I’ve kept a promise to myself for eight years.

Since 31 December 2011, when I made the promise, I have had a daily creative practice.

Let me say that again:

A Daily. Creative. Practice.

Not, to invent an example out of whole cloth, “Make a big plan! Leap in on Day 1 like a creative WARRIOR, slay ALL the dragons! Coast on this incredible success until…

…well, until you notice you haven’t done any work in a month, and your brain’s gone all floppy and sad…”

No – daily, in fact.

For 2,922 days.

And counting.

This is good, right, because if there’s one thing the Official Creativity Wonks agree about, it’s the importance of a daily practice.

(We may safely assume they teach them this at Wonk School.)

The benefits of a daily practice are fairly obvious – they include steady progress, increased skill, and plenty of that sweet, crunchy brain-fodder that can only be got by doing your creative work.

The principle that helped me to establish my daily practice is counterintuitive to the point of absurdity, and I want to share it today in case it helps you too.

It all started far, far away from here…

Some time in 2011, I came across an interview with a Stanford professor specialising in behavioural change, BJ Fogg.

The interview was fascinating, but what really stuck with me was one tiny story that Fogg told, which managed, as such things sometimes startlingly do, to unlock one of the head-cages I’d been crouching in for most of my life.

It was a story about teeth – Fogg’s teeth, and specifically the flossing thereof.

Yes, flossing – bear with me…

In the story, Fogg wants to develop the habit of flossing his teeth regularly.

So he makes a commitment – or in other words, a promise to himself. He will floss, he declares, one tooth per day.

One tooth.

That’s all.

If he flosses one tooth, he succeeds in keeping his promise.

You can imagine what happens, of course: pretty much every day, he ends up going on to floss more than one tooth. Often even (gasp) the whole lot.

But every tooth beyond the first is a bonus.

You might be thinking this sounds familiar…

On the surface, it seems quite like “baby steps” – a phrase beloved of motivational types everywhere, from FlyLady to Lao-Tzu. Somewhat similar is Barbara Sher’s excellent notion of the Complete Willingness Unit – a chunk of work sufficiently small that it doesn’t trigger resistance.

But the One Tooth Doctrine (as BJ Fogg to my knowledge has never called it) feels different to me. There’s just … something about it. It’s stubborn. It’s defiant.

It’s ridiculous.

Declaring that flossing one tooth is good enough to be called “success” is … absurd. It’s outrageous.

So much so that it feels like a radical redrawing of boundaries. God, even thinking about it stirs my indignation. It’s like something an angry toddler would do to show just how much they are not doing whatever it is you want them to do.

How can you say one tooth is enough?

How can you?!

And yet, if you do, it seems that the neuroscience works in your favour: you floss that tooth, and because that’s the commitment you made, your brain goes, “Yay! We did it! We succeeded!”

(The brain is, in many ways, a simple animal.)

Good feelings ensue, which reinforce your motivation to continue, and to floss another tooth tomorrow.

And suddenly, it’s liberating!

So I took this and ran with it…

You’ll laugh.

Here is the promise I made to myself: each day, says I to me, I will write one word (novel, blog post, journal…) and make one stitch (sewing, knitting, crochet…).

And I’ve done it – 2,922  times in a row so far.

Yes, there have been a few days when I’ve done literally one word and one stitch. Migraine days. Joint pain days. Fever days. Travel days. The days (plural, dammit) when I ended up in Accident & Emergency with a kidney stone or a sick kid. That sort of thing.

But the point is that even on those days, I’ve still succeeded. I’m still feeding the happy chemicals to my brain.

I’ve kept my promise to myself.

And it’s working

The monumental, dazzling benefit of this initiative is that it has put my creative work – and the support practices that enable it to happen – firmly at the top of my priority list (a position that for the first thirty-several years of my life was exceedingly precarious).

To get my fix of Yay! I must find a way to to write and to stitch, each and every day.

2,922 days ago, I had been “writing a novel” for so long that the early drafts were pressed into clay tablets in cuneiform script.

Since that day, I’ve rewritten the novel (again), sold it to a publisher, worked with my editor on several more rounds of rewrites, and (this is my favourite bit) PUBLISHED it. Then started on the next one.

(Oh, all right, the next three. Parallel projects are my thing.)

2,922 days ago, I’d done a fair bit of stitching in my time, but it would come and go from my life depending on how busy I was – this despite having run a craft-related blog for a couple of years at that stage.

Since that day, I’ve quilted, embroidered, crocheted, and knit a growing heap of things, and I’ve completed a pair of City & Guilds certificates in textiles.

With this one seemingly risible technique, I completely changed my behaviour in relation to my creative work, with dramatic cumulative effects.

Would it work for you, do you think?

Try it and see.

You can just jump straight in – right now, today, because the whole point is that the individual action takes no time at all!

