By Joe Byerly
We start each year with the best of intentions, and then life happens. Dry January becomes Damp January. The gym membership app turns into just another unused icon on the phone. Weekly date nights, diets, check-ins with family and friends—all of it gets swallowed by the day-to-day demands on our already overcrowded calendars.
And that’s usually where the “new year, new me” story ends.
Instead of treating intentions as abstract promises, I’ve started reframing them as a body of work. It’s a term artists use—painters, writers, musicians—to describe the accumulation of effort over time.
People often look at artists with a sense of awe. How do they produce so much? How does Steven Pressfield, at 82 years old, consistently publish a blog post every week? How does Ryan Holiday put out book after book, year after year? How does Taylor Swift keep releasing albums, era after era?
If I had to guess, they focus on one song, one page, one brushstroke at a time. Over time, that consistency compounds.
I made this connection to my own habits when I looked back over my Sunday Emails from 2025. I print each one after I publish it, and recently I found myself flipping through a binder filled with four years’ worth of those emails. Page after page, week after week, compounding into a body of work.
You don’t have to be an artist to accumulate a body of work. In fact, we’re all building one. Instead of a binder filled with pages, it may show up in the strength of our relationships, the quality of our health, and the memories we collect along the way.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that creating a body of work requires intentionality and consistency. Life will always offer a thousand reasons not to show up—to take the day off, to put it off until tomorrow, to reach for our phones and disappear into Instagram reels.
That’s why most resolutions don’t survive February. We skip the gym because we’re tired. Then we do it again. And again. We get swallowed by work and miss a date night. One missed night becomes two. Two become three.
Building a body of work means we can’t allow circumstances or feelings to decide whether we show up.
One of the keys to consistency is focusing on the streak. The streak pulls your attention away from outcomes and brings it back to the work itself. It has power over excuses. There’s strength in being able to say, “We haven’t missed a date night in eight weeks,” or “I haven’t missed a gym day since December.”
One of the ways we can protect the streak is by letting go of the need to do things perfectly. Instead of getting stuck on an ideal version of the work, we recalibrate. Maybe the 90-minute gym session isn’t realistic today, but a few sets of push-ups and air squats during a commercial break still count. Maybe you’re both too exhausted for the fancy dinner downtown, but a movie on the couch with a bowl of popcorn is what keeps the streak alive.
Building consistency can be counterintuitive: sometimes the key isn’t raising our standards, but lowering the barrier to showing up. When we do that, the streak stays alive—and the body of work keeps growing.
As Seth Godin has written on his blog, “Streaks are their own reward…streaks create an internal pressure that keeps them going.”
I’ve learned that once I get a streak going—even if it’s only a few days—the pressure to continue does the work for me. It’s why I’ve never missed a Sunday Email in four years, or a Monthly Reading List Email in eight.
There are some weeks where I don’t feel like writing or I’m beyond exhausted. Maybe the email is a little shorter that week. Or maybe I ask a friend to help me with edits. And then I write anyway. The streak is what gets me in the chair.
Bodies of work aren’t created by talking about them. They aren’t built on social media posts. We build our body of work by doing. By staying intentional. By remaining consistent. By focusing on the streak.
Joe Byerly is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel with 20 years of service, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and command of a cavalry squadron in Europe. He earned numerous prestigious awards, including multiple Legion of Merits, Bronze Stars, the Purple Heart, and General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award. In 2013, Joe founded From the Green Notebook.
A passionate advocate for self-knowledge through reading and reflection, he authored The Leader’s 90-Day Notebook and co-authored My Green Notebook: “Know Thyself” Before Changing Jobs, a resource for leaders seeking greater self-awareness. If this post resonated with you or sparked any questions, feel free to reach out to him at Joe@fromthegreennotebook.com.
