All the various posts on 200wad about the streak had been an interesting read. It’s a fascinating lens on the depths of human motivation, and the various techniques on what makes a habit stick.

I thought I just wanted to share my perspective on one thing that seems to come up a lot: writing posts that are trivial or gibberish in an effort to keep the streak. The question is, how much of doing that is considered ‘cheating’? Is there any value to it at all, or completely zero? 

The interesting thing I learned about trying to keep my streak is that writing gibberish or trivial things to keep the streak is part of the bigger journey, not against it. Because learning how to navigate and persevere through the low points in my writing enabled me to come back up stronger. It forced me to come up with ever creative ways to write so that I can keep the streak, and through that, I learned loads about creativity, and for instance, how to tap on the boredom that comes with a slump. Writing something trivial despite being completely uninspired is still that one rep in your discipline muscles. It’s still showing up, even if the quality of your ‘workout’ is less than ideal. 

So yeah, but of course, everyone’s mileage may vary. You might not agree, and that’s ok. I recognise that it’s a grey area with no clear rights or wrongs. And I’m definitely not saying that I’m in favour of writing gibberish all the time to keep a streak. It depends on context, and personal motivations. I do believe though, that some value can be found in writing such posts, in the bigger picture of journeying as a creative person/writer. 

Tl;dr - writing gibberish/trivial is not ALL bad. But it depends.

Have you ever experienced something similar in your writing journey here on 200wad before too?