From Scratch – Adventures in Independent Music Making

Posts Tagged ‘Goals’

Photo by Tony Hisgett /CC BY-SA 2.0

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The holidays were a great time to take a step back, spend time with family and reassess where I am going with my life and career. It really does feel like a new year. There is something different in the air, everyone I run into is more optimistic and excited, I feel more confident and determined, and new opportunities and connections are already presenting themselves in bushels. 2011 is going to be awesome!

This time last year, I wrote a blog post called “A Walk With Jean“. It was primarily about an amusing experience I had last year on New Year’s Eve while on a walk with a strange old lady.  At the end, however, I described my intentions for ringing in the new year and for what I wanted to accomplish in 2010. Reading it today, a year later, I feel amazed. An excerpt about my feelings at the end of 2009:

“This past year has been filled with struggle, fear, and uncertainty in many ways and I’ve been heavily reliant on my friends and family for emotional support. Last year, I celebrated NYE in a dim closet as a coat check girl at a restaurant where the ‘big boss’ looked down upon me. I want to start this year off with a statement of strength, focus, unwavering commitment to my passion, confidence in my ability to improve upon my situation, and the satisfaction of being able to stand on my own two feet as my own ‘big boss’.”

At the end of 2010 … I really was my own ‘big boss’. My business is thriving (though developing) I am fiercely independent, hell bent on establishing a career in music, and emotionally very harmonious. Last year I made my statement to myself and the world by staying at home, with a small bottle of champagne, writing lyrics as the clock struck midnight. This year I wanted the statement to be bigger, so I hosted a New Year’s Eve bash in a venue I’ve never played at before and my countdown happened on stage, with champagne and the man I want to make music with for the rest of my life. 2011 is going to be awesome!

Since it is a new year, it is definitely time for a new blog challenge (this time one that is self-designed). Last year was about getting the ball rolling. The year before that was about making decisions. I want this year to be about establishing quality … of life, in my music, and caring about everything I do. If I find myself not caring about something, I will work through the reasons why and, if that doesn’t change anything, I will let myself move on from it. I have decided to dedicate every Monday morning in 2011 to writing and posting my blogs and to focus this year on developing as an artist, now that I have a full band, small administrative team, strong website, and a good start to a marketing strategy (thanks to Ariel Hyatt’s Music Success in Nine Weeks Blog Challenge).

In order to create my own personal blog challenge, I sat down and reflected on the core challenges I want to face and overcome this year as an independent artist. The brainstorming process resulted in the following list of priorities, which I guess you could also view as New Year’s Resolutions:

Business Resolutions

Resolution #1 -> I want to run my business … not let it run me. Same thing with my schedule

2) I want to put my art/music first, while moving the business forward

3) I want to stay on top of the button orders and develop the webcast so that it is strong enough to justify sponsorship

4) I want to make the webcast more mobile and take it on tour

5) I want to finish writing my business plan, apply for small business grants, and develop a more efficient method of planning and tracking my finances

6) I want to be 100% financially independent and not in need of a part time “day job”

Artistic & Musical Resolutions

Resolution #1 ->  I want to perform my songs, not play them

2) I want to write better music (more of it and more often)

3) I want to be a stronger vocalist and instrumentalist

3) I want to develop and bring more movement into my live show

4) I want to learn theory and communicate more effectively with musicians

5) I want my physical style and outward appearance/presentation to reflect my musical and artistic style

6) I want to incorporate new sounds (especially effects) into my music

7) I want to learn more about audio production, specifically mastering

Band/Team Resolutions

Resolution #1 -> I want my band and team to feel and be recognized as a band/team, not just as a backing band of a solo artist.

