Consistency Is a Creative Discipline
Why simple ideas often outlast impressive ones
What if creative growth is less about finding new ideas and more about staying with one idea long enough for it to deepen?
One of my favourite YouTubers is a guy called Probably Riding.
I discovered him through someone’s Substack about a year ago. They were writing about different styles of YouTube videos, specifically videos where the creator doesn’t sit in front of the camera talking. Instead of a typical “talking head” format, they mentioned creators who tell stories through movement, atmosphere, and voiceover.
He mentioned Probably Riding, so I looked him up.
He’s a British cyclist who lives in Seoul, Korea. He’s married to a Korean woman, and most of his videos are simply him riding his bicycle through the city. Sometimes he rides to work. Sometimes he rides through different neighbourhoods. Sometimes he rides to a bakery. The camera is usually mounted on his bike while viewers just follow along.
That’s the whole idea of his channel.
If you have a good eye, you start to notice small things: the camera angles are creative, the editing is well done, and the pacing is calm. But none of that is the main point of the videos. The focus is simply his love for bicycles and the quiet rhythm of riding through the city.
Every video begins the same way:
“Hi, I’m Probably Riding.” Then he tells you what he’s doing that day.
When I first found his channel, he had around a thousand subscribers. I watched a few videos and moved on. A year later, I thought of him again and decided to check his channel.
Almost nothing had changed.
The videos were still simple. The format was still the same. He still started every video with the same introduction. But something else had changed dramatically.
His audience had grown. He now has tens of thousands of subscribers, and he’s even sponsored by a camera company that makes small action cameras for cyclists. Watching his videos again made me realise something important about creativity. For him, nothing has changed, and everything has changed.
The simplicity of the idea remained the same. The consistency of the work remained the same. But the growth around it multiplied. And it made me think about something many creatives struggle with, especially those with a good eye for possibilities.
When you see clearly, you often see too many possibilities.
You can imagine five different directions for an idea. You can see ten ways to improve it. You can picture something bigger, more complex, more impressive. But sometimes creativity grows best when you do the opposite.
Sometimes the work is simply choosing one thread and staying with it.
Watching his channel reminded me that creativity doesn’t always grow through expansion. Sometimes it grows through repetition.
The same idea. Refined over time. Explored again and again.
When we remove the pressure to be impressive, we start to see how much creative potential actually lives inside simple ideas.
Consistency creates space for depth.
When you return to the same idea repeatedly, you begin to notice things you didn’t see before. Your eye sharpens. Your instincts refine. Small adjustments accumulate. Over time, the work becomes clearer, stronger, more recognisable.
Consistency is not the enemy of creativity. It’s one of the disciplines that protects it.
This is especially important for people with a good eye and a mind full of possibilities. Because when you see many directions at once, your greatest challenge is rarely imagination.
It’s focus.
Focus doesn’t mean you stop being creative. It means you choose a direction and allow your creativity to deepen within it.
Stewarding your gift sometimes means resisting the urge to constantly reinvent yourself. It means recognising that one simple idea, practiced consistently, can grow into something far more meaningful than a dozen impressive ideas that never fully mature. In that sense, consistency is not confinement.
It’s cultivation.
What is one simple creative thread in your life that might be worth staying with a little longer?
Creative principle
Consistency often reveals more depth than impressiveness.
What the good eye notices
Creative growth often comes from repeating a simple idea with attention.
Creative practice
Choose one creative thread and stay with it long enough for it to deepen.
I love experimenting with framing. Which one is your favourite?
Vai com Deus,
xoxo
Jem
I don’t even know the frame to pick wow , they’re all soo beautiful.
Thanks for sharing this !