Consistent Creation is a Myth

I didn’t send an email last week. I’m not even sure if you notice that I land in your inboxes each week. I am aware of the absence when I don’t, though.

The truth is, I had an email to send. I just didn’t really feel like sending it. I wasn’t massively excited by it. I was having a very “life-first” week and I didn’t have much inclination to sit at my desk and edit my earlier expression to be email-ready.

So I didn’t.

Nothing happened. Nothing collapsed. No one minded.

And funnily enough, unplanned, I’m back to talk to you about the myth of consistency. It was already in the schedule, so maybe I was invited to become the living embodiment of it first.

I’ve really been on a journey with consistency over the past few years.

I’ve pulled it apart and questioned it, whilst also desperately wanting to keep it together.
Consistency feels safe. It feels like commitment. It creates momentum.

It’s also the world of marketing’s favourite word, alongside “innovation” (🤢).

We are told that people have to see us 128.5 times before a message lands. 

We are encouraged to stand out from the “noise” by being as visible as possible. 

We are made to see the age-old “out of sight, out of mind” saying as an excuse to poke people as much as we can, so they don’t forget us. 

We are advised that the algorithms reward you for showing up at the same time each week as often as possible. 

Naturally, none of us can easily and willingly create that way. It asks something of our creativity that isn’t entirely possible because it requires the kind of conformity that douses the spark our best ideas need to survive.

And yet, there’s always that little niggle that suggests things will go to shit if we don’t post. If we don’t have a well-oiled launch plan. If we don’t have a rhythm that the algorithm rewards. 

So much so, that we will do whatever it takes to get something out there.
We will half-arse it. Lean on tools. Follow a formula. Maybe even ask the robots to fill in the blanks of our creative blocks.

Something that, if you know me, I’m not a huge lover of.

The other week, I wrote about why we don’t actually need to be using “optimisation” tools, we just need to stop trying to optimise in the first place.

I’m beating the same drum here, too, in that we don’t actually need to conform our creativity to consistency. We just need to put the advice that was never actually made for creatives like us down.

Something I’m doing more and more.

I don’t even think it’s intentional either. But because there’s this thread inside of me that has well and truly snapped. It’s the one that carries the weight of the performance and the rules and the structure.

 A thread I thought I needed for my work to actually work, until I’ve proven otherwise with a still-thriving business in spite of abandoning it all. 

The reality is, I’m not a consistent person. I don’t actually think any of us really are, not by choice, at least. 

Some days I cannot stop sharing and I wonder if I’ve overdone it. Others, I hide under a blanket and won’t even reply to texts from my nearest and dearest. 

Sometimes my writing app shows me I’ve racked up 85k words in a week. Other weeks, I don’t put a pen anywhere near paper. 

Some weeks, I believe so deeply in my work and want to shout about it from the rooftops. Others, I wonder if there’s any point and consider packing it all in to work in a coffee shop in the middle of nowhere.

The thing is, inconsistency is something this very robotic, capitalist, corporate world is desperately trying to erase. 

It’s also the very thing creatives need to champion because inconsistency is essential.

It’s how the seasons flow, the tides move, crops grow and animals survive. It’s also how we actually stay aligned with the truth we care so deeply about.

Marketing was never about how often you show up. 

It was always about cultivating the capacity to create, which sometimes comes from not creating anything at all.

And if you want to create consistently inconsistent marketing that still survives through your internal seasons. You can apply for 1:2:1 work with me here.