2) I want to involve the band in more of the creative, administrative, and marketing activities as well as decision making

3) I want to record two 8 track, self-produced albums with the band this year. One for summer/touring release and one for Christmas release

4) I want to direct my own music videos from now on and bring the band into them

5) I want to establish a more regular routine with writing and rehearsals (having dedicated writing and rehearsal days)

The Action Plan

Now, I recognize that many of these things will have to be worked on simultaneously and all of this is going to take months, let alone 9 weeks. So this upcoming week I will be focusing on the 2 key themes/areas of development that I feel are most important right now:

1) Creating an action plan for the next 12 months

2) Fostering cohesiveness by bringing the band and admin team together in person (house party -band/team members only) and online (establishing their presence and importance on my website). These people are the closest members of my musical family, but I don’t feel like I have been really demonstrating that effectively or creating opportunities for all of us to become more tightly knit or to grow together as artists and professionals. This is a major priority for my music and business this year.

So, who the h*ll am I?

… I’m an independent artist. I can actually say that this year and really believe it.

And Where am I going?

… This year, I’m in search of finding my true artistic path while building upon the foundational business path I started last year. I am going to tour again this year (really missed that last year) and this time I am taking my band with me. I want to embark on a least one small tour outside of the country (in the fall, so we have enough time to clear the paper work associated with international gigging), though that will likely have to be as a solo or duo trip this time around.

Now, who the h*ll are you? And where are you going?

I really enjoyed the collaborative nature of the MSI9W blog challenge and the interactions in the forum. I want to keep that flame burning in a new way. If you are going through an artistic revitalization, please share a link to your blog in the comment section below and tweet about it with the hashtag #aiimm .

All the Best to All of You! Did I mention that 2011 is going to be Awesome!?!

Meghan Morrison
www.meghanmorrison.com
@MegsMorrison

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Here we go.

After completing the second wave, I am joining the third wave of Ariel Hyatt’s Music Success in Nine Weeks Blog Challenge, not to compete for a prize, but to challenge myself to build off of what I have started and hopefully be a resource for those who are starting out or trying it again.  I accomplished a lot and learned a lot during the second wave, but I neglected other parts of my life (especially health and social life) in order to push myself bootcamp style. I don’t regret it one bit! I knew it was only temporary and I knew I needed it. While the blog challenge is only 9 weeks long, however, music marketing is an aspect of the business that will go on for as long as you are pursuing your music as a career. I plan to be doing that for a long time, so now I need to focus on finding balance and/or harmony.

I imagine the second time through this program is going to be more fun. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the first challenge series, but being a very reflective person, I’m actually excited to look back on my older blog posts and see how much my project has grown since the last time I visited a particular challenge. This week: Setting goals and acknowledging accomplishments. It feels like forever ago that I sat down to evaluate my goals in a formal way, which probably means it is high time to be doing it again! … or that I should be purposefully making it a part of my regular routine.

During the first week of the last wave, I made a ridiculous number of goals for myself; both long and short term. Though I have always been a dreamer and have always had big picture goals in mind, going through that process certainly helped me achieve a clearer picture for what I want to achieve overall.  Where I struggled mostly during the past 9 weeks wasn’t so much with goal setting, but with goal planning.The marketing process was very clearly laid out (thanks to Ariel), but I didn’t have a handbook for all my goals outside of the marketing side of music… or life in general … or how to work with unexpected responsibilities that cut into the time I needed to do the challenge work that week. This became more evident to me during the first few weeks of the challenge as I consistently missed goals;  partly because I planned far too much for myself and partly because I didn’t realize how much time the blog challenge work was actually going to take. Since my long term goals are still basically the same, this time around I want to try a different approach for week 1: focusing more on short term and intermediate goal “planning” vs “setting“. The strategy is to build off the work I did under Ariel’s tutelage during the last wave by blending in the Pomodoro Technique and, what I’m going to call, “1 Thing at a Time”.

How I’m doing it and what this means:

Ariel’s Tutelage: I have used the focus areas that Ariel suggests in her book (as well as a few custom areas that I felt were necessary for my project) and the 3 techniques Ariel teaches on page 16 (Clarity, Involve Only You, Achievable) to generate ideas for goals and setting goals. My Statement Piece survived the move and is still hanging up in my room so that I can see it every day. This time around, however, I have created a more organized system for storing and working on my goals: A binder with tabs. Go figure. Just like I have a binder for my daily 5 Successes.

