Your Most Creative Year Yet: Building Habits That Actually Stick with Creative Practice

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January always feels like a fresh start, doesn't it? A blank canvas. A new chapter. And if you're anything like me, you've probably made at least one resolution about being "more creative" this year.

But here's the thing I've learned about New Year's resolutions: they fail when we treat them like destinations instead of directions. Saying "I want to be more creative in 2026" is like saying "I want to be healthier." It's a nice intention and you should continue to repeat it, but it must be put to action. So where do you actually start?

Last time, we talked about why creativity can't be templated. And now I want to talk about what you actually do with that insight. Because understanding that your creative process is uniquely yours is only step one. Step two is building the habits that let you access it consistently.

And there's no better time to start than right now.

BUT WAIT. How can creativity be a habit? How can there be routine and discipline? I thought creativity was about being free and impulsive and just living in the moment. EXACTLY. But what can get us to that place of "zen" to surrender for true creativity? Routines, habits, discipline help us get there.

Why Habits Matter More Than Motivation: Creative Practice Matters

Twyla Tharp's taxi ride anyone? I definitely said it was a bus ride at one point, but its a taxi. It wasn't about the taxi. It was about creating a trigger that told her brain, "Now we create."

Here's what most people get wrong about creative work: they wait for inspiration. They wait to "feel creative." They wait for the perfect conditions. And they wait. And wait.

Creative people, the ones who actually produce work consistently, don't wait. They've built habits that make creativity a practice, not an event. They show up whether they feel inspired or not. And here's the beautiful paradox: showing up regularly is often what creates the inspiration.

Showing up is 80% of it.

This is crucial for Gen Z, us, entering the workforce or leading teams. The culture that celebrates hustle and overnight success misses this quiet truth: sustainable creativity is built in tiny, repeated actions, not dramatic bursts of genius. Overnight fame and success for actors? HA. Not real, it's ten (+) years of work behind the scenes first.

Recommended reading: The Creative Habit.

The New Year Reset: Friend or Foe?

Let's be honest about January. It's the month of big promises and abandoned gym memberships. And giving up dry January on day three...Why? Because we try to overhaul everything at once.

Small actions, repeated daily, create big successes.

Instead of fighting against this pattern, I want you to use the energy of a new year differently. Not as pressure to transform overnight, but as permission to start small and specific.

Side note: When I hear the word specific, I immediately think of choices as an actor. What we do as humans is very specific when we give ourselves permission to do so. This same guidance is part of my continued training to allow the idiosyncrasies of life to be alive in my work as an actor.

Think of January 2025 as a laboratory. You're not committing to a rigid creative routine for the entire year. You're experimenting to discover what ACTUALLY WORKS FOR YOU. By February, you'll know more about your creative rhythms than you did in December. By March, you'll have data about what fuels you and what drains you.

This is how you lean into your creative self, not through force, but through attention.

Four Habits To Help Unlock Creativity

Based on working with creative teams and my own experiments, here are four foundational habits that actually move the needle:

1. The Morning Snapshot

Before you open social media, before you check email, before the world makes demands on your attention, spend five minutes capturing what's in your head. This isn't journaling (unless that works for you). It's a brain dump. Ideas, dreams, worries, random observations, half-formed thoughts.

This is for you and by you. It is not meant to be polished or shared. Let it be messy. Perfectionists, I am talking to us...

Why it works: Your brain has been processing all night. The early morning state, before you're fully alert and self-critical, is gold for creative raw material. Most people scroll through their phones and let it all evaporate. While probably losing brain cells because TikTok does that...

Try it for two weeks. Use your phone's notes app if that's easiest (BUT do not check those social media apps or email or whatevers). No pressure to do anything with what you capture, just get it out of your head and onto a page.

I also recommend a daily devotional to engage your spiritual self. I like Jesus Calling.

Write by hand if you can. In blue ink on a white piece of paper.

2. The Weekly Creative Date

We all love a date night. So might as well make it habit to go on this date with your creativity. Block two hours every week, same day, same time, for creative exploration with no deliverable attached. This isn't work. This isn't productive. This is play.

Maybe you spend it reading, sketching, cooking something new, taking photographs, or sitting in a coffee shop watching people. The only rule: no phone, no pressure, no outcome required.

NO PHONE.

Why it works: Most of us only engage creativity when we have to produce something. But creativity needs space to roam without purpose. These dates fill your creative well. The ideas you generate here will show up in your "real" work later, often in surprising ways.

