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NickVenturella.com 1-14-18-Help Yourself Stay On Track for the Best 2018

Help Yourself Stay On Track for the Best 2018 Ever

January 14, 2018

I'm currently in the middle of reading Ari Herstand's, How to make it in the New Music Business (not affiliate link), which is chalk full of tons of useful information about how independent musicians can make a living in the current music biz landscape.

The book offers a ton of great practical advice that can be actioned on by the reader, however, it's easy to set the book down, begin writing out what you need to get done to excel at your endeavor and feel defeated before you even begin.

When you look at all those individual tasks to be completed it can feel overwhelming, and if you're not careful that overwhelming feeling can lead to negative self-talk like, "who am I kidding to think I could do all these tasks and reach this goal?" This often results in self-sabotage…trust me, I know.

Whether you think you can or you can't achieve your goal, depending on your mindset, you'll be right.

How to overcome the overwhelm…

You need to do consistent work. You don’t have to achieve huge sweeping victories in one sitting, but rather small individual ones everyday.

Here’s a quick idea…

Write out your top 3 priorities for the day. These are tasks that are critical to being completed before the day is done. 

This can help you feel like what needs to get done that day are only a few things, and because they need to be completed by the end of the day you feel a sense of urgency to get them done. 

You also hold yourself accountable to get them completed by the imposed deadline -- that same day.

A variation of the above idea is to use an email calendar system like Outlook or Google Calendar to schedule out specific times during the day that you'll set aside to work on those 3 daily priorities. 

Using such technology can help if the alerts and reminder notifications that pop up on your computer screen or phone trigger you to take action on those tasks when they appear. 

I know some people who are very busy and rely heavily on their schedule being up-to-date with these kinds of appointments and reminders to complete their necessary work.

Another idea is to find at least one other person in your life who understands the importance you place on achieving your goal(s). This could be a spouse or significant other, sibling, good friend coworker, or a fellow colleague in your industry…someone who will be positive about your pursuit. 

Tell the person you choose about your goal and ask them to randomly check in with you via phone, text or email to ask 2 things:

  1. How are you doing toward reaching your goal?

  2. What action will you take today to help push forward toward your goal? 

It becomes a way to have additional accountability for your goals.When you’re forced to report to someone else what you’ve done, or will do that day, to move the ball forward you realize that you don’t want to let that other person down by not having anything to report. 

More importantly in that moment, you realize you’re only letting yourself down if you’re not taking the action to do the work to have something to report.

My biggest personal goal this year is to ensure I make regular time to build a consistent habit of further developing my musical / artistic expressions…

In recent years, to really work on my craft, it’s felt like I’ve had to fight tooth and nail to eek out 15 or 20 minutes let alone an hour.I’ve just been in the midst of raising two little boys with my wife, and priorities had to shift. 

However, we’re getting to a point, where we’re getting a little breathing room and I can spend some more time getting back to perfecting my craft, which I think is actually an important lesson to teach my boys.

So if you ever need an accountability partner to help keep you focused on your goals, feel free to reach out and I’ll ask you some question to help you stay on track…maybe you can do that for me too?

Have a great week!