For the past 241 days, from June 8, 2025, to February 3, 2026, I have hopped on my indoor exercise bike and pedaled for at least 30 minutes. That’s 34 weeks and 3 days. Over 163 workdays and 78 non-workdays, including 34 Saturdays, 35 Sundays, and 9 federal holidays, my indoor recumbent bike and I go for a ride at least once a day. No breaks. A consistent streak.
At first, I tracked the rides on tiny Post-it notes attached to a poster-sized one. After a while, it became a fun mind game and a daily challenge to find time for leisurely rides. As I pedal along, I wonder.
What motivates people to start habits, much less streaks? What keeps them going?
Getting on the Bike: A Small Decision, Repeated Daily
Mine began one hot June evening when the temperature soared and my enthusiasm for an evening walk flagged. Five months earlier, my left hip replacement brought relief and a determination to keep moving every day. The bike ride offers a way to unwind after a full day of caregiving, book coaching, and spiritual direction.
Some days, I simply enjoy the gray-and-white flash of mockingbirds and the bright red cardinals as they fly in and out of the branches of the aging dogwood tree outside my window. Some evenings, a satisfying catch-up call happens. Yakking with a friend in Colorado, California, or Georgia, or a cousin in Texas, helps the miles and minutes fly by. Spotify playlists, podcasts, documentaries, and shows sometimes fill the time. Over these 7 months and 27 days, I’ve slowly chugged along, even on days when a head cold hitched a ride, or laryngitis whispered, “I’m on board, too.”
As the Winter Olympics, Milano Cortina 2026, unfold in Italy this week, from February 6-22, participants will compete as people worldwide cheer them on. Though I once “lettered” on my high school tennis team, ran the July 4th Atlanta Peachtree Road Race, the world’s largest 10K, multiple times, jogged with the wild crowds at the Bolder Boulder in Colorado, and backpacked in the Colorado Rockies, I’m not what you’d call an athlete. Yet I’m fascinated by the training that goes into becoming one.
Across broad fields and majestic forests, I cross-country skied and snowshoed through the thick white of winter. Down snowy (or icy) bunny hills in Georgia, North Carolina, and Colorado, I’ve slipped and slid my way down a portion of a mountain on downhill skis. Bundled up to endure the cold of a rink, I ice-skated.
Training on the Bike and on the Page
Reading bits and pieces of Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration, and Get to Work reveals the determination that accompanies those who create regularly. Leann Shapton’s Swimming Studies offers insight into the journey required to become an Olympic hopeful. The rigor and mundaneness of training while immersed in water run throughout the memoir. Habits sustain whatever you choose to invest time in daily.
Choreographer Twyla Tharp writes in her book The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life,
“After so many years, I’ve learned that being creative is a full-time job with its own daily patterns.” She continues, “I will keep stressing the point about creativity being augmented by routine and habit.” And she reminds us that “Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits.”
C.S. Lewis combined writing, reading, and walking. Mornings were for creative work—reading and writing. Midmorning tea and a lunch break led to long walks, more tea, and more writing and creative work. Silence, solitude, and nature nourished his habits and routines.
Whether you are an athlete or a creative, habits, rhythms, routines, schedules, and streaks shape your days. So, what’s the difference?
James Clear, in his book Atomic Habits, defines a habit this way: “A habit is a routine of behavior that is performed regularly—and, in many cases, automatically.” Breakthroughs occur when repeated actions bring about major change over time. “All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger.”
Habits That Carry Us Forward
My single, tiny decision to ride my exercise bike for 30 minutes on a June day came about simply because I wanted my post-hip-replacement body to keep moving. Yet I needed a small, predictable step to take to make that happen. James Clear’s idea of atomic habits holds that small, mighty habits, when combined, lead to “a regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do, but also the source of incredible power…” So this habit of mine is a good thing. I don’t debate whether I will ride. I have the habit ingrained now. When I swing my feet onto the pedals, that habit carries me forward. Repeating it over and over means it will happen almost automatically the more often I do it. The same is true of our creative life.
