How to build a creative habit for good

If you've been trying to develop a creative habit without much success or you haven't made the progress you would have liked, you're not alone. Perhaps you want to learn to draw or aspire to finish writing this book you started months ago. If, either you cannot get started or stick to a creative habit, the odds are not against you. And, it's not you.

In this article, I am offering you resources to help you make creativity a habit. I promise that if you leverage the lessons discussed here, it will be much easier to develop a process that you can sustain in your pursuit of any creative endeavor in the future.

The power of a creative habit

Let's get one thing out of the way first. The only approach to successfully pursue a creative endeavor is by building a habit around it, preferably a daily one. There are more books on this topic than any of us can ever read in our lifetime. I prefer to learn from those who have experienced themselves what they share with the rest of us through their books and work.

Steven Pressfield, in his book War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, labels the enemy of creativity Resistance. He shares his personal experience with writing to help us to understand our own fears and creative journeys.

"Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt. It's a repelling force. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work."

Twyla Tharp wrote a wonderful book called The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life. Through her personal journey as a dancer and choreographer, she learned to rely on a lifetime of exercises to help her get out of the rut when she was stuck. The book contains more than thirty of them to ease the fears and to open the mind to new possibilities.

"In order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative. There is a process that generates creativity - you can learn it. And you can make it habitual."

I've read many more than these two books as I aspired to develop my own writing habit. Most resources repeat the lessons shared by Pressfield and Tharp: First, we need to understand our own Resistance and, second, we must develop a daily practice that works for us. Both steps require deep reflection and deliberate effort.

Most of us cannot do this alone

It doesn't matter how much we like writing or how passionate we may be about learning to draw or anything else for that matter. Very few of us can develop a creative habit alone.

How many people do you know who learned to play an instrument by practicing every day in their basement on their own and no one ever heard about it? A friend told me once about one of his friends who published a book before he ever told anyone that he was actually writing a book. While this sounds great, it's also rare.

"The Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It is an engine of destruction. The Resistance is self-sabotage. Procrastination is the most common manifestation." - Steven Pressfield

The (known!) secret

It shouldn't come as a surprise that to best way to develop a habit is to be accountable to someone else; an editor, a coach or a friend. A higher level of accountability is created when we share our commitment more broadly. That worked for me well in October of 2017 when I shared with my network on LinkedIn that I was planning to publish a daily blog post.

But what about those of us who do not feel quite ready yet for such a commitment? Or we might want to try a new creative endeavor that we are far less comfortable with? Is there a better way to overcome the Resistance, develop a deliberate practice, and achieve our goal?

That's where an accountability group comes into play. Not only does it help us develop a creative habit, but it also supports us to improve our skills. Even if we have, or are considering getting a coach to help us hone our craft, an accountability group will offer us so much more and can complement (or even substitute for some of us) the one-to-one coaching.

"All you need are people with good judgement who care about you and will give their honest opinion with no strings attached." - Twyla Tharp

The power of a shared journey 

Seth Godin blogged about the power of shared reality and shared goals. He claimed that this is the best way to hold each other accountable for our work. I joined a writing accountability group in March this year together with a few other grads of the altMBA alumni community.

I've gained so much more from the members of this group than I could ever offer them back! Since I had already developed a daily writing habit for my blog, my new goal this year was to improve my storytelling skills, while shifting away from the traditional business writing that I was focused on during my former corporate career. Any good storytelling book will tell you that people respond to our writing first based on how they feel and, second, based on what they know. My writing focus this year has been on how I make the readers feel.

The goals of our accountability group are simple:

1. To encourage each other to keep the writing habit strong through shipping weekly.
2. To build a community of writers through the art of giving/getting feedback.

During our shared journey, we learn from each other and improve our writing. We coach and support each other. We are seen as writers and our work is cherished and appreciated.

We count on each other to show up, share our work, and offer generous questions and comments to help each other expand our writing. We don't only rely on the ones with stronger writing and peer-coaching skills. We need everyone to show up and contribute. As we improve our skills individually, our group gets better. We're all in this together.

Photo by Ethan Weil on Unsplash

One more challenge

I'm sure most of you have heard before about accountability groups - with agreed upon goals, reality, and measurement - and, perhaps, a few have had already your own experience.

If they're as great as everyone keeps telling us about, why is it that not all of us stick with them for the long run?

Assuming our personal 'why' behind developing the creative habit is still valid, along with our commitment to do the work, there must be other reasons that make us drift away from our well-meaning intentions. Of course, life happens and, sometimes, we need to put our creative endeavors on the back burner to take care of other important matters. We take a break and come back when things settle down.

If all the above are in our favor, what else could it be holding us back from continuing to share our creative journey with an accountability group?

It might be the cousin of the Resistance; namely our own Ego! The one that keeps telling us that everyone else has better skills than we have and, is making faster progress than we do. There is no way - no matter how hard we try - that we'll ever reach our goals. We're just not that good. The odds are against us.

While no one can guarantee that being part of an accountability group will make us successful and famous creators, at the same time, no one can argue that our shared journey will help us make creativity a habit and improve our skills, if we're willing to do the work.

When in doubt about continuing in an accountability group - because our Ego is trying to convince us to drop out - it's worth considering the following:

• We're not alone; everyone else struggles with that. When we share our fears with the group, we can confirm this easily. While it's perfectly human to compare our progress with that of others in the group, it's not helping us in any way or shape.
• If we're not happy with the progress we've made thus far, we need to give ourselves more time. Our skills are improving even if it's not that obvious. Creative work is not for the faint of heart. We must persist. The more work we create, the better it will become.
• When we don't get much joy out of our creative habit, we need to explore new ways to do our work. We must develop a personal practice that works for us. Adapting the practice of someone else is not always our best option. Trial and error is the way to go.

While we share this journey with our fellow creators, each of us is on our own journey, and at a different stage of that journey.

• We all start with different skills and may have different goals. Our personal reality may not allow us to put the same level of effort with everyone else. We may need more time to learn. Our aspirations may also be different. And we have our own fears to work with.
• The fact that it feels hard work doesn't mean that we're not making progress. Nothing is easy at the beginning. And creative work doesn't get much easier with time. We merely get used to that feeling and we keep going.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

If we're still considering dropping out of an accountability group, our last resort is to remind ourselves of our commitment to our fellow creators. When we promise to pick our children up from school, we show up rain or shine, right? For those who may not relate to this example, let's consider a friend who is waiting for us to pick them up from the hospital. If you're thinking, well this isn't the same accountability we're talking about here, think again.

Commitment is defined as the the state of being dedicated to a cause or an activity.

The question we should ask ourselves every time we don't feel like doing the work is simple:

Are we willing to do whatever it takes to honor our commitment to the group?

And when we serve others, whatever we offer to them comes back to us amplified. My key takeaway message regarding accountability groups and creative habits is this:

When we find a generous and committed group of creators, we stick with it!

The Java Jive

I would not have written this article if it was not for my personal experience with a very special writing accountability group. We call ourselves Java Jive, which is a song written by Ben Oakland and Milton Drake, in 1940. The lyrics speak of the singer's love of coffee.

Maria is a storyteller, and a change maker on a mission to empower people to design their learning journey and build the life and career they want. She blogs on LinkedIn daily, and she is the host of the Impact Learning podcast. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, on Google Play Music, on Spotify, on Stitcher, or subscribe via RSS.