The Groove Jar Challenge: A Simple Way to Rebuild Your Creative Rhythm

Photo credit: Tara Henton

Sometimes, we get lost.

We start with the best intentions to prioritise our creativity—but life has other plans. The inbox stacks up. A voice interrupts your thoughts. The house is buzzing with unfinished things. Despite our best intentions, sonwriting doesn't always win.

In an average week, I manage to spend some time nurturing my creativity and my songwriting—but if I’m honest, not usually as long as I’d like. It can feel… unsatisfying. Like I’ve only skimmed the surface of what I actually want to express. And I know I’m not alone in that.

I've tried setting reminders on my phone to carve out writing time, but more often than not, something “more urgent” pops up. It’s not necessarily more important—just more pressing, more visible, more likely to affect someone else, so it gets pushed to the top of the list, and my songwriting aspirations quietly slink off into the corner like a sulking, forgotten child.

As creatives, it can be easy to believe that making space for our work is selfish. But the truth is, it’s not selfish—it’s self. It’s how we stay connected to who we are. It’s how we stay well.

As Brené Brown writes in The Gifts of Imperfection:

“Unused creativity is not benign. It metastasises. It turns into grief, rage, judgment, sorrow, shame.”

That line stayed with me. Because I’ve felt it. And maybe you have too.

A Jar Full of Creativity

In the past few months, I’ve been doing the slow, sometimes uncomfortable work of getting my songwriting momentum back. Not with big declarations or ambitious word counts, but with small, meaningful actions I can actually stick to. I wanted a way to see those actions—something tangible that would remind me I was, in fact, still showing up.

That’s where the Groove Jar came in.

It started as a personal idea: a simple jar near my writing space. Each time I did something creative—wrote a lyric, played piano, jotted a note, sang into Voice Memos—I dropped in a token. Some days I added a few. Some days, none. But over time, I started to see a quiet rhythm re-emerging.

It wasn’t about productivity. It was about visibility. It was about remembering that I was still a songwriter, even when life felt loud.

The Psychology Behind It

The idea of marking small wins in a physical, tangible way isn’t new. One well-known example comes from a study by the Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University, where researchers gave participants a set of gold coins to drop into a jar each week they successfully added money to a savings account. This simple act—placing a coin in the jar—more than doubled their savings compared to participants who only received text reminders. The physical presence of the jar served as a visual cue, a quiet but consistent nudge to stick with the habit.

This idea is echoed in James Clear’s Atomic Habits, where one of the core principles is to “make it obvious.” In other words, design your environment in a way that supports the habits you want to build. When we can see our progress—when it becomes part of our surroundings—it becomes easier to keep going.

In our case, it’s not about finances—it’s about creativity.

Each token in your Groove Jar is a quiet yes. A way to say: “This mattered. I showed up.” That kind of reinforcement builds confidence—and eventually, momentum.

The Groove Jar may be small, but the signal it sends is powerful: your creativity is worth showing up for.

The Groove Jar Challenge: Join Us!

This month inside We Write Songs, we’re inviting songwriters everywhere to join us in the Foyer—our free-tier creative space—for the Groove Jar Challenge.

Created in Canva

The invitation is simple:

• Create your own Groove Jar (it can be a vase, a mug, a takeaway container—you choose)

• Choose a token to drop in each time you honour your creativity

• Join fellow writers doing the same: reclaiming their writing time, celebrating small wins, and rebuilding their rhythm, one token at a time

  
  

You don’t have to be on a roll. You don’t have to be prolific.

You just have to start.

Because this isn’t about perfection—it’s about presence. About reconnecting to the part of you that writes, dreams, plays, sings, hums, journals, wonders. The part that never really left. It just needed a way back in.

Your Groove Jar is waiting. 🫙✨

💬 We’d love to see how you’re filling yours. Join the challenge in The Foyer and if you're sharing your progress on socials be sure to tag @wewritesongs.club and use the hashtag #GrooveJarChallenge.

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