How Long Until It Works?
How many times can you try before you give up entirely? How many times should you try before giving up becomes acceptable? Nobody has arrived at a fixed number of iterations one must endure before giving up becomes normal or necessary.
I have been writing for a long time, yet I do not know how consistent I need to be. Sometimes a first-time author becomes a bestseller, while someone else writes ten books and still manages to sell only a thousand copies. The contrast is stark, and the advice remains the same: don’t give up. It sounds compelling, but continuing is not easy, especially when success is nowhere in sight.
There are two ways in which persistence is framed: repetitions and iterations. Repetitions apply to tasks where you aim to achieve mastery, like building muscle. You keep putting in the repetitions with progressive overload, and your body eventually adapts to the tension, developing the strength to withstand it. You do not gain fully formed muscles in a month, but you do feel progress in strength.
Iterations, on the other hand, require improvement after every repetition. You focus on shortcomings and refine them one by one until you arrive at something close to a masterpiece. It is like learning to sketch. On day one, the strokes may not come together, but if you persist, by day one hundred you can recreate a face from memory.
Content creation is often described as a blend of repetition and iteration. You learn the skill of writing online and then keep writing until you see results. There is no fixed number of essays one must publish before going viral. There is no guarantee which post will resonate the most.
So you focus on volume. You put your work out into the world with brute force, hoping one piece will open the door. Building online is neither pure repetition nor pure iteration; it is a combination of both. You cannot keep doing the same thing repeatedly and expect transformation. There will be no visible growth, only a growing tolerance for the absence of results.
Yet repetitions are essential. You must show up every day for your content and your craft. That part is non-negotiable. At the same time, you must remain aware enough to recognise where improvement is needed. You need to consume strategically so that iteration is happening in the right direction while you continue to show up consistently.
While there is a method to this madness, there is no clear destination. You keep going until you arrive. But when you will arrive, or whether you will arrive at all, is never guaranteed. You continue because there is little else to do. If you can cultivate this mindset, you can remain motivated for long periods, which is essential. Either that, or you learn to fall in love with improving your craft.
Writers are, in a sense, conditioned to accept failure, so they channel their energy into refining their work. They read great writers and try to absorb their qualities. Their focus shifts toward making their writing more literary. On one hand, this fuels their ability to endure long stretches of failure. On the other, it can distance them from adopting commercial techniques that might yield tangible returns.
For creators, this is a real risk. Devoting all your energy to the craft can make you believe that craft is all that matters, and anything that diverts you from it, such as commercial projects, is inherently inferior. It is easy to grow comfortable with the identity of the tortured artist.
There is no clear resolution to this tension except one: you keep going because giving up is not an option. Whether continuing offers immediate benefits becomes irrelevant. What matters is whether the eventual outcome justifies the effort. If you believe the outcome is worth the pain, you will not give up. And perhaps, you may arrive sooner than expected.