Don’t Be Scared of Being Repetitive.
Repetition is an inevitable part of creation.
One of the main arguments people use again the idea that a higher quantity of production also leads to higher quality, is the idea of repetitiveness. All creatives know this.
The more they produce, the more repetitive their work becomes.
Quickly, this turns into a fear of being boring to frequent readers. As a result, people tend to consciously reduce the amount of work, they produce.
In my experience, this is a bad idea.
It forces you to break your routines and habits. Before you know it, you find yourself procrastinating and, eventually, unable to create any work at all. No longer is the process of creation, a part of your natural body rhythm
As a result, you depend on your willpower to get you to do the work. And willpower is, by its very nature, an unreliable creature.
Repetition helps improve your work.
What we often don’t recognize, is that repetition is an unavoidable part of the evolution of creative work. It is through repetition, that we improve on our ideas, refine them, and learn how to communicate them better.
Sometimes, our ideas might fail, simply because we haven’t gotten them across in the right way.
Repeating these ideas, gives us the chance to correct that. It gives us the chance, to learn more about what works and what doesn’t. It helps us to look at an idea from a different angle.
In short, repetition is a great learning opportunity.
By communicating an idea only one time, we don’t know if it was the idea itself which was successful (or unsuccessful), or whether it is was the packaging, which we were using. Repetition gives us a comparison point, that we can use to gain more insights.
Repetition increases understanding.
But repetition is not only good for the creatives themselves, it is also good for the audience.
First of all, the audience might not have understood a point perfectly the first time. Secondly, repetition increases the chance, that people actually put a learning point into action.
We all know this problem:
People consume way too much advice. But they implement far too little of it.
Often, they just read about something and then forget about it. They move on to the next point, without ever having implemented the first one. They are constantly consuming, but not acting.
Repetition can be a great reminder, to counterbalance this problem.
Somebody might think: “Oh yeah, I’ve heard about this idea before. Perhaps its something, that is actually worth trying. Let me give it a shot, then.”
And this should always be the ultimate the goal. Getting somebody to change their actions, is always significantly more powerful, than getting somebody to think.
Repetition is who you are.
You have your own beliefs, ideas and your own worldview. Your ideas will, by definition, be restrained to all those things, which lie within this worldview. It is this worldview, which you communicate with the world.
As a person, you change slowly.
Likewise, your work is going to reflect those slow changes.
Work inevitably comes in cycles. For a while, you are going to be interested in a certain subject area. Then, you are going to be interested in another. A little bit later, you return to one of your previous topics.
Within these subject areas, there will be a lot of repetition on your part. After all, there is only so much to say. And yet, over time, you are going to form connections between all of these different subject areas.
And that’s when you are going to come up with truly unique work.
Innovation always happens at the intersection between different fields of knowledge.
But to do that, you need to give yourself the space to explore each field comprehensively. You need to embrace who you are and what you believe in, and share it with your audience thoroughly.
Over time, your work will evolve.
And you are going to come up with new, fresh ideas.
But it is going to take time. You will have to remain patient, and give your subconscious mind the space to do its work. Slowly, over time, your ideas will become more refined and evolve into something completely different.
Conclusion:
I get the point, why many creatives are scared of being too repetitive. They are scared, that they are going to upset their frequent readers. And in some ways, they are certainly right.
It has happened to me a few times, that I stopped following a writer, because he or she kept repeating the same things over and over again.
Of course, there are limits to the degree, to which repetition is useful.
But as long as the quantity of repetition stays within reason, and as long as the same ideas are framed in different and unique ways every single time, it should be fine.
Repetition is nothing to be scared of.
It is an inevitable part of the creative process.
Tim Rettig is the author of “Struggling Forward: Embrace the struggle. Achieve your dreams”. It’s a book about the psychological journey of struggle, which every (creative) entrepreneur must pass through, before they can turn their vision into reality.
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