December 2017 - Page 2 of 2

The key to more success in your daily life

What separates all successful people everyone else is that they form habits of doing things failures do not like to do. You’ve heard that saying about how when the going gets tough then the tough get going? This is the same thing. Successful people recognize challenges and accept them as a necessary path to where they want to be. Those who fail recognize the same challenges and do their best to avoid them. They believe there must be another way to the top, especially because the digital age has taught us the paths to success across all platform is numerous, but no matter how you begin your journey to the top you eventually have to overcome the same challenges that have been presented to everyone throughout history. You have to fight through creative blocks and do things that may seem mundane or boring because doing them is the only way to get ahead.

Stephen King did not wake up one day and write a novel the world wanted to read. No one who has ever written anything meaningful has done that. The only way to become a great writer is to write every single day for years and years. Some mornings the words will flow out of you like water from the Mississippi into the gulf of Mexico, but most of the time the words will be hard, if not next to impossible, to find. Writing is hard. Everything worth doing is hard.

Part of you will try and explain away the struggle by saying you need a break or some time away, but this is resistance fighting your desire to progress from the inside out. Successful people realize that in order to live the majority of their lives as champions – AKA the people they want to be – they must suffer in the short term. They accept the hardship that comes with starting at the bottom of any field and do whatever they must in order to get ahead. If this means long hours, they work as long as it takes to get the job done. If this means reading and doing research, the library and Google becomes their best friend. If this means going to the gym daily, or cooking every meal, or setting aside an hour a day to focus on developing one specific skill, successful people find the time to work on their goals. Sacrifice is part of the game, and successful people are far more willing to make short term sacrifices in exchange for long term gain than those who fail.

We all encounter walls in individual journeys through life. What separates those who succeed from those who fail is how they respond to the presence of those walls. Successful people understand that walls do not exist to keep us out of something, but rather to make us prove how badly we want to excel at whatever it is we are trying to accomplish. In order for any industry or creative medium to progress you need the most talented and driven individuals at the helm. Walls exist to ensure there is a separation between those capable of overcoming the hurdles inherent in a field and those who will stumble at the first sign of hardship. It’s not a perfect system by any means, but it is one that exists in all career fields around the world.

Creativity and success are processes, not events. To excel at anything in life takes time, sacrifice, and doing things you might not otherwise choose to do. Does everyone start at square one? No. Life is not fair and never will be, but the vast majority (95% or more) start from roughly the same place. Everyone is born with a dream and in order to make those goals a reality they must put in work. Whether or not you are willing to do the work required to be whatever it is you hope to become is a decision only you can make, but know your choice will decide your course in life for many years to come. The work is worth the effort as long as you stick with it.

Make a decision to succeed and commit to seeing it through. The only other option is failure.

A tip for surviving the industry holiday slowdown

The holiday season is upon us, and in no time at all businesses across the industry will go dark so employees can celebrate this time of year with their loved ones. It’s a beautiful thing, especially in an industry notorious for long hours, but for a few professionals it’s also maddening. Allow me to explain…

While many music professionals are able to setup out of office replies for the holidays there are still bloggers, podcasters, and a wide variety of media people in between with audiences who demand a constant feed of fresh content. When the industry goes dark for the holiday these poor souls (including yours truly) find themselves clicking through every pitch they receive in hopes of discovering something worth writing about. More often than not they settle on additional editorial content, generally in the form of telling you the best stuff you might have missed, and they pray it’s enough to keep clicks rolling in while the snow falls.

There is a saying in journalism that you should seek to tell stories you would want to read. If you should find yourself writing something you have no interest in reading it is highly likely those who find that article will feel the same. As much as fresh stories in a feed can be good for business is it really worth whatever investment of time they require if next to no one cares to read them?

People care less about entertainment news around the holidays than they do practically any other time of year. Don’t take this personally though, as it is true for virtually every publication. Entertainment and entertainment news is the distraction we fill our days with when doing things we would otherwise avoid if we could, like work. Holidays are communal escapes, offerings friends and family the chance to do things they want to do, therefore lowering the need for distractions.

To put it another way, the demand does not exist because the need for something that brings joy is met through other (arguably far more important) means.

This year, I want to challenge all music writers out there to try something different. Rather than beat your head against your keyboard in between clicking refresh on your RSS feeds just try and take a little time to experience what the rest of the world does this time of year. Schedule tweets and make whatever necessary posts you feel you must make to maintain appearances, but as soon as that is done shutdown your computer and experience this thing call life. Talk to the people who support you and tell them of your vision for the new year. Ask people what they have been up to with their time, and make it a point to really listen to their words. Be present, and remember you will never have two holiday seasons that work the same way. The people around you now may not be there next year, so don’t take a minute for granted.

This won’t be easy, but I have good news: The music industry will still be here when you get back. I know you will feel like you are slipping behind, but there is rarely a single headline in the last ten to fourteen days of the new year that drastically impacts the music landscape. You know this as well as I do, so quit lying to yourself and accept that it is okay to spend a little time offline. Who knows? It might even do you good to unplug.