044: Consistency Is Hard

Starving Artist No More

We’re getting toward the end of the year, when people employed in corporate jobs are completing their yearly self-assessments in preparation for performance reviews in early January. My husband, Arturo, who you heard from in last week’s episode, turned in his 2023 self-assessment last week, just before Thanksgiving. And yes, I am a self-employed creative entrepreneur, not an employee of a large company like he is, but I’m doing my own self-assessment right now, too: thinking about what went well over the past year, what didn’t go so well, and how I want to use that data to move forward with joy and creativity into 2024. As I’m thinking about those things and reviewing my own actions (and inactions) over the past year, I’m struck over and over again by one overarching theme: as a creative entrepreneur, consistency is necessary, but consistency is also hard. Today, we’re going to focus in on consistency in our creative work and figure out how we can be more consistent together.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why changing your perspective on what it means to be consistent can help you be more consistent in the long run.
• What paradox exists around consistency, and how acknowledging the truth of that paradox can free you from judgement.
• Why curiosity is the best mindset to cultivate when you find yourself struggling to be consistent.
• How to figure out where consistency really matters, and where doing something most of the time is enough.
• What strategies will help you improve your consistency in your areas of highest priority.
• How your creative colleagues can help you (and how you can help them!) be consistent in ways that count.

In this episode, I mention the upcoming free Dream Big workshop I am hosting on December 5, 2023. You can learn more about this free goal-setting workshop for creative entrepreneurs on the events page of my website, www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com/events.

In this episode, I refer to several past episodes of this podcast:

• 004: An Attitude of Gratitude
• 006: Pay Yourself First
• 016: The Six Components of a Thriving Creative Business
• 039: Fix Forward
• 041: A New Season.

A full transcript of this episode can be found here. Full transcripts of every episode will always be available at the Starving Artist No More Blog.

Thank you for listening. Please feel free to reach out to me at www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com, with any questions, comments, or feedback. I'd love to hear from you.