You can't make yourself practice or put in the hours
You know your creative work requires putting in the hours — practicing, showing up, doing the work regularly — but you cannot make yourself do it. You wait to feel motivated and the motivation rarely comes, so the hours do not get put in and the work does not progress. You want to become someone who actually does the work, consistently.
Let us solve this properly, because the trouble is not a lack of discipline in you but a reliance on the wrong thing. Relying on motivation is why the hours don't happen — motivation is unreliable, arriving and departing on its own schedule, and the makers who put in the hours do not have more of it but have learned not to depend on it, working whether or not they feel like it, so the problem is that you are waiting for a feeling that keeps failing you. Routine does what willpower cannot — a fixed time and place for your work, repeated until it becomes habit, stops the making from depending on the daily summoning of will and simply carries you, which is how most sustained creative work actually gets done. And make the sessions small enough to actually begin — a daunting long session is easy to put off while a small one is easy to start, and beginning is most of the battle, so ask for modest repeatable sessions you will actually do. Stop waiting to feel like it, build the routine, keep it small. When could your regular small session be?
What changes unlock by starting
- You stop relying on unreliable motivation
- You build a routine that carries you where willpower can't
- You make the sessions small enough to actually begin
- You put in the hours consistently through habit