Gretchen Rubin On The Power Of Frequency And Forming Creative Routines

There is a line that exists between the world’s demands and your own ambitions. There is a wide gray area of have-tos and want-tos, and if a line is not drawn, this area will quickly fill up with other people’s requests and leave no time for work that you consider important. The world we live in today is vastly different from the world of Michelangelo, or of Emerson, or of Einstein. We are constantly bombarded by emails, notifications, phone calls, text messages, and other things that eat up our attention and focus.

Aristotle once said “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Creating a habit of is the best way to accomplish a long-term goal. I truly enjoy learning about the creative routines of successful people because in the routine is where the grind resides.

Pearl S. Buck, an American writer and novelist, once said “I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.” We enjoy the feeling of getting inspired take action. Truth be told the infrequency of inspirations makes them unreliable. And even if inspirations were to happen consistently, they would quickly get boring. They are passive — inspirations happen to us rather than us taking action to become inspiring.

Pearl Buck, and many other artists understood that creative work happens in the day-to-day grind where no one is watching and inspirations are but a whisper. The thing with motivation and inspiration is that they are temporary. They happen in random moments and are inconsistent. Inspiration gets you started and discipline keeps you going in the short-term. Routines and habits put you into autopilot for the long run. Geniuses understood that they needed to put in the effort to set a creative routine and then let habit take over.

Gretchen Rubin, author of the bestsellers Happier at Home and founder of The Happiness Project, wrote:

We tend to overestimate what we can do in a short period, and underestimate what we can do over a long period, provided we work slowly and consistently. Anthony Trollope, the nineteenth-century writer who managed to be a prolific novelist while also revolutionizing the British postal system, observed, “A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.” Over the long run, the unglamorous habit of frequency fosters both productivity and creativity.

Gretchen Rubin understood the power of frequency. Getting started on a new project or a piece of writing is challenging. But once started, working on it every day builds up momentum. The power of doing something for 15 minutes every day over the course of a year has tremendous effects. We find it difficult to do so because mentally we see little value in doing something for just 15 minutes. As Rubin’s said, “We tend to overestimate what we can do in a short period, and underestimate what we can do over a long period”. However, a pattern among great achievers is that they meditated for 15 minutes every day.

Frequency does more than build a habit. It keeps ideas fresh and nurtures creativity. Taking action every day persists the ideas and thoughts in your head. Repetition is the mother of all knowledge. Lingering ideas in your mind means that when you learn other things, you can create connections and spur creativity.

Frequency also keeps the pressure off. By putting in effort every day, even if its only for 15 minutes, you can feel confident that every day you are making progress towards your goals and can avoid the feeling of insecurity that comes with not progressing.

Frequency builds on frequency. As Gretchen Rubin wrote,

“What I do every day matters more than what I do once in a while.”

Originally published at seekingintellect.com on November 3, 2014. Subscribe to the Seeking Intellect Newsletter