What does it mean to be a prolific creator?
If you looked at my output over the last four months, some might call it prolific. After all, I've published something on the internet for the last 130 days straight. But if you look at that output in the context of the last 40 years of my life, it's just a drop in the ocean.
So how do we measure the prolificness of someone's work? There is no point in killing yourself to publish every day only to burn out and have to take months or even years off. Building a library of work as a creator is not a sprint, it's more like a marathon.
You have to find your creator pace
Runners know this. They set their pace depending on the length of the run. Short distances = faster pace. Longer distances = slower pace.
Sprints can be helpful as a creator to build your library and learn a new skill or develop a new habit. But you can't sprint forever. You have two choices:
- Join the marathon runners and slow your pace down to go the long-distance
- Set your sprint lengths and have breaks in between
I'm a long-distance creator, who has set a sprint pace over the last four months. Adding WAY too many things to my simple daily writing habit. So I'm recalibrating my pace. Instead of trying to do everything every day, I'm committing to creating ONE thing every day. That could be an essay, a Twitter thread, a newsletter, a long-form article, or something else.
One creative practice daily. I want to ensure I'm in this for the long haul and that you will look back on my life and be able to say... she was prolific.