding yourself of this unsolved puzzle, your mind will keep on blinking now and then until you finish your day’s task. Loved how you played with your mind?
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2. Create accountability
Illustrating an example of this: I started writing and used Instagram to put out my work. I put prose and self-help content very often. Having said that, I understand the challenge of keeping the audience posted with relevant content now and then. Unlike a regular job, here I have the freedom to perform whenever I want to, and boom! The same freedom kept me away from consistency. I decided to create accountability. I announced to the audience that I will be posting for the next 30 days in a routine. By doing that, I created an obligation to post every day. Now, I had in mind if I don’t do so, there are a lot of question marks I will create in the audience’s mind. Now, it’s not just me in the picture, but also the people to whom I have set out my commitment.
And as planned, no matter what, I made sure I was posting the content out there.
I would recommend you to do the same.
3. Carry a journal to plan out
This might sound poor but one thing I have learned the hard way is not to rely on memory.
We don’t live in a time where food, shelter, and clothing are our major concerns. In the super busy era that we live in, it is quite natural for us to forget. But, this shall be no excuse for you to sacrifice on THAT ONE IDEA that hit you suddenly.
Google Keep is a brilliant place where you can vent out all your ideas and leave them to automatically save themselves. It would sync easily even if you use it on a desktop or other mobile devices. Outline the idea in your head and you can stuff it up later on. Good idea, Nah?
4. Keep the learning on
Quite often, we get exhausted and run out of ideas. That is why constant learning is important. If you don’t fuel up the car, it would hardly run another mile.
The success behind great men and women are they keep themselves updated and utilize it for their next step.
Similarly, the key to writing effortlessly is reading. Keep reading, it might be a newspaper, an article on mobile, and even a comic book can do wonders. It is just about a habit.
5. Trust your words
The secret of bestsellers? They trust and believe in themselves. They never judge their own words. That is what is required of you.
“Every story that comes out of you is a part of you.”, I once wrote to myself when the world seemed not to appreciate.
It is important to take critiques seriously but not personally. Trust that little heart oozing words out of you. And see, you won’t get to know when it became unstoppable!