Just some boring advice on consistency
Being consistent and sticking with a routine is something I only seriously started doing like a year ago. For most of my life I would start things with insane enthusiasm, to the point that it would take up all my time and mental space. Then I would quickly burn out, grow bored, and then abandon whatever it was I was obsessed with.
The mainstream advice when it comes to productivity and consistency is always the same: come up with a routine and stick with it until it becomes a habit. Procrastination is just resistance, and resistance is just fear, and fear is just our stupid brain thinking there's danger where there is none. The only way to break the cycle is to teach your brain that stress is not the same as fear, and you do that by completing tasks. Like an overbearing parent, once your brain sees you can actually do things, it starts to trust us more and stops making us feel anxious about everything.
I know this, everyone knows this, but I still hate routine. I hate being forced to do things when I don't feel like doing them. So I came up with my own system.
Since I'm good at having big, explosive amounts of energy followed by weeks of burnout, I use it to my advantage. Take this blog for example. I was pretty inconsistent at first, but then found a way to stay productive. Instead of writing posts here and there then feeling completely over it, I now batch-write several posts at once whenever that burst of energy hits. I leave all the posts in draft and just let them sit there. Then, once a week, I go in and publish whatever draft that makes the most sense and looks the least sloppy. Easy peasy.
Any time I'm not consistent, it's usually because I procrastinated and let the cache go empty and now I have to find the time to refill it.1
I have a similar system with other writing projects. During bouts of energy I'll write a ton without stopping, without sticking to a particular goal. Then, during burn-out days, I'll only write a little, like incoherent/stream of conscious-type stuff that doesn't take too much energy.
It even extends to reading. I have a goal of reading 2-4 books a month, which I have stuck to even though I don't always read every day. Sometimes I'll read a quarter of a novel over two weeks and then finish the rest of the book in one night. Even though I do it a bit differently, it's all still a routine at the end of the day.
Routine and consistency. It's boring, but it works.
Like today. 👀↩