Oh no…another 10 ten stories from 2019…top 10 stories from the last decade.
Enough already; so predictable, isn’t there a different way to summarize the past year or the past decade.? Can’t we be more creative than that?
Our 10 biggest mistakes from the past year?
Our 10 biggest mistakes from the past decade?
The ten things I’ll stop doing in 2020, because they no longer work, or they never worked at all?
Here’s my top 10 list, with apologies to everyone.
The ten things I’ve learned and made my life both easier and more fulfilling since March 15 – the day I started devoting my full-time efforts to All Art is Personal.
1. Show Up. Know who you are, know what you do well and show up every day to do that with no expectations. Simply enjoy the art of doing what you do well.
2. Know how to describe #1 in a way that is immediately graspable to anyone who asks and anyone you wish to inform.
“I’m a melodist” is still my favorite as is “I write music so that when we meet, you and I are not strangers anymore.”
3. Sometimes, businesses fire their customers for being too high maintenance. It’s okay to write people off for the right reasons and to move on. The work you are doing is important. Silently write them off and move on to bigger, better and more realistic opportunities and friendships.
4. Know when to give up on something happening in the time frame you would like. See #1. If you build it, they will come…eventually. Sorry, but it’s true.
5. Know thine rabbit hole. This is the distraction that gets in the way of Thing No. 1.
6. You may have more than one audience, and audience #2 may not be in the music business. Who are they, what do they do, and what can you, in modified form, do for audience #2?
7. Always seek to justify the work you do by but answering this question: “why should they care?”
8. Nothing bad ever happened during the 1 hour you turned your phone completely off.
In fact, maybe something wonderful happened that time you turned your phone completely off.
Since your phone is turned off you can take it off of the table at the restaurant or bar. Cleared table = cleared head
9. Procrastination Relief: That thing you think will take 2 hours to complete may take less than 30 minutes. But that thing you think will take 5 minutes to complete might take 40 minutes to finish.
10. All Art is Personal. Your audience is listening to you one person at a time. Connect with that one person and you will connect with many.
