People say that practice makes perfect. Is that actually true? In all honesty, probably not. Nobody can be truly perfect, even with consistent practice. But does it help? Absolutely!
Last week, we talked about four ways we can develop our creativity. I decided I’d like to go a bit deeper into each step, not just to give practical applications, but also to discuss the mindset behind each step. Developing our creativity is all about developing our mindset, after all!
So today we’re tackling the not-so-fun step first: practice.
It’s Important
Consistent practice of our craft is important if we want to improve and if we want to cultivate a mind that keeps churning out those great ideas.
With that being said, here are three exercises we can implement starting today to develop consistent practice:
1. Make It a Daily Habit
Just like we need to exercise every (or almost every) day to get good, noticeable results, we need to practice our craft every day to get noticeably more amazing at it.
One of the reasons it needs to be every day is so that it becomes a habit. Whether they are good ones or bad ones, habits are hard to break. If we can form good habits—not just wishful inclinations with occasional action taken—we’re building a strong life foundation of creative productivity!
I recently started a daily writing habit. The first hour of my day is for writing only—no getting distracted by other things that need to be done, like answering emails, designing graphics, filling social media queues, or any of the other non-writing tasks on my to-do list that I often use to distract myself from the difficult job of plain old writing.
The results? I love the consistency in this part of my day. At least for one hour, I know exactly what I’ll be doing, and even on days when I feel dry and that I don’t have any ideas, text still ends up on the page, and I’m further along than before I started. Sometimes the creativity keeps flowing, and my writing time spills into the rest of the day. (That’s what happened with this article, actually!)
Try it! With consistent practice, you’ll start seeing results.
2. Set Goals
Don’t form this new habit without direction. Having an overall goal for all this practice will give direction and focus to our creativity.
Want to write a book? Set a daily word count for your habit: I will write 500 words in my book or I will write new content for my book for one hour. <— Notice the specific wording for this second part. Don’t self-edit before you’re done writing.
This is a major writing pitfall and one we must avoid at all costs! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fallen into the self-editing trap and ended up using much of my writing time to tweak, correct, and critique myself instead of producing content, and all this before the first draft was even finished.
We won’t be able to achieve our goals in finishing our projects if we’re over-editing them before they’re completed. We’ll not only lose steam, but we’ll also start thinking poorly of our work and not be motivated to finish it. Save the critique for after the draft is finished.
Make writing—finishing the draft—the goal of this daily habit. Make it specific; set a word or time count and stick to it.
3. Share
Finally, we shouldn’t keep our creativity to ourselves. It’s hard, but we have to share our work with others, even if we don’t feel like it’s our best. Because honestly? We’ll rarely, if ever, feel that a work is our best and that we’re ready to share it.
I’m not saying to just pump out a bunch of sub-par content. Please don’t do that! But we can set small goals for ourselves, such as publishing one thing per week that we’ve really taken the time to tweak and perfect (after the writing part is finished;)). This provides consistent practice in sharing our creativity with others, which is essential if that’s what we’re trying to do in our lives as writers!
Consistently sharing our work will keep us on our creative toes and ensure none of this practice is going unnoticed. Even if we never publish what we’re practicing, the practice won’t go to waste because at least we’re doing something productive to improve our craft. However, the work will matter more to us and we will care more if we know it’s getting released to the public.
What will you start practicing this week? Share in the comments below!
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