Every ambitious artist has career goals.
The question is… are you doing the right things to be able to reach your goals? How do you know that you’re on track? Do you have any way of tracking your progress?
For most artists, the answer will be “no,” because we like to do most things by the seat of our pants and make things up as we go.
But there are a few simple practices you can adopt to increase your chances of getting to where you want to go in your career with greater ease and rapidity.
Here we look at five productivity tips that, if adopted, will see you getting more of the right things done in less time.
Reduce distractions
Disorganized desks. Constant smartphone notifications. Social media. Unruly roommates.
Most artists are trying to be productive in environments that facilitate anything but. They’re trying to get things done in settings where distractions and interruptions are abundant and inevitable.
Here are several changes you can make to ensure you’re getting things done when they need to get done:
- Make it a discipline to spend five to 10 minutes per day organizing your workspace.
- Turn off all notifications on all devices. Or set your devices to Airplane Mode while you’re tackling key priorities.
- If the internet and social media are a distraction for you, lock yourself in a device-free room to do your work.
- If necessary, move. You don’t need to put up with bad roommates just because it’s cheaper to live with them. Downgrade and live alone for a while. Sometimes drastic changes are necessary.
Schedule time for your priorities
It’s a simple thing, but I’m regularly amazed at how few artists do this.
I know that creative work is often done in the margins of life, but if you wait for the rare moments you’re available, you might be too tired or too distracted to do it.
Just as you prioritize certain tasks at work, you must learn to prioritize specific projects in your creative life too.
This looks like:
- Estimating how much time the project is going to take to finish.
- Setting a target date for its achievement.
- Breaking down how much time you need to spend each week to complete your project.
- Blocking off hours in your schedule to do the work required.
Without scheduling your priorities, you have no hope of ensuring your career is on track.
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Check-in regularly
Success is fundamentally boring. It’s about doing the right things consistently long enough. It’s perfectly logical, and yet most artists end up feeling the urge to shake things up, change their routines, and adopt different practices at the drop of a hat.
In the docuseries Arnold (recommended viewing), bodybuilder, actor, and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger reveals his method for working out – he would take a piece of chalk, write “biceps,” “triceps,” “chest,” etc. on the wall and keep doing sets until the wall was full of tally marks.
I recently started doing exactly this in my workout routine (though I’m probably not lifting anywhere the same weight as Arnold was). Not only did I find it effective, but I was also amazed at the number of sets I was able to crank out.
Funny thing – I noticed myself wanting to deviate from the workout method just two weeks later, even though it was working!
The difference is this… I caught myself and kept the successful practice. Most artists don’t catch themselves in time to keep doing what’s making them successful.
You’ve got to check in on a monthly if not weekly basis to ensure the actions you’re taking are taking you to where you want to go. Guaranteed you will fall off the track occasionally. It’s not a matter of if - but when. So, check to ensure that you keep doing the things that are working instead of shaking things up on a whim.
Do less
As I was beginning to embrace the artistic life, I found it very difficult to stay focused on a single project to see it through to completion.
I wanted to tour. But I also wanted to record a jazz album. And before long… House concerts. Radio airplay. Videos. Crowdfunding. Sync licensing. Video-game-music-inspired album. The list of things I wanted to do just kept growing, sidetracking my priorities.
Productivity through addition is a real thing, but most artists would be better served doing no more than two or three things per day.
Many artists wear their long to-do lists like a badge of honor, but most things they’re doing are not getting them any closer to their goals. A year or two later, they’re surprised to find they’ve made very little progress and have little to show for their hours of hard work.
In the last five to six years or so, much of my life has revolved around writing, so my priorities for the day often look like 1) working on my next book and 2) writing articles for clients. I might have one or two other small tasks to handle, but I’m never doing more than three key tasks in a day.
The fastest way to get to the next project is to finish the one you’re working on right now. Embrace this and you will be surprised at the progress you make. You’ll be amazed at how much you accomplish, not in months or years, but in days and weeks.
Find a productivity methodology that works for you
The problem with productivity for artists is threefold.
The first problem is that there isn’t much information out there, and even the information available is either misguided or unrealistic.
The second problem is that much of the philosophy is fluffy and passive. Unfortunately, without a strong mindset and a willingness to act with urgency, productivity hacks don’t work.
The third problem is that artists are sometimes encouraged to adopt a methodology wholesale regardless of whether it fits into their ecosystem (e.g., productivity systems designed for teams and not individuals). To further complicate the problem, these methods often assume personal and team productivity are two different things, which is a myth.
My advice? Figure out the tools and processes that work for you, commit to their mastery, and iterate as necessary.
And if you’re ready to transform your relationship to productivity, I recommend a reading of my new Productivity, Performance & Profits Blackbook.
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Award-winning composer, best-selling author, and long-time podcaster David Andrew Wiebe is the founder of Content Marketing Musician. His eighth self-published book is the Productivity, Performance & Profits Blackbook, a thorough resource for artists looking to accomplish more in their careers, build a fan base, and create the life they love through music.
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