1 Thing at a Time : Because I set so many goals for myself, I need to start breaking them down into what I can plan to achieve this week and evaluating my progress and goal setting on a weekly basis. A lot of the time my goals are really just ideas; being ambitious, I tend to treat the two things equally. A goal, however, is more formal than an idea. As such, in my goal binder, I have included one page of loose-leaf under each focus area tab/divider just for ideas (goals in training) and a separate “Activity Planning Sheet” (from the Pomodoro Technique) for formal goals that have specific dates and time allotments.  This has helped me develop a clearer picture of the success I can achieve over the following 7 days. To promote this feeling of achievement (and eliminate the feeling of being overwhelmed), I have decided to plan 1 goal and only 1 goal as a “priority goal” for each focus area that week. Other goals that I will attempt to achieve during the week are listed under each focus area tab, but I only put one goal for each focus area on my ‘This Week” page (that goes at the front of the binder) which absolutely must get done -no excuses!

Pomodoro Technique: This technique was introduced to me by fellow #msi9w3 blogger, Ethan Waldman.  After seeing in my Google Alerts update that he had blogged about me, I checked out his Week Zero blog (clever, Ethan!) and learned about it there. Basically, this technique makes you break down your tasks into 25 + 5 minutes chunks to help you get more value out of your work time. It also teaches you how to manage interruptions (from outside and within) and stay on task. Though I am very task oriented, focused and determined, as a creative person my mind is still always wandering. Often to things that make my project better, but also often to things that are completely irrelevant and can wait until later.

In my strategy for goal attainment during this wave, I am going to use the Pomodoro Technique not only to to help me organize the time I spend working on tasks, but in planning my weekly goals as well. At present I have my 1Thing at a Time goals (organized by focus area) planned out for the week based on how many ‘Pomodoros’ it takes to complete the task and have left time open for unexpected tasks that need immediate attention, free time/personal life. Like Ariel recommends, no more than 6 things to do per day. At the end of every day, I will sit down with my goals and successes binders to track what I have done and reflect on how I can plan my time better if I didn’t achieve what I wanted to.

I found that writing blogs on Sundays (to have ready for Monday) left me feeling too rushed because of band commitments on the weekends. So this time around I’m going to try posting on Fridays, before the weekend, and then promoting on Mondays. This gives a couple of days for reflection and editing and offers the die-hards a chance to comment before everyone else reads (*ahem*… James), huzzah! If you know of any other time management strategies or have success stories of your own that you’d like to share, I’d love for you to leave them in the comment section below.

Here’s to week 1 of Wave 3! Kudos to everyone who has signed up and blogged.

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I’m thinking of… by Davide Restivo (Creative Commons License 2.0)

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Thursday’s rehearsal led to my drummer telling me I need to stop taking on more than I can handle, as I typically have more projects on the go than any sane person would permit in their lives … and then I went home and joined Arial Hyatt’s Music Success in 9 Weeks Blog Challenge.

I was referred to the contest through a newsletter I started receiving after I bought the book from Ariel’s website. NOTE: She didn’t spam me, I wanted the newsletter. The winner of this challenge earns a 3 month Cyber PR campaign … a massive opportunity for an artist at the bottom of the totem pole, like myself. That however, isn’t the only reason I was compelled to take the challenge; Brad’s commentary on uber-ambitiousness was ringing at the back of my ears when I saw the posting. Not because I needed another task to wig me out (I can be a bit of a spaz when I’m stressed), but because I needed a task to help me stop wigging out. Follow my jive?

Though I am a very self-motivated individual, capable of directing my affairs, I have also been told that I am a pressure performer (which hearkens back to conversations I had in cold ice rinks with my coach when I was a competitive figure skater). I saw this as an opportunity to make a formal commitment to getting my act together (pun intended) and I believe having a weekly blog (aka deadline) will help move things along in a more structured way. Up until now, things having been happening so randomly I don’t know where I’m going other than forward. Though I don’t want blinders on while walking this journey, missing unpredicted paths, I would like to have 20:20 vision while taking each step.