If two hours feels impossible, start with one. If weekly feels like too much, try bi-weekly. But commit to it like you'd commit to a meeting with your most important client. Because you are.

Mic drop. You are your most important client. If you are not taking care of you, how can you be taking care of your clients well..?

3. The Input-Output Balance

For every hour you spend creating, spend roughly equal time consuming interesting input—but be intentional about what you consume.

This means: read books outside your field. Listen to podcasts about topics you know nothing about. Visit exhibits. Have long conversations with people who think differently than you. Watch documentaries. Take walks without earbuds.

Get comfortable in silence.

Why it works: Your creative output is only as diverse as your inputs. If you consume the same content as everyone else in your field, your ideas will sound like everyone else's. Creativity is often just connecting dots in new ways, but you need varied dots to connect.

Make a list right now of three things you're curious about but know little about. Spend January exploring one of them. Notice what happens to your ideas.

4. The Progress Over Perfection Practice

Once a week, share something you're working on before it's finished. Send a rough draft to a friend. Post a work-in-progress. Show your team an early prototype.

Why it works: Perfectionism is creativity's silent killer. Most people never finish anything because they're waiting for it to be "good enough." Sharing imperfect work builds your tolerance for vulnerability and speeds up your creative cycle. You learn faster. You iterate more. You actually ship things.

We are all in process, so let that be part of the journey.

Start small. Find one person who gets it. Make it safe. Then expand from there.

Your January Creative Challenge

Want to lean into your creative self this year? Here's my challenge: pick just one of these four habits and commit to it for January. Not all four. Not a complete creative overhaul. One habit. Thirty-one days.

Track it simply. Put an X on your calendar every day you do it. Miss a day? No problem. Don't let one missed day become two.

By February 1st, you might know if this habit serves you. If it does, keep it. If it doesn't, try a different one in February. By the end of 2026, you'll have tested twelve different approaches to creativity. One method per month. So twelve. Some will stick. Some won't. And that's exactly the point.

Remember: creativity isn't something you suddenly become. It's something you practice. And practice, by definition, is repetitive. It's showing up. It's doing the thing even when it feels ordinary.

The Myth of the Creative Personality

I need to address something that stops people before they even start: the belief that some people are "just creative" and others aren't. Sure, people have different personality types, different interests and passions, different natural talents, but none of that equals creative.

This is nonsense.

Yes, some people have special talents in specific creative domains. But the broader capacity for creative thinking, for seeing problems differently, for generating novel solutions, for bringing fresh perspective to your work, is absolutely available to everyone.

The difference between people who consider themselves creative and those who don't usually comes down to one thing: the creative people have given themselves permission to be bad at things while they learn. They've built the habit of trying, failing, iterating. They've made creativity a practice rather than a performance.

Give yourself permission to try.

If you don't think of yourself as creative, that's not a fact about you. It's a story you're telling yourself. And a new year is a perfect time to test whether that story is actually true. Remember, what you tell yourself and say about yourself, you get. Recommended reading: What You Say is What You Get.

What About When Life Gets Messy?

Here's what no one tells you about building creative habits: life will absolutely get in the way.

You'll get sick. Work will explode. Family will need you. Your carefully planned creative morning will be hijacked by an emergency. And that's okay.

The goal isn't perfect consistency. It's persistent return. It's noticing when you've fallen off track and gently coming back without self-judgment.

The people with sustainable creative practices aren't the ones who never break their streaks. They're the ones who restart easily. They treat interruptions as normal, not as failure.

Build this flexibility into your approach from the beginning. Expect disruption. Plan for imperfection. The habit isn't about never missing, it's about always returning. Try and try again.

Your Creative Self Is Waiting

Here's what I believe about you, even though we've never met: you have creative capacity you're not currently accessing. You have ideas that want to emerge. You have a perspective that only you can offer.

The templates, frameworks, and systems won't give you those things. They might help you organize them once they arrive, but they won't summon them into being.

Only you can do that. And you do it through practice. Through habit. Through showing up for yourself and your creative process, even when—especially when—it feels awkward or uncertain.

This year, this month, this week, today: you can start. You can begin the experiment of discovering what unlocks your creativity. Not someone else's. Yours.

The blank page (and blue pen) of 2026 is waiting. But you don't have to fill it all at once. You just have to make the first mark. I will do that with you. Let's make our mark this year.

This is the one where we stop waiting for permission to create and start building the habits that make creativity inevitable.

Let's rise!

xx

Nani

Need some physical health support this new year? Check out 1stPhorm.

Content inspired by Twlya Tharp and Abraham Maslow.