The Fine Line Between Discipline and Inspiration

After a few weeks of maintaining a daily writing practice, my output increased significantly and I even produced some work that made sense. My overachieving self was very excited about overachieving at writing.

Then one day the well dried up. I sat down to write as usual and came up with zero ideas before, during and after my 15-minute session. A blank page, or at best a couple of sentences that didn’t even make sense as a shitty first draft. Since Steven Pressfield warned me about the resistance (i.e. fear) that creeps up on us just when we think we’re on a winning streak, I was determined not to surrender to its sneaky tactics. I tried to write multiple times a day. I spoke to “the muse”. I wrote more gibberish. Nothing. The spark was gone. 

A few more days of this and I happened to land on a YouTube video about holding our desires too tightly. I realized that was exactly what I’d been doing: I’d been trying to continue the streak, to not fail, to hold on to the muse instead of listening to it. As soon as I started listening again, I realized I’d had a strong desire to draw that I’d been suppressing for days because I was so focused on being disciplined about writing.

I picked up a drawing I abandoned when I started my writing practice. The muse was back, just elsewhere. 

The renowned artist Chuck Close said, “inspiration is for amateurs” and “all the best ideas come out of the process”. Yet we have to be careful not to become slaves to the process, treating the discipline as a goal in and of itself rather than a tool to serve our true purpose. There’s a fine line between making excuses to avoid doing hard things, and blindly doing them for the sake of doing them. It’s possible to push too hard. When the flow is gone for a while, even our favorite projects become yet another job.

What are you working on that could use less pressure and more flow?

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