The Power of Getting Started

(This post is copied from my Patreon page.)

I was journaling about “just getting started” this morning, and then a few minutes ago I saw AfroDJMac’s post on the topic.

I’m usually working on 3-4 projects simultaneously. I think – being a moody Pisces – this usually works for me. When I get stuck or burned out on one song I can just move over to another one. It’s like creative cross-fertilization or crop rotation.

BUT I realized one reason I procrastinate with music stuff is that I get stuck ruminating on “Which project should I work on today?”

Subconsciously I’m weighing it up as this huge investment. Like, I’d better choose the right project or I’ll have wasted my day. In reality I’m wasting my day by not “just getting started”.

I gave myself permission to dump that old story today by saying: just pick one and set a timer for 5 minutes. If it feels like the wrong one when the timer dings, pick another one…

(I had about 40 minutes music time today. I spent 35 of them totally rockin’ out and making big progress on a live performance technique I’ve been trying to figure out! That was five hours ago and I’m still mildly buzzing from it 😆)

I’ve read – and written – quite a bit about the “just get started” thing, but I had never thought of it in terms of inertia and momentum. Whether you’re a musician or not, I think you’ll find AfroDJMac’s inertia/momentum angle helpful too.

Fight Perfectionism with Creative Constraints

Limits, Pt. 2

In this recent post on voluntarily embracing limits as a way of increasing creative output, I talk about the limits I used to record a live looping version of Traffic’s Dear Mr. Fantasy.

I also made a video – mainly because I know some of my readers prefer to listen to music on YouTube. The video took me about two hours to make. (Obviously, I have no ambitions of being the next Stanley Kubrick.)  I limited myself to using: Continue reading

Embracing Limits

A couple of my favorite producer-teachers have been advocating the use of self-imposed limitations as a way of getting more work completed. It’s a ‘creative hack’ I’ve been ruminating about for a while. Cognitively, I get it – find it attractive, even. But emotionally?

Continue reading

The (Corporate) Cultural Revolution

How Cloud-Based Data Is Changing the Contract Between Companies and Workers

Haven’t had much time to sit down and write a grammatically-correct, well-structured blog post about the creative process lately. (1)

matrix300Between a big freelance project I started three weeks ago and the sometimes frustrating levels of fatigue that seem to be affecting so many of us during this Mars Retrograde, time for unpaid creative work has been in short supply. (Mars, the energy and drive planet, has been retro since March 25. He goes direct on June 29. We should see a noticeable bounce by early July.)

I can’t tell you too many details about the project I’ve been working on. It involves a couple of mega-corporations in which people are using technology to change the way people work. (I’ll share the video once it comes out.)  Continue reading