The Problem with Chasing Consistency

You’ve experienced it before. That burst of inspiration and creative energy that carries you through days of focused work.

It’s a type of high that creatives have a particular relationship with.

You’re producing. Making progress. Losing all sense of time. Riding the wave. Until you’re not.

Then comes the crash. The exhaustion. The guilt about not maintaining that momentum and flow.

The problem isn’t your discipline or your commitment. It’s that you’re treating your creative work like it’s supposed to be a constant crescendo when it’s actually a dynamic rhythm.

Most of us learned to work in one gear - full throttle until we burn out, then recover and repeat.

We chase consistency as if it means showing up inspired, motivated and focused the same way every single day.

Creative work doesn’t flow like that. Neither do our minds, our lives, or the constantly shifting contexts we’re building in.

What sustains us isn’t relentless consistency. It’s responsive rhythm. An intentional pacing that adapts to where we are, what we’re working on, and what our intentions are. Some weeks invite deep focus. Others call for reflection, connection, or rest.

When we ignore those shifts and try to force the same tempo regardless, our systems break down and overwhelm follows shortly after.

The shift from burnout cycles to sustainable rhythm starts with permission. Permission to work differently across different contexts. Permission to honor your natural cadence instead of fighting it. Permission to design a creative practice that adapts to you, not one you have to contort yourself to maintain.

So how do you start designing your rhythm instead of forcing someone else’s tempo?

Start With Observation, Not Optimization

Your rhythm already exists. You don’t need to create it from scratch or adopt someone else’s system. You need to notice what’s actually happening beneath the surface of your days.

This isn’t about tracking every minute or logging productivity metrics. It’s about tuning in to your current cadence. When do ideas arrive easily? When does focus deepen without force? When does your emotional and physical energy shift?
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Start here:

• Map your energy patterns across a typical week. Notice when you feel most alive in your work and when you’re just going through the motions. You might discover your best thinking happens in the late afternoon, or that Mondays are better for planning than producing.
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• Identify what drains you versus what sustains you. Not all tasks carry the same energetic weight. Some work depletes you quickly even when it’s important. Other work restores you while moving things forward. Track both so you can design your rhythm around this reality instead of pretending everything costs the same.
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• Pay attention to the "seasons" within your projects. Every creative endeavor moves through phases. Ideation feels different from execution, which feels different from refinement. When you try to maintain the same intensity across all phases, you create friction. Notice which phase you’re in and what tempo it’s asking for.

As you map these patterns, practice observation without judgment. No shame, no “shoulds”, no blame of yourself or others.

The goal isn’t to find a perfect rhythm (it doesn’t exist). It’s to practice self-awareness as a skill so that you can make intentional choices about pacing instead of defaulting to constant acceleration or reactive collapse.

Learning to Listen to Your Own Cadence

Creative rhythm isn’t something you perfect once and lock in forever. It’s a practice of noticing, adjusting, and trusting yourself enough to work differently when context shifts.

The creatives who sustain their work over years aren’t the ones who found the ideal schedule and stuck to it religiously. They’re the ones who learned to listen to their own cadence and gave themselves permission to adapt without guilt.

This week, try observing before optimizing. Notice your patterns without immediately trying to fix them. See what your energy is telling you about the tempo your work actually needs right now.

And if you’re wrestling with how to translate what you notice into a rhythm that actually works, I’d love to hear about it.

Reply and share what you’re discovering or where you’re getting stuck.

Looking forward to exploring this with you.

Jeff

Share This With Someone Who Needs It

Know a creative who’s caught in the burnout-and-recovery cycle? Forward this newsletter to them. Sometimes permission to work differently is exactly what someone needs to hear.

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