And if you want a bit more guidance, “Floss One Tooth” is also included in my free e-course, Reboot Your Creative Drive, which gives you seven techniques to reintegrate your creative work into your daily routine (if you take the course you’ll also get my newsletter, which is lovely). Click that link there for more details.

Whether you take the course or go it alone, I highly recommend this technique. It changed my life. Give it a go. What have you got to lose?

Do you know the pain of not doing your work? I used to experience it as a constant, nagging ache at the back of my mind, a metallic sense of wrongness in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes, it was barely noticeable. Sometimes, it was strong enough to stop me in my tracks, double me over, bring tears to my eyes.

Up to late 2011, I was fairly frequently not doing my work (see under: small children, among many other things). These days, by contrast, I am doing my work.

There’s no pain … and whoa, I just paused to acknowledge that, because it’s huge. Instead, there’s a sense of stability, of bite and groove. Even when I don’t make much progress for a little while, I never grind to a complete halt, and I trust that my momentum will return.

It’s all down to what I wrote about a couple of months ago: the tiny things I do every day in order to keep my promise to myself.

Until I began that process, I’d never done anything remotely similar. The shift is immense. In many ways, it has rewritten me.

“Ooh, now I can fly to the sun, just like I’ve always wanted!”

A little way into my promise-keeping experiment, I gave another of B.J. Fogg’s ideas a whirl – namely, his “Tiny Habits” exercise. I had high hopes, given that it was Fogg who had inspired my commitment to tiny things in the first place.

The way the Tiny Habits dealio works is that you sign up, for free, choosing three behaviours you want to develop over the course of a week, and then there’s an automated email series with a daily check-in.

A lot of people find this life-changing.

I … kind of flopped at it?

Although I’d followed the instructions to the letter and come up with three perfectly viable habits to try (or so it seemed to me), I kept forgetting all about them. I did at least two of them most days, but I don’t think I had a “perfect” day the whole week.

Fogg’s system is well developed: he describes clearly how to “anchor” your desired behaviour to an existing automatic behaviour, and he gives highly specific guidelines on what constitutes an effective Tiny Habit (hint: go tiny … tinier … no, tinier than that).

Furthermore, he’s clearly speaking from the solid theoretical standpoint of a Stanford University professor. But something about it – or me – or the relationship between it and me-at-the-time – just didn’t gel.

I was frustrated, because I really thought I’d nailed the “do tiny things consistently” lark.

(Can one nail a lark? Given a sufficiently sharp nail and a sufficiently compliant – possibly chloroformed – lark, I think one can.)

Turns out I hadn’t. The lark remained unnailed (much to its relief, one rather suspects). Something was missing.

See, I don’t forget about my tiny things.

What’s the difference? I believe it comes down to that ageing chestnut, extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation.

Extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation

You’ve probably heard of this distinction, but to summarise, broadly speaking, extrinsic motivation is a reason to do something that exists outside myself.

So, for instance, observing the rules of the road. Hauling out the glad rags for a friend’s wedding. Having that report on your desk by nine a.m.

It follows, then, that intrinsic motivation is a reason to do something that exists inside myself.

“You know what,” one might say, “today I’m going to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. Because that sounds like a lark I’d like to nail.”

(James Joyce said that. More or less.)

Extrinsic motivation and I? Let’s just say we have a complicated history. We go way back, deep into the territory of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Approval Junkie.

As a child I jumped through ALL the hoops. My continued existence, in fact, was predicated on being able to wring favourable judgement from those in authority. I was really good at it, too.

These days, for an intricate web of reasons, extrinsic motivation and I are on a break.

(Er. I mean for certain things, such as creative work and personal development. I’m still following the rules of the road and dressing up for weddings. And I’d say, if you explained to me why your desk was the best place for that report, and nine a.m. the best time for it to arrive there, I’d get it done.)

Pats on the head, once the staple nourishment of my tender, twisted little soul, don’t do it for me any more. I need a better reason.

Trying to do my three Tiny Habits for B.J. Fogg that week just ran me into a series of rucks and pulled threads. Even though I’d chosen the habits myself, something about the structure of the thing apparently busted me right back to my teens. To be honest, it was tough going.

By contrast, my one-word-one-stitch regime is for me, pure and simple. My motivation could not possibly be more intrinsic. Happy days.

The story is not over

It’s fair to say that since extrinsic motivation loosened its grip on me, there’s been a kind of power vacuum. Saying that I’ll do something can feel quite risky these days, because I’ve done so much belated rebelling against the system (man). My experimental daily practice is – still – revolutionary, but it hasn’t solved everything.

After the Tiny Things Incident I did what any stable, balanced, self-respecting artist would do: I ran and hid. For several years. It was a setback, truly, to discover that I wasn’t Magically Cured, that I couldn’t now make myself do anything that took my fancy.

More recently, I’ve been experimenting with a bit more structure in my life – a greater level of explicit commitment to the things I want to do.

Living without a schedule, as I have been for all sorts of reasons, only gets you so far: other people’s agendas encroach from all sides, at all times, unless you set up palisades.

