Is Consistency Holding You Back?

What a Broken Bowl, a Shark, and Burnout Taught Me About Consistency

I told my colleague, “Let’s talk about my transition,” and he started laughing.

I didn’t get why at first. I was referring to my shift into a new role at the company. We were supposed to talk about what that transition would look like.

But in his mind, “transition” meant something entirely different: he assumed I was talking about gender.

Language is a strange thing…

Words don’t just have definitions—they carry context, associations, and cultural baggage. A word can mean one thing to you and something completely different to someone else, depending on what’s happening in the news, in their life, or even in the room.

While some words change meaning, others get so overused they become meaningless. Take freedom, for example. Everywhere you look people are selling some version of it: financial freedom, creative freedom, time freedom—but it’s hard to say what it actually looks like anymore. It’s been packaged, sold, and abstracted into oblivion.

But there's one particular word that shows up in every writing space, whispering expectations most of us struggle to deal with:

Consistency.

“If you want to build an audience, you have to write consistently.”

You’ve probably heard some version of this advice before. It floats around every writing community, course, and social media platforms.

The logic is familiar: show up daily, beat the algorithm, be seen. You look at the most successful creators, and they reinforce the myth—publishing non-stop, never slowing down.

So over time, the word consistency gets layered with pressure:

You must produce more to matter. You must perform on command, or risk falling behind.

A few years ago, I lived inside that mindset while building an audience on Twitter.

I didn’t miss a single day. Posted threads 3 to 5 times a week. My content was performing well, often even going viral. But the grind was exhausting.

Some days, I had nothing real to say. So I’d recycle an old post, tweak a hook, or copy a structure from someone else and give it a half-hearted spin. Other times, I’d write about things I didn’t care that much, just polished them up to sound smart.

If I'm honest, that version of consistency didn’t improve my writing. It flattened it. It dulled my curiosity and pulled me toward burnout.

The frustrating part is, I’m far from the only one.

Plenty of writers quit, or never start, because they hate this version of consistency. The grind looks unbearable. And often, it is.

But the problem isn’t the act of showing up regularly per se. It’s how we define consistency in the first place.

When framed differently, consistency can actually become a tool, not for performance, but for deepening your craft.

So today, I want to invite you to set aside the algorithm-driven definition of consistency, the one every guru tries to push down your throat, and look at it through a different lens.

A lens that turns consistency into an ally for your writing.

Consistency Creates a Path to Follow

In Japan, there’s an ancient art called kintsugi: the practice of repairing broken pottery using lacquer mixed with powdered gold.

Unlike Western restoration, which often tries to hide damage, kintsugi makes the cracks visible. The break becomes part of the story. The flaw becomes the feature.

But what few realize is that mastery in kintsugi comes not from inspiration, but from repetition: repairing dozens, sometimes hundreds, of broken bowls.

Eventually, the break stops being a problem to fix and becomes a path to follow.

That’s what consistency does for your writing.

It gives you the courage to show up with imperfect work. To keep sharing your voice, even when it still feels incomplete. Especially then.

As Paul McCartney once said:

“Music is never finished. It’s just released.”

That’s the real challenge of writing: accepting that some pieces will always feel unfinished.

That voice in your head—“If only I had more time to polish this”—can be seductive. But often, it’s just our ego trying to protect us from criticism.

Because it might take five, six, even ten versions of an idea before it finally lands.

But the only way to get to version ten is by publishing version one.

And once you stop writing to prove something—and start writing to evolve—the pressure loosens its grip.

That’s when consistency begins to reveal its true power.

Consistency Clears the Fog

When we try to figure out if we're on the right path, we tend to default to metrics: subscribers, shares, views. And while those numbers offer a signal, they only show you a fraction of the story.

If you write consistently and pay close attention—not just to stats, but to your internal cues—you start noticing a different kind of feedback.

For example, a few weeks into my weekly writing rhythm, I started recognizing a few patterns:

• Certain themes kept pulling me in: like our obsession with performance, the cost of speed, the hunger for depth.
  

• A psychological lens often emerged in my writing, even when I wasn’t trying to insert it.
  

• I felt more alive writing from personal experience than when I tried to sound smart.

None of that would’ve emerged if I was only writing when I felt inspired. It was the consistency that brought the signal to the surface.

Every piece you publish becomes a mirror. It shows you what you care about, how you see the world, and where your voice wants to go next.

Without consistency, none of that becomes visible. It stays trapped in your mind—unresolved and unshaped.

Consistency Unlocks Creativity

In 1975, while filming Jaws, Steven Spielberg hit a major problem.

The film’s entire premise revolved around a terrifying great white shark. But early into production, the mechanical shark broke.

With no functioning monster, Spielberg had a choice: delay the film or adapt the story.

He chose the latter.

“I just decided to shoot without the shark.”

What followed were some of the most iconic suspense scenes in cinema—not because the shark was visible, but because the audience imagined the threat. And that made it far more terrifying.

Spielberg later admitted:

“If I had the technology at the time to fix the problem, I would’ve ruined much more of the movie.”

More often than we realize, the constraint is what makes the work stronger.

When you commit to writing consistently, you create your own version of that constraint: the deadline.

There will be weeks when inspiration doesn’t show up. When life gets in the way. When you feel like you have nothing to say.

But the deadline still stands, pushing you to get words on the page.

And in those moments, something surprising happens: You become more inventive. You reach for ideas you might’ve dismissed. You experiment with structure, tone, or form.

The thing is… when the usual path isn’t available, you don’t have time to overthink.

You just move.

And in that movement, you strip away the excess. You get to the core.

Because when time is short, and the piece has to ship, what remains is often what matters most.

A Different Kind of Consistency

If consistency has felt like a trap to you, maybe the solution isn’t to abandon it.

But to redefine it.

Forget the treadmill of constant output. Let consistency become less about obligation, and more about orientation. A commitment not to quantity, but to get yourself out there even when your work isn't perfect.

Clarity doesn’t arrive fully formed. It emerges in motion. From the willingness to meet the page with your questions still open. Week after week.

In that way, consistency becomes something quite more powerful:

A practice to sharpen your voice and stay close to the work that matters the most.

A ritual of self-return.

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