Steven Pressfield says the professional shows up every day, no matter what. Twyla Tharp gets in the cab at 5:30 a.m., every morning, rain or shine. Mason Currey documented the daily rituals of 161 artists and writers and found one common thread: commitment to a daily practice.

I believe them. I’ve read their books more than once, and they’ve gotten me off the couch and into the studio on days when nothing in me wanted to go. Pressfield’s line, “the Muse favors working stiffs”, has been taped to my wall. Discipline is real. Showing up matters. I’m not here to argue with that.

But here’s what I’ve been sitting with lately: is that the whole story?

Pressfield wrote The War of Art in his fifties, after decades of living alone with the opportunity to focus solely on writing. Tharp’s ritual was built into a life organized entirely around her art. These are extraordinary people with extraordinary circumstances. Their discipline is real, and their lives were structured to make that discipline possible.

What about the rest of us? The ones caring for aging parents. The ones whose bodies don’t cooperate the way they did at thirty-five. The ones who spent decades pouring into students or children or careers and are now trying to find their way back to work that’s theirs.

Consistency still matters. But the shape it takes might need to change. That’s what I want to explore this week: not whether to show up, but what showing up actually looks like when your life, your energy, and your body are different than they used to be.

There’s a framework in developmental psychology that doesn’t get enough attention from artists. It’s called Selective Optimization with Compensation, developed by Paul and Margret Baltes in the late 1980s through their work at the Berlin Aging Study. The idea is straightforward: as we age, we don’t simply decline. We adapt. We select what matters most, optimize how we pursue it, and compensate for what’s changed.

The Balteses’ most famous example was the pianist Arthur Rubinstein. In his eighties, Rubinstein was asked how he continued performing at such a high level. His answer: he played fewer pieces (selection), practiced those pieces more carefully (optimization), and slowed down before fast passages to make the speed feel more dramatic by contrast (compensation). He didn’t stop performing. He restructured how he performed.

I think about this constantly when I’m in the studio now. I’m not the maker I was at forty. My stamina is different. My eyes are different. The time between rest and readiness is longer. But my judgment is sharper. My tolerance for empty ambition is lower. My sense of what actually matters in a piece has deepened in ways I couldn’t have accessed at thirty. As an experimental artist I have been considering trying to choose one specific medium. (so far that has not gone well.)

The neuroscience supports this. Research published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience shows that when we step away from a creative problem, the brain’s Default Mode Network activates, making connections between ideas that focused attention can’t reach. Graham Wallas identified this as the “incubation stage” of creativity back in 1926, and modern brain imaging has confirmed it: rest is not the opposite of creative work. It’s part of the creative process itself.

And here’s what matters for us: David Galenson at the University of Chicago has documented two distinct creative life cycles. “Conceptual innovators” do their boldest work young, they arrive with a vision and execute it. But “experimental innovators”, artists who work through trial and error, who discover the image in the process of making it, peak later. Often much later. Galenson’s research suggests that for this second group, accumulated knowledge and experience aren’t liabilities. They’re advantages. Yeees!

So, when someone tells you that consistency means eight hours a day, seven days a week, like Pressfield or Tharp, they’re not wrong about the principle. They’re describing their shape of it. Your shape might be three focused hours, four days a week, with real rest between sessions. And that might not be compromise. It might be intelligence.

If someone came to mind while you are reading this, someone who’s been carrying guilt about not being “consistent enough”, would you forward this to them? Sometimes the most useful thing you can give another maker is a different frame.

I’ve been rethinking my own schedule this month.

For years I tried to work in the studio every day. Some version of Pressfield’s “turn pro.” And some of that was genuinely useful, it got me past resistance on mornings when I didn’t feel like starting. The discipline was the vehicle.

But I noticed something I didn’t want to admit: the days I forced weren’t just less productive. They were often actively damaging. I’d make choices I’d have to undo. I’d push past the point of care and end up resenting the work. The research on maladaptive perfectionism and art block actually describes this, a 2024 study in the journal Personality and Individual Differences found a strong correlation between art block and maladaptive perfectionism, noting that the block is “highly emotionally charged and associated with feelings of tension.” Grinding through that tension didn’t resolve it. It deepened it.

What’s working better now is something closer to what the Balteses described: I’ve selected four days a week as "studio days". I’ve optimized by protecting those times fiercely, no email, no teaching prep, no errands. And I’ve compensated for lower stamina by working in shorter, more focused blocks with real rest between them.