I bought the book after attending a session that Ariel spoke in at CMW and after reading the first chapter “Getting Mentally Prepared”, which addresses the importance of goal setting and celebrating successes, I decided to read the entire book all the way through before setting my goals. The rationale: I figured I would be able to set more quality, target-focused goals if first I knew what would be expected of me in the coming 9 weeks (and beyond). The result: 10 pages of specific, time-oriented goals (big and small) conceived via 6 music-focused areas with 24 sub-focus areas, 1 family & socially-focused area, 1 general financial area, and 2 sets of lifetime goals (general and music-focused). I have always been a goal setter, but I’ve never treated my goal setting process like a project before. I feel much more confident in my compass now. If you would like to see some examples of goals I have set in the 6 music-focused areas I created for myself, please click on any of the titles  in the list below:

1. Artistic Development
2. Marketing
3. Finances
4. The Team
5. Health & Well-being
6. Fan Base

Ariel recommends hanging your goals in your space in an aesthetically pleasing way to keep them in your sight and inspiring you. So as not to become too narrowly focused on short term tasks, I have also created a representation of my current overarching (albeit lofty) goal for music:

“It is July 8^th, 2022 and I have just celebrated my 40^th birthday by returning home from my 5^th world tour”

I know, a little crazy… but not impossible.

I call this piece my statement piece. Being made from the CD spines of all the albums I bought as a teenager and young adult (my foundation), the Eiffel Tower represents my desire to return to Europe (my future), this time through my music. The sky is scattered with the occasional horoscope clipping, inspiring fortune cookie predictions, and one ‘music advice’ snippet from Now Weekly, all pointing upward beyond the tower and out of the view of the piece itself, representing the notion of having no limits or boundaries. The golden wrappers blanket the opportunities that exist, but are yet to be seen by the eye. This is the base of the piece and over the next year I will be painting over top of it, as I find and redefine myself as an artist and as I revisit my goals.

To take things even more overboard, when setting dates for my goals I bought The Secret Languages of Relationships by Gary Goldschneider & Joost Eiffers (1997). It’s a book about the interactions of personality based on week of birth which my friend introduced me to a few years back. It was so freakishly accurate with everything about me and the people I know, I figured it might also be relevant for events. As a person who believes in math and science just as much as spirituality and intuition, it seemed worth an experiment. If nothing else, it has brought me closer to my goals in a more personal, internally seeking way.

Just as important as setting goals, celebrating successes is also promoted in Chapter 1. The idea is that in order to keep your mind on your achievements and feeling like you are accomplishing your goals and moving forward (which you are), you should take 5 – 10 minutes to reflect on the successes of your day. This was earth moving for me. I’m the type who is very hard on themselves (recognition is the first step to recovery, right?), always panicking because they’re not getting everything (or enough) done in a day. Note: I also learned through this chapter that I’m trying to do too much in any given day. No more than six ‘things to do’ for me anymore. I am now in the habit of sitting down with my “Successes Binder” and pen before closing my eyes at night and enjoying the satisfaction of writing down each thing I achieved that day. Now the accomplishments (whether big or small; music or personally related) get the recognition they deserve. It’s like attending an awards ceremony every night. Luckily without all the trophies. My room is too small for that.

I have decided that I am comfortable with sharing my 5 successes with the world and will be posting them online at the end of each week with the hope that other people might be able to take something away from the process and get ideas of ‘successes’ for themselves.

Already today:

1. Celebrated exactly 1 month since working the last shift at my meaningless retail day job, which led to the creation of my new mantra of only taking jobs that are related to music. *I did so after having read The Dip by Seth Godin. I highly recommend it.
2. Haven’t looked back since.
3. Posted my first Challenge Blog … before the deadline!
4. Woke up after only one slap of the snooze button
5. Didn’t freak out when the network connection dropped as I was writing my blog, because I outsmarted the internet by saving it in Word first. Muahaha

Now I’m late for our writing session… that’s something to work on for next week.

Week/Chapter 2: Your Perfect Pitch

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Ariel Hyatt’s Music Success in Nine Weeks Website