Letter #2: Minimum viable consistency and what love really is

I’ve been writing a book and it’s almost done but in the past month I was struggling to finish it. In fact, this struggle was the inspiration for my make it to the finish line essay. How ironical, right?

The way I approached it is to write in bursts. I’d write 2000-3000 words on some days and then crash. This crash would last for a few days and then I’d again get back to writing.

This is not a new way of working. Artists are known to work in bursts. But this streak should last for the entirety of the project. A filmmaker doesn’t quit making a movie midway to relax. He might take his time to start a new project but when he is working on a movie, the work needs to happen consistently.

And there’s that annoying word again. Consistency. The bane of my life.

I’ve always struggled with consistency. It’s like something inside my body pulls me back with utmost force when I try to work daily. It whispers in my ears, “You’re not meant for such hard work. Pull back. Life’s going away, catch it while you can,” and I, like an obedient pet, listen to this inner voice.

As Steven Pressfield wrote in The War of Art, this is the resistance, a force that stifles your creativity. One has to fight it.

I’ve come up with an innovative solution to fight this resistance.

I call it Minimum Viable Consistency (MVC).

Ask yourself these 3 questions:

1. What is the minimum amount of effort needed for you to work daily on your art?

2. What can you create every day no matter what life throws at you?

3. What can you achieve daily despite the environment around you?

For me, I’ve decided that it’s writing for 2 hours. I can do it from home, from office, from a hotel during vacation. I can do it while mildly sick. I can do it in the morning and/or at night.

I can devote 2 hours to writing almost every day no matter how much friction life creates.

Writing for 2 hours is my minimum viable consistency.

I’ve tried this for the last two weeks and it has worked quite well. The pressure is off. My first goal for the day is to achieve MVC. Once it is achieved, I take a call on whether to continue or go do something else. Some days I push through. Some days I just give up and read. No matter what the structure of the day looks like post achieving MVC, the satisfaction of getting some writing done remains.

So, what’s your MVC? Figured it out yet? Give it a thought.

Kiran Desai on Fulfillment and Love

Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself.

The above is from The Inheritance of Loss, the Booker prize winning novel by Kiran Desai. These profound lines threw me off a bit and my mind, impacted by these words, wandered for a good few minutes.

Notes From My Rambling Mind

You can do anything but not everything.

As we grow older, we seem to travel back in time more than traveling forward. We value nostalgia more than aspiration. We start dying bit by bit gradually over the years and decades, and then, suddenly.

Wake up early Sleep early

What can go wrong What can go right

Save more Earn more

Do more in less time Do less but do better

Change how you think to change your life.

Do send me feedback on this new format. I figured since the publication is called Abhijeet’s Letters, why not make it about letters. Here’s Letter #1 from last week in case you missed it.

Have a good week ahead everyone!

Cheers,

Abhijeet