The surprising thing? My output hasn’t dropped. If anything, the work is more honest and I much more prolific. Because I’m not dragging myself through the motions pretending that quantity is the same as commitment.

The other days I still show up. But, I am working on the other areas of the business. Marketing, sales, website, gallery correspondence, brainstorming books, courses and other things. Showing up is still the answer. I’m just learning to show up on purpose instead of on autopilot.

Three books that shaped this week’s thinking, each pulling in a different direction:

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art — The case for discipline and treating your creative work like a profession. If you haven’t read it, start here. It will make you uncomfortable in the best way.

Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit — A working artist’s manual for building rituals that sustain a creative life over decades. More practical and less metaphysical than Pressfield. The taxi ritual is worth the price of admission.

Mason Currey, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work — 161 portraits of how creators actually structured their days. What emerges is not one formula but the permission to find your own. Currey writes: “A solid routine fosters a well-worn groove for one’s mental energies and helps stave off the tyranny of moods.”

All three argue for consistency. None of them argue for the same version of it. That’s the point.

This week’s practice: Redefine Your Showing Up

Take ten minutes this week and answer three questions. Write them down. Don’t just think about them, put pen to paper.

1. What does “consistency” currently look like in my creative life? (Be honest. Not what you think it should look like, what it actually looks like.)

2. When I look at my best work from the past year, the pieces I’m most satisfied with, what were the conditions? (Time of day, energy level, what came before the session, how long I worked.)

3. If I designed my creative week around energy instead of guilt, what would I change?

You’re not looking for someone else’s schedule. You’re looking for yours, the one that already exists underneath the “should.”

If you try this, hit reply and tell me what you found. Even one sentence. I read every response.

If the kind of thinking in this issue resonates with you, I recently put together a short guide called The 7-Day Arrival Practice. If you are already on the newsletter list and have not received it, drop me a line. It’s seven small practices for makers who feel scattered, each takes under five minutes. It’s free, and it’s designed to help you actually arrive at your creative work instead of just showing up distracted.

———

Pressfield is right: you show up. But showing up at sixty isn’t the same as showing up at thirty. It shouldn’t be. You’ve earned the right to be more deliberate about where you place your attention and your energy.

The creative life is long. Longer than any single system or schedule. What matters is that you keep returning to the work, at whatever pace and shape your life can hold right now.

Thank you for being here. See you next week.

Several ideas in this issue draw on research. If you’re the kind of person who likes to follow the thread, here’s where to find what I referenced.

Books

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles (2002). The foundational case for treating creative work like a profession. [affiliate link]

Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life (2003). A working artist’s guide to building sustainable creative rituals. [affiliate link]

Mason Currey, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (2013). 161 portraits of how creators structured their days. [affiliate link]

David Galenson, Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity (2006). The research behind conceptual vs. experimental innovators and why some artists peak late. [affiliate link]

Research & Studies

Paul B. Baltes & Margret M. Baltes, “Selective Optimization with Compensation,” from Successful Aging: Perspectives from the Behavioral Sciences (Cambridge University Press, 1990). The framework for how we adapt as we age—and the Rubinstein example. Available through most university libraries or search “Baltes SOC model” for summaries.

Ritter, S.M. & Dijksterhuis, A. (2014). “Creativity—the unconscious foundations of the incubation period.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 215. Free to read: frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00215

Graham Wallas, The Art of Thought (1926). The original four-stage model of creative thinking (Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, Verification). Out of print but available in many libraries and as reprints. From internet archive scan of original, free. https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.507402

Seligman, M., Forgeard, M.J.C. & Kaufman, S.B. (2016). “Creativity and Aging: What We Can Make With What We Have Left.” Chapter from The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. Covers how creative achievement shifts across the lifespan and the role of physical/mental energy. I found one at Abe books. They are availble used if you look.

Ross, S.D. et al. (2023). “Creativity across the lifespan: changes with age and with dementia.” BMC Geriatrics, 23, 195. Free to read: bmcgeriatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12877-023-03825-1

Art block & perfectionism: Published 2024 in Personality and Individual Differences (ScienceDirect). Search “art block perfectionism burnout artists” on sciencedirect.com for the full paper.

Default Mode Network overview: “Default Mode Network,” Psychology Today. A clear, accessible summary: psychologytoday.com/us/basics/default-mode-network