A habit is a micro-behavior. So when a writer opens a laptop document, writes a sentence without editing, and closes the writing session with a note of what to do tomorrow, that small behavior matters. Habits bypass willpower. Without a habit, the creative says, “I can’t start.”
Yet each writer’s habits need to fit within each person’s rhythms, which differ. When do you feel most alert? Do you write, paint, or work in your carpentry corner best in the morning, before the day gets rolling? Do new ideas flow when you swim or walk in the afternoon? Your creative energy peaks at certain times of day. Base your rhythms on what you know about yourself.
I am a morning person to the nth degree, so if I try to write at night, it falls flat. Frustration reigns. When we write against our rhythms, we feel stifled, stilted, and stymied. The same is true of our body’s engagement in exercise. When I ride during my high-energy time of day, I can stay on the bike longer. When I’m quite weary, I choose a long, slow ride instead.
Routines create predictability and prevent decision fatigue. I change out of business attire, fill my water bottle, put on my headphones, crank up the music, get on the bike, and ride. When I write, I have my routines, as do you. What are yours like?
My writing routine involves a combination of:
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- Stretching.
- Deep breathing.
- Prayer to consecrate the work time.
- Tea.
- Review yesterday’s last page.
- Write for 50 minutes.
- Leave the writing space by taking a walk around the house, to the mailbox, and back.
- Then repeat the routine. Stretching. Deep breathing.
Chaos rules when routines don’t. More chaos? Less motivation.
Unless it’s on my calendar, unruliness rules. Schedules create space to stay on track. When I say things like, “I will write every day at dawn for one hour. I will meet with my book coach every two weeks to meet my deadline of completing this book by September 15. I will play around with words and craft a poem a month,” that’s well and good. Intentions inspire, but an appointment with myself converts ideas into completed creations.
Though we wish it were true, time never appears magically. Without schedules that set boundaries, we complain, “I never have any time to do anything I intend to do, much less to write.” On the other hand, in The Writing Life, Annie Dillard, who is also fascinated by schedules, writes, “A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”
When the Bike Ride Becomes a Streak
A streak occurs when habits, rhythms, routines, and schedules align. When we step into a streak, we prove that “Consistency matters.”
Today is day 241. With a streak going, I am loath to miss a day of my casual bike ride. I don’t want to reset to zero. I don’t want to skip a day because I now see myself as someone who consistently moves through the world, with time on my bike each day. The writer who writes for 21 days is more likely to write for 21 more days. Three months of meeting with a book coach without missing a gathering underscores the importance of the manuscript work.
A habit is how you start writing or creating. This behavior helps you and me run somewhat on autopilot. It removes choice. I create without negotiating with myself every time. I get on the bike. I write. I move. I create.
Your rhythm is when your creative juices flow best. Your natural tempo is honored, so burnout doesn’t come for a visit. I ride in a way my body can sustain. I create at a time of day when creativity bubbles up easily. What about you?
The routine is how a creative session unfolds and removes friction. I know what’s next in the predictable sequence, so I follow the familiar path.
The schedule protects time for moving or writing. External constraints are in place. This yes means no to other things that might lure me in. I protect my time window for exercise and for working on my poem, blog, or manuscript.
A streak shows how consistently you show up to the focus you have in mind: something creative or something that keeps your blood flowing and your muscles moving. It motivates you to be part of the everyday norm, both today and in the days ahead.
This week, my husband and I will watch athletes compete. Their habits, rhythms, routines, schedules, and streaks over days, weeks, months, years, even decades, prepared them for the 2026 Olympics, Six Nations Rugby, or the Super Bowl. We may also wander down to the Savannah Book Festival, where authors speak about the wonder behind the book that began with the habit of writing one word, then another, and then another.
What habit intrigues you for the year ahead? Who will cheer you on as you move forward toward what delights you?
If you need guidance on how to craft a plan or a habit or where to begin with your writing, I’d love to connect.