I’m not sure exactly what’s going to work best for me, or whether I’ll end up giving Tiny Habits another whirl, but I’m trying things on for size.

Watch this space, I guess.

Do you like self-coercion as a tactic for making art?

One of my favourite pieces of artistic trivia concerns the eighteenth-century Italian dramatist Vittorio Alfieri, who (we are told) would instruct his manservant to tie him to his writing chair every morning until he’d done his allotted quota of work.

Yes, you read that right.

To tie him.

To his writing chair.

Get a good mental picture of that, now.

(What he expected the manservant to do after the writing session is not a matter of polite historical record, hurr hurr hurr.)

Alfieri is an extreme example of a principle so prevalent in our society these days that it might fairly be described as dominant.

(Not unlike Alfieri’s manservant, hurr hurr OK I’ll stop.)

Yes, Nike, I’m looking at you, and your JUST DO IT schtick. Push through the pain barrier. Crush it. All that carry-on.

Sorry, but no thanks. A crucial aspect of my creative practice is that it isn’t forced. I don’t go in for Just Do It motivation, or for pushing, or crushing, or being tied to articles of furniture (…at least, not when I’m working, ba-dum-tssh!).

It’s not my bag, baby

Well, how nice, you may reply, how positively spiffing, Léan, that you need never force yourself to do something you don’t feel like.

Now, hold your horses, because that’s not it either.

All I’m saying is that self-coercion is incompatible with my creative practice.

That’s not some moral stand I’m taking: it’s just a fact. Indeed, it’s a highly inconvenient fact, because I live in the same world you do, and sometimes I need to get something done that I don’t feel like doing.

When that happens, I wish I were able to Just Do It.

I’m genuinely inspired by the model of the super-organised artist who has the Creative Habit locked and loaded. He sits down at his desk each day to rattle out his quota of words. She shows up at her studio having already meditated and put dinner in the slow-cooker. They do what it takes.

It may have been William Faulkner who said he wrote only when inspiration struck – “Fortunately, it strikes at nine o’ clock every morning.”

There’s beauty in that image of regularity, and it works for a lot of people. My grandmother wrote for three hours every morning, Monday to Friday, rain or shine. She published more than fifty books, so presumably she was on to something.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to establish that sort of fruitful routine.

Actually, I kind of am able, just not for longer than about a week at a time. There are too many variables in my life over which I have too little control. Reluctantly, after many attempts, I have concluded that Just Do It is not a viable strategy for me – at least, not for the moment.

And hey, if you’ve read this far, I’m thinking you might be in the same boat. So what do we do instead?

Three ways to make art without self-coercion

One

Do self-engagement. Find out what specific things are apt to lull you into a creative frame of mind. Keep a list, and when you encounter resistance, pick something from that list and do it, with a flourish.

See if that helps.

If the resistance persists, get down in there and be present with it.

Notice the physical sensations it produces. Talk to it, and listen for its responses. Many people find that actually writing down a dialogue with the resistance can help to tease out what’s going on, at least enough to unravel the snarl and get working again.

That’s all you need for now.

Two

Here’s an idea I got from a wise friend.

Beside my desk is a piece of string suspended between two shelf-brackets, with a row of little cards attached to it by those dinky little mini-clothes-pegs that I find so irresistible. On each card is written the name of a current project.

This assemblage is called the Washing-Line of Possibility, and when I look up at it I remember that I’m not trapped; I have choices.

If you’re comfortable with having several projects on the go, and the one you need to work on is unappealing for some reason, try another for a while and see if that loosens things.

You’ll probably find, when you go back to the primary project, that your lovely, helpful brain has been foostering away behind the scenes resolving whatever was holding you up.

Three

Take the softly-softly approach.

Determine what Barbara Sher refers to as the CWU – the Complete Willingness Unit. That’s the largest chunk of your work that does not trigger your resistance.

Think about what you want to get done. Break it down. Now break it down some more. Keep going until that inner voice says, “Well, OK. I could probably do that.”

Even if all you will agree to do is sit down at your desk or stroke your clean brushes or pull open the drawer where the cut pieces lie, that’s the deal.

That’s officially enough.

Let yourself do it, whatever it is, without judgement, then ask again, what’s the CWU?

For bonus points, celebrate every little win. Come up with a delicious reward scheme, and follow through it.

(That last bit is really important, by the way. I don’t want to confess to you how old I was when it finally dawned on me that breaking a promise to myself is really no better than breaking a promise to somebody else. I was old, people. I mean, younger than I am now, obviously, but still. Old.)

And look, if all else fails…

…you can at least procrastinate productively.

Use your resistance as leverage to knock other tasks off the to-do list that might otherwise languish there. My dear, there is no shame in an alphabetised spice-rack. (But if there were, it would be located between the rosemary and the tarragon. AM I RIGHT?!?)

And try again tomorrow. Best of luck.